Harry Reid hanging on to lead over Sharron Angle

STEVE MARCUS

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid addresses volunteers on the afternoon of Tuesday, Nov. 2, 2010, at campaign headquarters on Valley View Boulevard.

By Anjeanette Damon (contact)

Published Tuesday, Nov. 2, 2010 | 8:40 p.m.

Updated 3 minutes ago

AP PHOTO/SCOTT SADY

Nevada Republican Senate candidate Sharron Angle speaks to supporters at the Peppermill Hotel/Casino in Reno on Tuesday, Nov. 2, 2010.

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When the numbers flashed up on the television screen that Reid was leading with 52 percent of the vote to Sharron Angle's 43, the convention center ballroom exploded into applause -- which turned into yelps and cheers as party attendees realized that 52 percent of precincts were reporting -- a sharp jump in significance from the numbers that flashed up only 10 minutes earlier, showing a narrower, 8 percent lead with just 1 percent of the precincts reporting.

"That's good," said press secretary Phoebe Sweet as she watched and digested the numbers. "That's good. And we're up in Washoe county too."

But Democrats are already cautiously celebrating the early voting totals.

After casting her vote in Reno, Angle said she was “cautiously optimistic” about her chances this evening. But she added, when prompted by a reporter, that her campaign is prepared for a recount if that becomes necessary.

“Whatever is necessary to do,” she said. “We have to be ready for any opportunity.”

In a reflection of the bitter destroy-the-opponent-at-all-costs ad war that characterized the Senate race, voters interviewed at polls across the state said they hated both of their choices.

Many Angle voters saw their ballot-choice as a protest of Reid’s policies, not an endorsement of Angle’s views.

“I’m not 100 percent Sharron Angle, but I am 100 percent against Harry Reid,” said Joseph Gomez, a Reno retiree who cast his vote for Angle.

Those who may have found some of her positions extreme, as Reid argued, said she wouldn’t be able to enact them anyway if she’s in the minority.

“It would take more than just her to end Social Security,” said 68-year-old Gail Gomez, a Reno Republican who voted for Angle. Similarly, Reid voters seemed more persuaded by the Democrat’s effort to cast his opponent as an extremist than his argument that Nevada could use his seniority.

“I voted for Reid reluctantly, because he’s a henchman for Obama,” said Lawrence Levine, a Las Vegas Democrat. “Nevada had a real problem with the two candidates on the ballot. Angle revealed that she’s no kind of leader.”

Reid’s turnout efforts focused strongly on the Hispanic community, a key swing demographic in Nevada elections. Early polling suggested Hispanics wouldn’t turn out because of frustration with the economy and a lack of movement on immigration reform.

A Republican operative even aired an ad explicitly telling Hispanics not to vote.

That, coupled with Angle’s inflammatory ads using images of Hispanic youth dressed as gang members drove some Hispanic voters to the polls.

“That was the final straw,” Gilberto Ramirez, a Reno concrete worker who recently obtained his citizenship and voted for the first time. “She was depicting me as a gang member. I served seven years in the Marine Corps.”

Other voters said Reid deserved more time to help fix the economy.

"Give Harry Reid and Obama a chance to fix it. It took them eight years to make this mess," said Selena Hamilton, a Las Vegas Democrat, referring to Bush and the Republicans. "And we're trying to get it cleaned up in just one year. And these Republicans in the Senate got to stop getting in the way."

Making Ignorance Chic

By MAUREEN DOWD

Published: October 19, 2010

HOLLYWOOD

Casanova’s rule for seduction was to tell a beautiful woman she was intelligent and an intelligent woman she was beautiful.

The false choice between intellectualism and sexuality in women has persisted through the ages. There was no more poignant victim of it than Marilyn Monroe.

She was smart enough to become the most famous Dumb Blonde in history. Photographers loved to get her to pose in tight shorts, a silk robe or a swimsuit with a come-hither look and a weighty book — a history of Goya or James Joyce’s “Ulysses” or Heinrich Heine’s poems. A high-brow bunny picture, a variation on the sexy librarian trope. Men who were nervous about her erotic intensity could feel superior by making fun of her intellectually.

Marilyn was not completely in on the joke. Scarred by her schizophrenic mother and dislocated upbringing, she was happy to have the classics put in her hand. What’s more, she read some of them, from Proust to Dostoyevsky to Freud to Carl Sandburg’s six-volume biography of Lincoln (given to her by husband Arthur Miller), collecting a library of 400 books.

Miller once called Marilyn “a poet on a street corner trying to recite to a crowd pulling at her clothes.”

“Fragments,” a new book of her poems, letters and musings, some written in her childlike hand with misspellings in leather books and others on stationery from the Waldorf-Astoria and the Beverly Hills Hotel, is affecting. The world’s most coveted woman, a picture of luminescence, was lonely and dark. Thinking herself happily married, she was crushed to discover an open journal in which Miller had written that she disappointed him and embarrassed him in front of his intellectual peers.

“I guess I have always been deeply terrified to really be someone’s wife since I know from life one cannot love another, ever, really.”

Her friend Saul Bellow wrote in a letter that Marilyn “conducts herself like a philosopher.” He observed: “She was connected with a very powerful current but she couldn’t disconnect herself from it,” adding: “She had a kind of curious incandescence under the skin.”

The sad sex symbol is still a candle in the wind. There’s a hit novel in Britain narrated by the Maltese terrier Frank Sinatra gave her, which she named “Maf,” for Mafia, and three movies in the works about her. Naomi Watts is planning to star in a biopic based on the novel, “Blonde,” by Joyce Carol Oates; Michelle Williams is shooting “My Week With Marilyn,” and another movie is planned based on an account by Lionel Grandison, a former deputy Los Angeles coroner who claims he was forced to change the star’s death certificate to read suicide instead of murder.

At least, unlike Paris Hilton and her ilk, the Dumb Blonde of ’50s cinema had a firm grasp on one thing: It was cool to be smart. She aspired to read good books and be friends with intellectuals, even going so far as to marry one. But now another famous beauty with glowing skin and a powerful current, Sarah Palin, has made ignorance fashionable.

You struggle to name Supreme Court cases, newspapers you read and even founding fathers you admire? No problem. You endorse a candidate for the Pennsylvania Senate seat who is the nominee in West Virginia? Oh, well.

At least you’re not one of those “spineless” elites with an Ivy League education, like President Obama, who can’t feel anything. It’s news to Christine O’Donnell that the Constitution guarantees separation of church and state. It’s news to Joe Miller, whose guards handcuffed a journalist, and to Carl Paladino, who threatened The New York Post’s Fred Dicker, that the First Amendment exists, even in Tea Party Land. Michele Bachmann calls Smoot-Hawley Hoot-Smalley.

Sharron Angle sank to new lows of obliviousness when she told a classroom of Hispanic kids in Las Vegas: “Some of you look a little more Asian to me.”

As Palin tweeted in July about her own special language adding examples from W. and Obama: “ ‘Refudiate,’ ‘misunderestimate,’ ‘wee-wee’d up.’ English is a living language. Shakespeare liked to coin new words too. Got to celebrate it!”

On Saturday, at a G.O.P. rally in Anaheim, Calif., Palin mockingly noted that you won’t find her invoking Mao or Saul Alinsky. She says she believes in American exceptionalism. But when it comes to the people running the country, exceptionalism is suspect; leaders should be — as Palin, O’Donnell and Angle keep saying — just like you.

In Marilyn’s America, there were aspirations. The studios tackled literary novels rather than one-liners like “He’s Just Not That Into You” and navel-gazing drivel like “Eat Pray Love.” Walt Disney’s “Fantasia” paired cartoon characters with famous composers. Even Bugs Bunny did Wagner.

But in Sarah’s America, we’ve refudiated all that
.

Colbert On Angle And Vitter Ads Using Same Immigrant Picture: 'Holy Frijoles, Those Are The Same Hombres!' (VIDEO)

David Taintor | October 8, 2010, 10:00AM

Stephen Colbert

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David Vitter, LA-SEN, NV-SEN, Sharron Angle, Stephen Colbert,The Colbert Report

Stephen Colbert kicked off his show last night by showing anti-immigration campaign ads from Senate candidates Sharron Angle (R-NV) and Sen. David Vitter (R-LA), that use the same stock photos.

"This is the most terrifying scenario of all: There aren't enough stock photos of scary minorities out there to represent all the scary minorities we know have got to be out there," Colbert said.

[TPM SLIDESHOW: The Whole Truthiness: Stephen Colbert Testifies On Capitol Hill]

Colbert also showcased his new "fear-based photo licensing service," dubbed fearstock.com, which offers one picture of Colbert in a vaguely threatening pose.

Watch:

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Indecision 2010 - Revenge of the Fallen - FearStock.com
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes 2010 Election March to Keep Fear Alive

Did Christine O'Donnell TV Ad Rip Off Sharron Angle's Nevada Senate Ad?

Christine O'Donnell, running for U.S. Senate in Delaware, has a new TV ad bashing her Republican primary opponent, Rep. Mike Castle.

But O'Donnell's ad looks eerily similar to one recently produced by Intrepid Media for Americans for New Leadership, in support of Nevada candidate Sharron Angle, who is running against Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. Intrepid media did not produce the O'Donnell ad.

It's like a Chinese copy of an iPod: it steals the form, shape and packaging, but doesn't really work the same way," says one Republican source familiar with ad production. Both ads are attack ads, attempting to tie their opponents to President Obama. Stylistically, both ads use similar red graphics and both use this red tint to cover pictures of the opponent. But it is the similarity of the words that is most noticeable.

For example, the ad for Angle ends with, "On the issues that count, Harry Reid is just wrong. Wrong on his votes. Wrong in his record. Wrong for Nevada."

Similarly, O'Donnell's ad ends with: "On real issues -- issues that count, Castle is just plain wrong. Wrong on his votes. Wrong on his record. Wrong for Delaware."

O'Donnell's office did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Judge for yourself. Here's the O'Donnell ad:


And here's the ad attacking Harry Reid:

Dangerous Propaganda Merchants

It may be possible that the current propaganda merchants are unaware of the dangers posed by hate speech and fear mongering. Or it may otherwise be the case that they don’t care what dangerous forces they release in their quest for power.

One of the more disturbing calls to a recent Washington Journal was from a defender of the Tea Party movement who said he’d rather vote for a mentally unstable candidate who occasionally said nutty things than for your run-of-the-mill establishment candidate. Well he certainly has a wide range of choices and, unfortunately, there are probably other voters who feel the same way. What a novel way of dealing with the complexities of the modern world - - elect a bunch of unstable people to take over the reins of government.

That point of view helps to explain some of the positions the far right espouses and exemplifies the inability of many current candidates to contend with the intricacies of governing in a multi-national, multi-ethnic domestic and international environment - - a geopolitical landscape fraught with high-stakes decision-making moments that defy rigidly-held concepts of American exceptionalism. Throw in narrow exclusionary religious values and we face the prospect of becoming the kind of society we so earnestly oppose in other places.

And what are we to make of Sharron Angle’s definition of “enemies” in Congress as those who pass legislation that threatens “free markets”, whatever that means to someone of such limited intellect? There are levels of incomprehensible thought processes that rational people find hard to follow. And attempts by Republican Party advisors to mitigate some of her more inflammatory statements have only been partially effective. It is difficult to put a happy face on Angle’s statement that sometimes second-amendment solutions are needed to counter unacceptable electoral outcomes. Presumably if one thinks of elected government officials as enemies any course of action is warranted, but such thoughts should make reasonable people exceedingly nervous.

But for the simple-minded approach there’s always Sarah Palin who explained, during her stint as John McCain’s running mate, that her experience in Alaska’s government was especially significant in terms of national security. Clearly if the Russians were to strike us they’d hit Alaska first, it being so close and all. Apparently that fanciful analysis would inform whatever foreign policy she might formulate if given an opportunity. She and others seem blissfully unaware of the danger their super-silly rhetoric poses. Still Palin and the rest of the extremist fringe have captured the imagination of gullible voters despite a tumult of meaningless blather totally lacking in substance.

Now as a pastor in Florida threatens to commemorate 9/11 by having his congregation burn copies of the Koran, most political and religious leaders here have condemned his plan and asked him to refrain from such an action though some are strangely silent. Minority Leader Boehner, never one to pass up an opportunity to use events for partisan purposes, found a way to conflate the proposed Koran burning with what he claims as an inappropriate plan to build a Muslim cultural center two blocks from Ground Zero. Other conservatives have made much the same connection, proving once again that they are shameless in pursuit of their political goals.

It has become a habit among some conservatives and many in the Tea Party movement to toss around Nazi images and accuse the current administration of fascist behavior. But as Hitler’s regime in took hold in Germany one of its early propaganda iterations was the practice of burning “un-German” texts, among them writings by Thomas Mann, Ernest Hemingway, Jack London, Erich Maria Remarque, Helen Keller and of course critics of the government and numerous Jewish writers. In a frightening forecast of things to come German Jewish poet Heinrich Heine wrote “Where they burn books, they will also ultimately burn people.” (ushmn.org, on book burning)

Things have not progressed to that level in this country, but profound ignorance, fear and hatred have surfaced to an alarming degree. And people, who should know better, have stood on the sidelines and made excuses for the worst kind of defamatory language and behavior in the name of free speech. These are times, however, when abusive speech is very much like the act of yelling “fire” in a crowded theater and politicians should be wary of thinking they can ride a wave of demagogic rhetoric to victory.

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FINDING A VOICE by Ann Davidow

Sharron Angle Campaigned Against Black Football Jerseys On Religious Grounds: Color is 'Thoroughly Evil'

Sharron Angle Campaigned Against Black Football Jerseys On Religious Grounds: Color is 'Thoroughly Evil'

Nevada Republican Senate candidate Sharron Angle once partook in a campaign against a local high school's use of black football jerseys, arguing that the dark color was ungodly and Bill Roberts of Nevada's Pahrump Valley Times recently reported.