i saw that cook county voted for both quinn (still counting votes) and giannoulias

Sonny Bono Fred Gandy (Gopher from The Love Boat) Jim Ryun Al Franken

There is a long list of inexperienced celebrities that made the jump to politics, although Sonny Bono was the mayor of Palm Springs before becoming a representative. I think his wife replaced him with less experience than he had.

None of the above caused the walls to come crumbling down in the Capitol Building, and though the timeframe on Franken is too new to judge, the others were pretty much considered effective representatives. I don't think a professional legislator is necessarily better than a inexperienced one. Congress is full of career politicians - how has that worked out?

That being said - Jon Runyan, the ex Philadelphia Eagle just elected in NJ, is a political newbie that has never run for any office before. My only problem with him has nothing to do with his political views - it is the way he sort of scammed his way out of property taxes by purchasing 4 donkeys. He has them at the entrance to his property and they are kind of a tourist attraction in the area. This "livestock" qualified his multimillion dollar house to be considered a "farm" and was therefore taxed at a fraction of the going rate. To top it off, he was habitually deliquent on the taxes he did owe. He did nothing illegal, but those of us paying extremely high property taxes in NJ can still resent him for it.

So now the Repubs can blame the Dems for everything that been wrong, as the Dems did when they were in power. Fact is many of these Congress people are in it for the benefits and the graft. Some will become criminals if they are not already and most will be planning their re-election strategies tomorrow. Oh, the sad state of American politics.

IMHO she's nothing but a sore loser, her reasoning was she believes the people deserve a choice. Sorry but they did have a choice and they voter her sorry but out.

No. Only those who were elgible to vote in the Republican primaty has a choice.

From a completely uneducated US political point on view:

Obama, he's not doing too well in his presidancy so far?
These mid-term results somehow reflected that right?

Why the change?

Rightly or wrongly the party in charge takes the credit or the blame for how things are going in the US. Things aren't going particularly well right now. We can argue, discuss and debate as to why, who's responsible and how to fix it but bottom line was that Democrats were going to lose seats in the midterms.

Obama is doing all right, he is not getting his message across. The problem is that the expectations were too high, and since he did not change everything overnight, people turned on the Democrats.

It is fairly predictable that the mid-term elections will result in a Congressional seat gain for the party that does not hold the Presidency. In 1938, the Republicans gained over 70 seats during Roosevelt's second term.

Divided government creates a tension between parties that engenders compromise.

There are those rare occassions when sticking around works in favor of the primary loser.

Sen. Joe Lieberman lost the Dem primary a few years ago mainly because of liberal anger at his support of the war. He then switched parties, ran as an Independent and won re-election.

Sore losers!!

I agree with you on that but I also think that healthcare bill didn't help the Dems either.

Actually, Obama is getting his message across loud & clear.

And he's changed plenty since being elected, mainly Healthcare which was soundly rejected by the American people, both before and after it passed.

As far of the expectations being too high...he has only himself and his 2008 campaign to blame for that. For some reason too many people thought this was..as Oprah so succinctly put it...THE ONE!

As a result, much of his final two years as President will be spent either in gridlock (which would be just fine)...or hammering out 'compromise' as he now claims to want to explore.

A key moment in defining Obama's presidency so far came from of all people, Hugh Hefner who guested on Larry King Live a few months ago. Hefner's statement was..."I like him, I voted for him, but I'm waiting for something to happen."

Apple

Thanks guys, and what's controversial about this health bill?
Aside from how many pages there are!

As health care kicks in, I think it will be less controversial.

One thing is for certain, in politics two years is forever. Two years ago Obama all but walked on water in the opinions of most Americans, not he is in the doghouse. Who knows what the perception will be in 2012.

Obama's major concern is that some real lefty like Howard Dean will take him on in the primaries. For the GOP, the moderates are going to have to make some kind of deal with the tea party people or they could come into 2012 divided.

Obama's best bet is to to what Reagan said when the GOP got a beating in 1982 "Stay the course," but do what Clinton did in 1994 when the Contract With America election steamrolled him...Triangulate.

If he holds up in the White House surrounded by only a few aides, he'll be joining Jimmy Carter and G.H.W. Bush as another one termer, but one would think he has learned his lesson.

i just hope the republicans can actually compromise with obama...because if not, they will lose their seats in 2014.

Or visa-versa or he won't get a second term.

I thought this section was as good as place as any to put this news. I never thought of him as a journalist so much as a pundit/columnist but rules are rules.

Msnbc TV host Keith Olbermann was suspended indefinitely on Friday for making campaign donations to three Democratic congressional candidates, apparently in violation of NBC News ethics policy.

The announcement came in a one-sentence statement from msnbc TV President Phil Griffin: “I became aware of Keith's political contributions late last night. Mindful of NBC News policy and standards, I have suspended him indefinitely without pay.”

The donations were first reported by the Politico website earlier in the day.

Olbermann acknowledged the donations in a statement to Politico, saying he gave the maximum legal donation of $2,400 to Arizona Reps. Raul Grijalva and Gabrielle Giffords and Kentucky Attorney General Jack Conway, who waged an unsuccessful campaign for the U.S. Senate against Tea Party standard-bearer Rand Paul.

Like most news organizations, NBC News, parent of msnbc TV, prohibits political contributions by its journalists without prior approval of the president. (Msnbc.com, a joint venture of NBC News and Microsoft, also has a policy against its journalists contributing to political campaigns.)


Olbermann Suspended Indefinitely

Even that's being too nice. Olbermann is as much a lefty clown as any of the righties on Fox.

Yeah Olbermann can be pompous, no doubt. I think the point's been made though and he should be brought back.

Maddow defends him here.
Maddow Video

Agreed. It's hardly a hanging offense.


Speaking of Lefty Loons . . .

Rachel does seem excited, though. Maybe because flannel shirt season is back .

God I wish George W Bush could run for president again.

ds

I don't

Don't miss Matt Laurer's interview with the former President on Monday night.

And don't forget to turn your clocks back.

i wish i could turn the clocks back to the 50's...at least that era wasn't as screwed up as it is now.

In part, that would depend on whether you were black rather than white or female rather than male.

Hmmm... with the Red Scare, Senator McCarthy and his ilk, the Cold War...

Not sure I would agree.

Signor V.

Not to mention:

Harry Truman, Doris Day, Red China, Johnnie Ray
South Pacific, Walter Winchell, Joe DiMaggio

Joe McCarthy, Richard Nixon, Studebaker, television
North Korea, South Korea, Marilyn Monroe

Rosenbergs, H-bomb, Sugar Ray, Panmunjom
Brando, "The King and I" and "The Catcher in the Rye"

Eisenhower, vaccine, England's got a new queen
Marciano, Liberace, Santayana goodbye

CHORUS
We didn't start the fire
It was always burning
Since the world's been turning
We didn't start the fire
No we didn't light it
But we tried to fight it

Joseph Stalin, Malenkov, Nasser aand Prokofiev
Rockefeller, Campanella, Communist Bloc

Roy hn, Juan Peron, Toscanini, dacron
Dien Bien Phu falls, "Rock Around the Clock"

Einstein, James Dean, Brooklyn's got a winning team
Davy Crockett, Peter Pan, Elvis Presley, Disneyland

Bardot, Budapest, Alabama, Krushchev
Princess Grace, "Peyton Place", trouble in the Suez

CHORUS

Little Rock, Pasternak, Mickey Mantle, Kerouac
Sputnik, Chou En-Lai, "Bridge on the River Kwai"

Lebanon, Charlse de Gaulle, California baseball
Starkweather, homicide, children of thalidomide

Buddy Holly, "Ben Hur", space monkey, Mafia
Hula hoops, Castro, Edsel is a no-go

U-2, Syngman Rhee, payola and Kennedy
Chubby Checker, "Psycho", Belgians in the Congo

By DAVID B. CARUSO The Associated Press updated 11/6/2010 4:44:56 PM ET

NEW YORK — A congressional election on eastern Long Island that had appeared to end in victory for a four-term Democrat, U.S. Rep. Tim Bishop, is now up for grabs after authorities discovered they had misreported the result of the vote.

Officials with the Suffolk County Board of Elections said they discovered Friday that the unofficial tally released in the hours after the polls closed was off by thousands. A routine check of voting machine memory cards showed that instead of leading by about 3,500 votes, Bishop was trailing Republican challenger Randy Altschuler by a little less than 400.

There are still some 9,000 absentee ballots to be counted in that Long Island election, plus there will, no doubt, be a recount.