.

Woo woo!

It has become an article of faith among certain Beltway inside-game commentators that there’s no way the Dem attack on secret money funding elections could ever have a prayer of working. Surely the issue is too esoteric, too process-y, and too removed from voter concerns about the economy to resonate.

But a new poll commissioned by MoveOn, and done by the respected non-partisan firm Survey USA, strongly suggests that the issue may indeed matter a good deal to voters after all.

The poll finds that two thirds of registered voters, or 66 percent, are aware that outside groups are behind some of the ads they’re seeing. This makes sense, since the issue has dominated the media amid the battle over the huge ad onslaught against Dems funded by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Karl Rove’s groups.

What’s more, an overwhelming 84 percent say they have a “right to know” who’s bankrolling the ads.

Hey, Karl, the Mad Hatter wants his crazy back!

Where are you getting the money?  Even your friends want to know.

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From Chicago.

The last name of Green Party gubernatorial candidate Rich Whitney is misspelled as “Whitey” on electronic-voting machines in nearly two dozen wards — about half in predominantly African-American areas — and election officials said Wednesday the problem cannot be corrected by Election Day.

So, his name is listed as “Rich Whitey” on the ballot.

“Do not fret,” Juanita says.  “Just send those ballots down here.  We have the same damn ticket on the GOP side.”

Click the little one to get a whole mess of Rich Whiteys.

F

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One of Juanita’s favorite customers is a guy named Bud Malone.  Bud is labor union guy who’s been retired for some years now but still keeps up the fight.  He’s from Minnesota but is spending his days now in the warm sun.

Bud gets peeved to high hell and back about guys claiming to be Americans who “want their country back” but seem far to ready to sell out to the highest bidder.  Greed is an ugly thing that no one wears well.

HOUSTON — State-owned Chinese energy giant CNOOC is buying a multibillion-dollar stake in 600,000 acres of South Texas oil and gas fields, potentially testing the political waters for further expansion into U.S. energy reserves.

With the announcement Monday that it would pay up to $2.2 billion for a one-third stake in Chesapeake Energy assets, CNOOC lays claim to a share of properties that eventually could produce up to half a million barrels a day of oil equivalent.

So they want their country back to sell it to the Chinese?

The deal represents China’s second try at making a big move into the U.S. oil and gas market, following a failed bid five years ago to buy California-based Unocal Corp.

Intense political opposition over energy security concerns derailed that $18.4 billion deal. But analysts expect few political or regulatory hurdles to the CNOOC-Chesapeake deal.

“The climate is much more hospitable now,” said Juli MacDonald-Wimbush, a partner with Marstel-Day, an energy and environmental security consulting company in Fredericksburg, Va.

I am amused by the idea that “the climate is more hospitable now.”

How’d that happen?

I think Bud has the answer.  He sent me this email late yesterday about this story —

“Susan. My first read of the day makes me nauseous. As a nation we climb the ladder of stupidity with relative ease. How about those God fearing  independent Texas guys that lease their land to a big time rival and then bitch about our own government. Everyone has their price, I guess. Bud”

He’s right, you know.

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Our buddy Don A sent this with the comment, “This is amazing. Such a stream of original adjectives is hard to find.”

I agree.  It is a thing a beauty.

By the way, as a practitioner of yoga, I now have another reason to make my morning yoga session at the YMCA – it pisses off the religious right!

Enjoy a good read.

I sip my wine and sigh. What deeply unhappy lives these people must lead, no? So small and cloistered, panicky and scripted, entirely cut off from anything resembling the hot thrum of raw, sticky, swear-worded life as you and I know it, as they shuffle like chilled meatpacks from air conditioned SUV to stuffy Holiday Inn conference room, threadbare high school auditorium to sparsely attended right-wing nutball Midwestern church, retirement home, cotton-candy fairground.

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“It appears that two hundred million dollars in false advertising will determine the makeup of the 112th Congress.  Ain’t that a damn kicker?” Juanita asks.

Everybody has been so focused on the foreign money that Karl Rover is using for his quest of world domination that we’ve forgotten what exactly it is he bought with that money.

Lies.  Lotsa lies.

We’re witnessing a massive disinformation campaign flooding airwaves across the country that could change the outcome of major races and shift the balance of power in Congress, funded by money from undisclosed sources, justified with still more falsehoods and disinformation.

There’s plenty of examples.

Here’s a partial list of debunked ads hitting Dems from the Chamber, and Rove’s groups, Crossroads GPS and American Crossroads —-

* A Chamber ad was yanked from two Pennsylvania TV stations after they determined its claim about Pennsylvania Senate Dem candidate Joe Sestak and Nancy Pelosi was false.

* A Crossroads GPS ad slamming Sestak over health care reform and Medicare was skewered by FactCheck.org for its “wild exaggeration” and dismissed as “badly misleading.”

* A Crossroads GPS ad attacking California Senator Barbara Boxer for voting to cut Medicare spending by $500 billion was rated by Politifact as “barely true” and “seriously misleading.”

Find more here.

“Look, I’m not saying that Karl Rove is the devil.  But he is in cahoots with the devil,” Juanita says.  “When he’s alone he’s in bad company.”

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Harold Cook over at Letters from Texas has a great find.

Apparently, elections officials in Atascosa County have been sending out absentee ballot packets for years with a picture of the Chilean flag. The County voter registrar blames the mistake on a predecessor.

I’m pretty certain that’s not the only time that’s happened.  I’ve had to call city hall several times to tell them that they’ve got the flag upside down.  Unlike the US flag, in Texas that is not a distress signal.  It just means you’re drunk.