Apparently we are not going to have Ken Mehlman to kick around any more.

Understand that this was already in the works, for ever and ever, and as nothing to do with the results of the recent elections. Ken’s garden has apparently been looking really bad, and he needs to tend to it. Oh, he also needs to do something about his kitchen.

Jazz at Lincoln Center, 60 Minutes, Vietnam and Cambodia…a truth speaker for people most of the world ignored.

He is missed.

He didn’t get any help from the Democratic Party, but Joe Roberts ran a good, clean campaign in District 1 against a well funded incumbent who even received Presidential visits.

Joe, managed to get 31.5% of the vote, which may not seem like much, but keeping a Republican incumbent below 70% in this area without an indictment involved is a major accomplishment.

I join the Pensacola Beach Blog in thanking you for your work. Maybe next time we can get the Party interested in providing a little support.

Cruella de Harris rise to prominence was because of a suspect election, and now the election to replace her is mired in controversy.

CBS carries the Associated Press report, Deja Vu: Another Florida Recount Likely

The touch-screen voting machines Katherine Harris championed as secretary of state after the 2000 presidential recount may have botched this year’s election to replace her in the U.S. House, and it’s likely going to mean another Florida recount.

More than 18,000 Sarasota County voters who marked other races didn’t have a vote register in the House race, a rate much higher than the rest of the district, elections results show.

Republican Vern Buchanan has a 373-vote lead over Democrat Christine Jennings, less than 0.2%. Anything less than 0.5% generates an automatic recount, which is meaningless with touch screen machines.

More information in the local Herald-Tribune story, and the raw data from the Sarasota County elections office.

My guess is that the race wasn’t visible in the ES&S machines. You may have had to scroll down to find it. That is based on looking at the numbers for absentee ballots [on paper ballots], and comparing it to early and election day voting on the machines.

It would appear a poorly designed ballot can occur on machines as easily as punch cards. “Nothing is foolproof: fools are too ingenious.”

Andante of Collective Sigh just remembered it was her third blogiversary™ on Sunday, November 5^th.

She was responsible for my first post outside of comments, so this is her fault.

It took a bit for me to figure out who Robert Gates was, and he was someone I was trying to forget. Holden over at First Draft has several posts that you should read, and since he makes this “open source”, I can talk about it.

First off, Gates made the entire US intel community look like amateurs in regards to the Soviet Union. He buried the crumbling of the CCCP to maintain funding for the Company, which made the fall look like it took the intel community by surprise. Folks there wasn’t an FM stereo radio station in Moscow until 1970, that’s tells you how far behind the curve Soviet technology was. Their space and missile program was based on refinements of German WWII designs, which overlooked the advances their own people had made. Intel knew that the Soviet Union was in trouble, but Gates buried the signs.

Gates is also the US “father of al Qaeda,” in his push to attack the Soviets in Afghanistan. He was responsible for American funding, training, and equipment pouring in to supply the mujahadeen. He is the person who gave Stinger ground-to-air missiles to Islamic militants.

You are probably aware of his memory and truth problems during his testimony on the Iran-Contra affair.

Like North, Poindexter, Elliot Abrams, et al., he should have been left under a rock.

We don’t need another lying re-tread at the head of the DoD, we need someone who can add up columns of numbers accurately and speak in truthful declarative sentences. William Cohen comes to mind as he is a Republican and he seemed to be able to do the job.