Two years ago, as we backed Joe Garcia's bid to take out Mario DIaz-Balard, the Miami Herald backed incumbent, who then went on to win a narrow victory that November.

Since then, Mario's brother Lincoln has quit to run for president of Cuba (no joke, he thinks that the Castro brothers are on their last legs, and that he'd be a viable choice on the island), and Mario -- spooked by his near-death experience in 2008 -- moved to Lincoln's more Republican district. So Garcia is back for a second crack at this now open seat. And given the quality of his opposition, the Herald has now cast its lot with our guy:

Mr. Rivera has been a state legislator for eight years, but during this campaign he has at times discredited himself. He has not released documentation to clarify a consulting contract he says he has with the U.S. Agency for International Development, which maintains it has no record of this. That raises disturbing questions about transparency and honesty. Mr. Rivera owes it to the public to come clean about his sources of income.

Mr. Garcia, a moderate on Cuba policy, is well known for an argumentative style. It may have served him well as an advocate for his party and other causes, but in Congress we need fewer verbal bomb throwers and more consensus-builders. His campaign has consisted of disparaging attack ads against Mr. Rivera, hardly an incentive to vote for Mr. Garcia.

Still, the time has come for a change in this district, giving Mr. Garcia an edge. It has been represented by U.S. Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, a Republican, ever since it was created after the 2000 census. This year, Mr. Diaz-Balart moved to a district considered safer for Republicans. The district is evenly divided among registered Democrats and Republicans, with independents holding the balance.

For U.S. House, District 25, The Miami Herald recommends JOE GARCIA.

Aww, the Herald was nice to Rivera. In addition to his money laundering and being Marco Rubio's BFF, Rivera is also a woman beater and highway pirate. He is also a judas, denying his own friends for political gain.

Quite the accomplishments.

As for Garcia, the fact that he has an "argumentative style" makes me like him even more. What Congress needs is less "consensus builder", and more "push back against right-wing crazy". The establishment may get the vapors when a Democrats acts like a passionate advocate for his or her beliefs, but fact is we definitely need more of those kinds of Democrats in Congress. We can help make that happen.

Support Joe Garcia today!

As someone who worked on his campaign, I’m not surprised Joe Sestak is making a big push. It isn’t surprising internal polls on both sides show the campaign getting tighter, and that Republicans are scrambling to make new ads to save their precious wingnut champion Pat Toomey. And it won’t be surprising to me if the campaign continues to swing toward Sestak, especially if you contribute another $10 today.

Here’s why:

Disciplined
First, Congressman Sestak is extremely disciplined, which isn’t surprising for an Admiral. He never says anything that he can’t back up with facts, never goes off message, and was always going to save up big resources for the end of the campaign.

Sestak would never make a rash early expenditure just because a few polls showed him trailing by around 7%. He faced even greater financial and polling deficits in the primary, and didn’t panic then. Personally, I was panicky during the primary, and thought saving resources for the final three weeks against Specter wouldn’t work. But I was wrong, and Congressman Sestak’s discipline paid off.

Brutally hard worker
Expect Sestak to put in 140-150 hour work weeks, even though there are only 168 hours in a week. I’m not exaggerating. Hell, during the final week, he might work the whole 168 hours. Maybe he is even doing that already.

When I first met him, in June of 2009, the only time he had for a meeting was at 11:30 pm on a Sunday night, in the Philadelphia suburbs. After that meeting, he drove himself to Pittsburgh for multiple events the next morning. That’s a 5-6 hour drive.

Great ads
Congressman Sestak was always going to have awesome ads at the end of the campaign. Here’s the proof:

”Belle”

Sestak’s ads are done by The Campaign Group, which is famous in Pennsylvania for producing awesome late campaign ad after awesome late campaign ad. There might not be anyone better in the entire country.

Bottom line

Sestak was always going to catch up during the final few weeks. No one can surpass him during that stretch in terms of mustering resources, making the best ads, and putting in the work to execute a plan. Wherever the campaign stands right now (I have Sestak down 3.5%), it’s going to swing toward the Admiral.

Kossacks are mirroring the late Sestak push. Since Wednesday, 2,800 of you have contributed $58,000 to his campaign--money that has already been wired to the campaign offices and which is being used to run his new ad. You are one of the big reasons why the “Belle” ad is on the air, and why millions of Pennsylvanians are going to see it today.

Please, contribute another $10 to Joe Sestak today. No candidate, or campaign ad, will make it go further.

• There are 17 days until the November 2 elections. Early voting is now taking place in Alaska, Arizona, California, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, South Dakota, Tennessee, Vermont, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming. Virginia allows early absentee voting under certain circumstances -- check here and see if you qualify. And New Jersey allows voting by mail -- apply here.
• By repeatedly giving them a public platform, with the tacit rationale that what they say is a legitimate part of public discourse, the Washington Post enables and promotes bigots.
• Chris Dudley's mindlessly generic Republican campaign to be Oregon's governor is predicated on the usual mindlessly generic Republican talking points. Among them is the canard that cutting taxes on businesses and the wealthy will help the economy, as Oregon's business tax rate supposedly scares businesses away. Oddly enough, Forbes Magazine just rated Oregon as the sixth best state for business and careers. Apparently, Oregon's taxes only scare away the particularly greedy and selfish, and not those that are sensible and responsible.
• The disaster that Bush, Cheney and Blair wrought in Iraq still doesn't make for much good or promising news, but this is something:

  More than 600 looted artifacts that were retrieved by the United States, shipped back to Iraq and then mysteriously lost finally have been found in the prime minister's warehouse alongside boxes of kitchen supplies, the Iraqi tourism minister said Monday.

  The ancient pieces — including clay pots, a bronze Sumerian figurine and stone tablets etched with cuneiform writing — were returned to the Iraqi National Museum, resolving a real-life caper that began when many of them were stolen from a museum in the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk in 1991.

• But speaking of Iraq...
• BP remains BP:

  BP is disbanding the external safety ombudsman it set up after the fatal explosion in 2005 at its Texas City refinery, despite the growing number of concerns raised by the oil company's employees.

  More than half the issues raised since the office was established in 2006 relate to BP's operations in Alaska.

• Questions about the safety of cell phones are not going away.
• Glenn Beck has been suffering from a variety of ailments. Irrational and monomaniacal as ever, he blames it on liberals.
• Tim Pawlenty is supposed to be one of the relatively moderate Republicans. Which certainly explains his sucking up to the so very moderate Faith and Freedom Coalition.
• And it's hard to say what, exactly, Mitch Daniels is supposed to be.
• China responds to Liu Xiaobo's being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize by placing his wife under de facto house arrest. In more encouraging news, almost two dozen former Communist Party officials are demanding an end to censorship and the establishment of a constitutional right to free speech.
• New Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan has recused herself from 25 of the 51 cases the Court will hear, this term. She is doing so because of potential conflicts from the work she did in her previous role as Solicitor General. Her recusals speak to her sense of honor and integrity.

  Justice Clarence Thomas did not recuse himself from the Citizens United ruling, which directly affected his wife's work at the politically active non-profit she founded. Justice Thomas also didn't recuse himself from the Bush v. Gore ruling, which also directly affected his wife's work. His refusals to recuse himself speak to his sense of honor and integrity.

Perhaps the quietest week on the hate mail front in the last two years. The slim pickings are below the fold.

Last week, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie cancelled the biggest infrastructure project in the nation, the Mass Transit Tunnel (also known as ARC or Access to the Regions Core), the first tunnel to be built under the Hudson River in over 100 years. The new tunnel would add two additional tracks leading to a new six-track platform underneath the old Farley Post Office in the City.

Currently, the commuter trains from New Jersey and the regional/national Amtrak trains use the same two-track tunnel for access to Penn Station in Manhattan, a necessary stop for all trains going north and south. This causes a great deal of delay as riders of the Acela Express would attest. The Acela is the most profitable Amtrak line in the nation, making a profit of $41 per passenger while the rest of the lines lose $32 per passenger on average. The Acela line is a popular alternative to all other modes of transport. No crappy airport experience. No cramped and smelly Chinatown bus. No tolls or I-95 gridlock. Smooth, roomy, comfortable and fast. Ample space for your luggage. Wheelchair friendly. Plugs for your laptop or phone charger. WiFi. Dining car. Puts you right downtown in Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Providence, Boston, and in Midtown Manhattan. It is government owned and it works. We need more of it. One major problem is the chokepoint tunnel entrance in New Jersey. (Acela still needs dedicated track, exclusive right of way, and needs to lose weight, but that's another story.)

Twenty years of planning have gone into the new Mass Transit Tunnel. Federal transportation funding to the tune of $4 billion has been secured. The Port Authority kicked in another $3 billion. President Obama's Recovery Act kicked in $130 million. All New Jersey had to do was provide $1.250 billion and they could spend the next 50 years touting how easy it is to get to and from the central business district of the region. Furthermore, their share was to paid from increased tolls on New Jersey highways, which would lower traffic, congestion, and pollution. Not a tax, but a toll. Work began last year. But Governor Christie canceled the whole thing. Why?

Here is what he said in his cancellation speech:

I have made a pledge to the people of New Jersey that on my watch I will not allow taxpayers to fund projects that run over budget with no clear way of how these costs will be paid for," said the governor. "Considering the unprecedented fiscal and economic climate our State is facing, it is completely unthinkable to borrow more money and leave taxpayers responsible for billions in cost overruns.

Even though the vast majority of the costs will be born by the Federal Government and the Port Authority, and even though the New Jersey portion will be paid by tolls, not taxes, Christie thinks his taxpayers are on the hook. Why?

The Star-Ledger editorial page weighed in:

The governor’s decision to kill the Hudson River tunnel project will go down as a blunder of historic proportions. It will stunt the state’s job market, depress home values, and leave us with nightmarish traffic jams and dirtier air.

He is leaving $3 billion in federal money on the table. And he’s putting at risk another $3 billion in Port Authority money that had been set aside for this project. Those are collosal sums.

So why did he do it? Why would he kill a project that even he concedes is critical to the state’s future?

He wants you to believe he had little choice because the costs were skyrocketing.

Don’t buy it. The evidence makes it clear that he wanted to kill this tunnel project so he could grab the money New Jersey had set aside for it. That is the only way he can avoid raising the gas tax to finance transit projects within the state’s borders.

The Star-Leger is correct, but there is more to the story.

The Transportation Trust Fund, New Jersey’s main source of funding for road and transit projects, is caught in a massive spiral of debt.

It didn’t happen overnight but gradually: Over the last 25 years, we have bought ourselves major transportation improvements – road widenings, interchange redesigns, new rail lines and countless other projects – without raising the money necessary to pay for them. Instead, we’ve borrowed money. We have borrowed – and we continue to borrow – so much money that nearly every dollar we raise in taxes for transportation projects from the gas tax and other taxes, almost $900 million a year, is instead going to pay off interest and principal on bonds issued years ago.

"Spiral of Debt" a report by the Regional Plan Association

Emphasis mine. Years and years of New Jersey Governors have faced the phobia of voters over increasing taxes. Christie is no different. He wanted to borrow his way out of the problem by making plans to refinance the authority's debt and kicking the can down the road. Recently, the transportation authority announced it was issuing $1.43 Billion in new bonds in as Christie tried to follow through. But Democratic legislature halted the bond sale and demanded a real plan from Christie. They later folded after Christie immediately ordered a stoppage of all road & bridge work. So, New Jersey's fiscal conservative solved a problem by doing what Republicans always do: borrow money. But this caused an even bigger problem:

Moody's also revised the outlook for $11.1 billion of New Jersey Transportation Trust Fund Authority bonds to negative, noting that much of the debt is repaid by state appropriations, some of which now appear more risky.

"Due to the risk of nonappropriation, we rate these bonds one notch below the state's general obligation rating," Moody's said.

The transportation bonds command a "Aa3" rating from Moody's.

link

New Jersey is one of the biggest issuers of municipal bonds in the country and one of the biggest targets of municipal credit default swaps. As the state's credit declines, so does its ability to do do what Christie wants to do...kick the can down the road and not have to face the only obvious, inevitable solution: raising taxes. The only other option are letting roads and bridges crumble until someone gets killed, or default and financial ruin. The Transportation Authority cannot default because those bonds are backed up by gas taxes. If the gas taxes are insufficient, the state of New Jersey will have to pay by some other means.

By canceling the commitment of Turnpike Authority tolls to support the tunnel project, the Governor can divert those funds to the trust fund, shoring up the financial position of the fund and allowing road repair and bridge projects, etc., to continue. So, once again, short-term thinking on the issue of taxes has forced a government into making bad decisions.

New Jersey's gas tax is 14.5 cents per gallon. In New York, it is 44.6 cents. In Connecticut, it is 41.9 cents. In Pennsylvania, it is 32.3 cents. In tiny little Delaware, it is 23 cents. New Jersey could double its gas tax, fix its transportation fund problems, improve its bond rating, and it still would have the second lowest gas taxes in the region. And, they'd have much better, cleaner, more efficient, job-creating, economy developing train service for the trouble.

Governor Christie's ideological loyalty to the Republican mantra of never raising taxes is putting New Jersey in worse condition that it is in already. Robbing trains to maintain highways is far more expensive than laying track over the long haul. Failing to invest in mass transit improvements hurts the economy, costs jobs, worsens pollution, and worst of all does not solve the financial predicament New Jersey is in.

Hopefully, Secretary LaHood's  most recent intervention can talk some sense into this man. The bottom line, however, is the same: New Jersey has to raise the gasoline tax. Or collapse.

(Full Disclosure: The diarist is a former municipal bond trader and has traded in New Jersey general-ob munis, rev munis, and muni credit default swaps.)

Update: Many of the comments note Switzerland's completion of the world longest rail tunnel after 20 years of work. It is an significant engineering accomplishment that this tiny nation, with about the same population as the City of New York, should be proud of. I'd just like to note who paid for it. From NPR:

Trumpets sounded, and workers wiped away tears as nearly 20 years of drilling came to an end. When the Gotthard Base Tunnel is fully completed in 2017, it will allow millions of tons of goods currently transported by trucks to be shifted to trains and will play a key role in the creation of a high-speed rail network connecting all corners of Europe.

The Gotthard Base tunnel will cost $12 billion, about $1,300 dollars for every Swiss taxpayer. The Swiss were willing to pay that to get thousands of polluting trucks off the roads and preserve their pristine Alpine environment.

We used to be a country that did great things like this.

Daily Kos readers have known Annie Kuster was a great candidate who'd mount a strong campaign for House in New Hampshire's second district. But conventional wisdom had the seat leaning toward former Republican representative Charlie Bass. Until the past few days, anyway.

• Questions were raised about Bass' use of his influence as a sitting congressman to benefit a company run by his nephew.
• Bass has now demonstrated that his own investments in that company did happen after he was defeated by Paul Hodes. But questions have now been raised -- and remain -- about the propriety of authoring legislation that benefits your family, setting up a meeting with an administration official for said family member, then investing in that company and joining its board as soon as you're out of office.
• Questions like "who's going to benefit if you get back into Congress?" And "how much stock in their companies will you acquire in a private sale immediately after leaving Congress?"
• The most recent FEC filings for both candidates show that Kuster has outraised Bass by nearly $1 million for the cycle.
• At the beginning of the week, a Penn Schoen Berland poll for The Hill showed Bass leading by just three points, well within the margin of error. Yesterday, a UNH (PDF) poll put Kuster up by seven points. UNH is always suspect, with massive margins of error for House polls, and in this case the sample does appear skewed to Democrats. But it will doubtless shape perception in the home stretch.

There's no doubt Kuster is running the stronger campaign and will close hard. Help her out by giving a few dollars or volunteering.

Ann McLane Kuster for Congress
Contribute

When more things are made in America, more families make it in America; more jobs are created in America; more businesses thrive in America. But Republicans in Washington have consistently fought to keep these corporate loopholes open. Over the last four years alone, Republicans in the House voted 11 times to continue rewarding corporations that create jobs and profits overseas – a policy that costs taxpayers billions of dollars every year.

Talking tax breaks for small business and closing loopholes for corporations that outsource jobs, President Obama shifted into campaign mode in his weekly address this morning, blaming Republicans for obstructing changes in the tax code--11 times!--that would favor innovation and job creation on American soil instead of rewarding companies that ship jobs overseas.

The president also directly addressed what he sees as the role of business and the role of government in the current economy: government creates the environment for ingenuity and expansion, trusting to the skills and talents of American workers, and the innovation and drive of the country's small business owners. After his pointed linking of behemoth corporations to Republicans, he's quite clearly hitching the Democratic horse to the small business/middle class worker wagon:

Winning this fight will not depend on government alone. It will depend on the innovation of American entrepreneurs; on the drive of American small business owners; on the skills and talents of American workers. These are the people who will help us grow our economy and create jobs.

But government still has an important responsibility. And that’s to create an environment in which someone can raise capital to start a new company; where a business can get a loan to expand; where ingenuity is prized and folks are rewarded for their hard work.

And as he has done in nearly every address he gives when discussing jobs, he emphasized clean energy and forward-looking industries, closing with a focus on who should be rewarded in the economy and what he'll be fighting for:

We should give tax breaks to American small businesses and manufacturers. We should reward the people who are helping us lead in the industries of the future, like clean energy. That’s how we’ll ensure that American innovation and ingenuity are what drive the next century. That’s how we’ll put our people back to work and lead the global economy. And that’s what I’ll be fighting for in the coming months.

Oh, and Mr. President, this line is a keeper: When more things are made in America, more families make it in America.

The full transcript can be found at the White House website and beneath the fold.

Why don't Republicans accept climate change? It's democracy's fault!

There’s a reasonably large Western European constituency, in other words, for some sort of climate change skepticism. (And probably a growing one: In Britain, at least, as in the United States, the economic slump has dampened public enthusiasm for anti-emissions regulation.) But the politicians haven’t been responding. Instead, Europe’s political class, left and right alike, has worked to marginalize a position that it considers intellectually disreputable, even as the American G.O.P. has exploited that same position to win votes.

• Asteroids don't hit one another very often. But it happens, and it may have happened recently.
• C-beams off the shoulder of Orion.
• We had a fun naming contest here on Daily Kos for Gleise 581g, but some outsider with the moniker Zarmina prevailed. And now astronomers argue over whether or not Zarmina exists.

Saturday opinion.

WSJ:

But among outside campaign organizations, Democrats are being outgunned, helping erase the Democrats' overall financial advantage. This lets Republicans inject money into races where Democrats had a big cash advantage, leaving Democratic candidates more reliant on the get-out-the-vote activities of the largest labor unions.

Chris Cillizza:

The Obama administration's lifting Tuesday of the temporary moratorium on deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico brings the first chapter of the devastating spill to a close.

The next chapter -- the spill's political impact -- is in the process of being written. But so far, it appears that if the spill does have a larger effect on politics, it will likely be felt in 2012 or 2016, not in 2010.

AP:

Attorney General Eric Holder says the federal government will enforce its marijuana laws in California even if voters next month make the state the first in the nation to legalize the drug.

Alan Abramowitz:

An examination of some of the internals from the latest Gallup survey of likely voters leads to the conclusion that these results are wildly implausible. First, Gallup shows a much larger percentage of Republicans (55% Republican identifiers and leaners vs. 40% Democratic identifiers and leaners) and conservatives (51% conservative vs. 28% moderates and 18% liberals) than we've ever seen in a modern election. They also show a smaller percentage of voters under the age of 30 (7%) and a larger percentage of voters over the age of 65 (27%) than we've seen in any modern election. But that's not all. The candidate preference results for some subgroups of voters are just wildly implausible.

See also Why Gallup's LV screen is the way it is.

NPR:

Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg sees a small, but silver lining.

"This is still an election that it would be very hard for Democrats to hold the House with these numbers," Greenberg said. "But there is movement here and it's not trivial movement.

"Particularly when you're dealing with life and death, that is we're dealing with battles that might well be right at the edge on control of the Congress. So many of these races are close; small movements matter."

Max Abelson:

In order to understand Wall Street's shrug during this foreclosure crisis, which as many as 40 attorneys general are expected to announce an investigation into this week, the key is to appreciate just how deeply connected the gesture is to Wall Street's view of who's to blame for the financial crisis.

The feeling, the idea at the bottom of all the others, is that even if Wall Street aggravated the crisis by bundling and betting on mortgage-backed securities that turned out not to live up to high ratings, it was not a matter of, as Citi chairman Richard D. Parsons told The Observer this summer, "bad people trying to do bad things." The loans wouldn't have been there in the first place if American home buyers, driven by what The Weekly Standard calls immediate gratification without personal responsibility, hadn't overstepped their bounds.

Yanks score 5 in the eighth to beat Texas 6-5. The Rangers have yet to win a home playoff game.

It none too pleased Nolan Ryan, who sat beside former President George W. Bush in the front row and stewed as they watched the Yankees overcome a dreadful start by C. C. Sabathia and a 5-0 deficit after six innings.

Sorry, Junior. You'll have to wait.

At SolveClimate, Stacy Feldman writes U.S. Solar Market Booms, With Utility-Scale Projects Leading the Way:

America could add 10 gigawatts of solar power every year by 2015, enough to power 2 million new homes annually, industry and market analysts have claimed in a new report.

The Solar Energy Industries Association and GTM Research, a Cambridge, Mass.-based market research firm, said the figures represent a tenfold surge compared to 2010, which is on track to set its own record.

A full gigawatt of solar may get installed this year for the first time, the report, U.S. Solar Market Insight [pdf], said — a roughly 150 percent leap from the 441 megawatts added last year.

One factor driving the boom is the ramp-up in large utility-scale photovoltaic (PV) setups.

"I would say we're going to look back on 2010 as the year that the utility-scale market really emerged," Shayle Kann, a managing director of GTM Research, told reporters in an Oct. 12 telephone press conference.

In the first half of 2010, over 23,000 PV systems were added, compared to about 28,000 in all of 2009. This includes an "unprecedented" 22 utility projects, the authors wrote.

• • • • •

At Daily Kos on this date in 2006:

Unreal. Sen. Lieberman tells the Hartford Courant - with an assumedly straight face - that he "hasn't thought enough" about whether he thinks Democrats should win back the [H]ouse, or about who he's endorsing for Governor.

But, hey, he's still caucusing with the Democrats because, y'know, how could we get along without him?

• • • • •

Today we endorsed two Democratic candidates who are making a couple of Republican incumbents sweat. Those two are Suzan DelBene of Washington's 8th District and Colleen Hanabusa of Hawai'i's 1st District. Polls show Hanabusa tied, and DelBene down only 3 percent.

Chip in $7 to each of them here.

A poll shows Orange to Blue candidate Anne McLane Kuster surging to a 7 percent lead in NH-02. Kuster is running against Republican Charlie Bass, who held this seat for 12 years but has a scandal on his hands. Contribute $7 to Ann McLane Kuster, and finish this one off.

Stay on the attack. Don’t ever give up. Contribute to Orange to Blue candidates tonight.

Since Wednesday's launch of this amazing fund-raising effort that started with a goal of 500 contributors, 3,111 Kossacks have put up a total of $186,280. What can we say? You guys rock.

Update: $3700 in less than two hours, with 43 contributors.

Tonight's Rescue Rangers are watercarrier4diogenes, dadanation, Hoosier Deb, shayera, grog, srkp23 and claude.

Our sélections du jour:

• Ojibwa shares about Native American Religions: The Cycle of the Seasons in a truly interesting diary. (shayera)
• Dumbo's superb series continues with Thursday Classical Music OPUS 16: Brahms' Symphony #4 in E minor. "Hotel California?!?! Who Knew?!!! (watercarrier4diogenes)
• Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse details why Propositions 23 and 26 are so bad for not just Californians but for us all in Whitman's One-Two Punch to Health And Environment. (dadanation)
• Richard Cranium talks about his first-time experience with the Veterans Administration, a Socialized, single payer health care in the U.S. - that works! (grog)
• prgsvmama26 shares a personal story of loss and suggestions on how to support grieving parents in Today is National Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day. (srkp23)

Our regular feature:

jotter has High Impact Diaries: October 14, 2010.

Please use this Open Thread responsibly and feel free to promote what diaries moved you.

   This Rescue Diary covers the period from 6 PM, Thursday, 10/14 to 6:00 PM EDT, Friday, 10/15

Today's Menu Includes :
60 Diaries Overall

- 13 On House races

- Covering 11 individual Districts in 10 states

- 23 On Senate races

- Representing 9 different states

- 17 On Various election races and ballot issues

- Encompassing Governor, Secretary of State, Local, and more

- 7 General election-related diaries

And be sure to follow the Election Diary Rescue on Twitter

Stop in and have a look around!

The nightly Election Diary Rescue is a collection of work written over the previous 24 hours by fellow Kossacks, many of whom are, themselves, candidates for office. Our crew would love to collect more of your work, particularly on those candidates or election-related items that may not be seeing as much daylight.

But if you can't contribute a diary of your own, at the very least please click the link below and just check out the provided summaries of today's compilation. Overall we have 60 to diaries to choose from tonight. You might be surprised, as many of these are on topics or people that don't receive Front Page or rec list attention, but are very worthy of our support.

The days are dwindling to a precious few and every race, every issue every vote matters as much as it ever has. Take a look and see what tonight EDR has in store...

(Tonight's compilation and more after the jump............)

It's funny that Allen West, the Republican candidate in Florida's 22nd District who claims that tolerance causes terrorism, not only tolerates but defends what many would call a homegrown terrorist group -- the Outlaws motorcycle gang.

According to the Justice Department:

... the Outlaws produce and distribute methamphetamine, and engage in other criminal activities including arson, homicide, and prostitution.

Yet Allen West says:

Please, no more references to criminals [and] I was never more amazed about how members of the Outlaws guarded me.

And perhaps some of those amazing members are now proud Outlaw 1%ers, the hall of fame of Outlaw criminals guardians who have:

... sacrificed their personal freedom, maintained their integrity, refused to compromise their honor and have stayed loyal to the principles that the Outlaws Motorcycle Club was founded on.

We consider these outstanding members "POW's" in the Governments attempts to destroy Americas Motorcycle Clubs. These Brothers did not betray their Brothers or the Outlaws Motorcycle Club in an attempt to avoid prosecution. They stood tall and strong and took what came their way. These Outlaw 1%ers set an example that can not and should not be forgotten. We are proud of these "Our True Outlaw 1%er Brothers" we owe them Honor, Respect, and Support for standing as true Outlaws.

Translation? They went to prison for murder, rape, robbery and arson without ratting out any fellow partners in crime guardianship. And Allen West thinks they're amazing.

Of course what's really amazing is that West, a candidate who has repeatedly proven that he's nuts, is considered a legitimate candidate by today's Republican Party.

This could make the catfood commission's work even harder, considering a plurality of members seem to be arguing for cuts to Social Security and the Republicans are fighting any revenue solutions.

(Reuters) - President Barack Obama said on Thursday he favored raising more revenue for Social Security to prolong the solvency of the U.S. retirement fund, rather than just cutting benefits or making people work longer.

Obama told a televised youth town hall event that he thought the best approach was to increase the amount of income subject to Social Security taxes above the current cap set around $106,000, but he did not rule anything out....

"I have said that all options are on the table. I think we've got to look at how we preserve it for the next generation," he said.

"I do think that the best way to do it would be to look at the fact that right now, you only pay Social Security taxes to about $106,000, and after that you don't pay any Social Security tax," he said. "That could be modified or changed in a way that would help extend the solvency of Social Security."

The "all options on the table" isn't necessarily what we want to hear, but this statement does give added weight to the growing number of members of Congress who have vowed to oppose any cuts to the program.

And also too, hugs and kisses. Why? Well this headline from Greg Sargent tells it all:

Sarah Palin advisers prepped Christine O'Donnell for debate

As Greg says, the secret sauce to O'Donnell's debate performance was advice from debate coaches Randy Scheunemann and Michael Goldfarb. Both of them are Palin advisers -- and both of them were recommended to O'Donnell by Palin herself.

And they did a fantastic job of bringing out the crazy. So thanks. Not just to Palin, but also to her two clown advisers.

It feels better when we go on the attack. Its gets results, too.

That why we just endorsed two Democrats, Suzan DelBene and Colleen Hanabusa, who can defeat vulnerable Republican incumbents. Polling shows Hanabusa tied, and DelBene down only 3%. If we start picking off Republican incumbents, so much for the Democrats are DOOOOOOMED scenario.

Chip in $7 to each of them here.

If you want proof that taking the fight to Republicans works, then check out the new UNH poll showing Orange to Blue candidate Anne McLane Kuster surging to a 7% lead in NH-02. Kuster is running against Republican Charlie Bass, who held this seat for 12 years but has a scandal on his hands. That isn’t going to help him stage a comeback.

Contribute $7 to Ann McLane Kuster, and finish this one off.

Oh yeah, and Markos is on Bill Maher tonight! Check it out, on HBO, at 10pm eastern. How awesome would it be to watch Markos take the fight to Republicans on television, while contributions taking the fight to Republicans on Orange to Blue keep climbing upward?

Stay on the attack. Don’t ever give up. Contribute to Orange to Blue candidates tonight.

Update--Wow--3,000 Kossacks have contributed since Wednesday. This is a frakking amazing run! Can you chip in $10 to reach 3,500 contributions?