Franken has been certified as the winner of the Minnesota senate race.  The Canvas board met today and declared him the winner.  The Wall street journal has a nifty recap of all the mess so far

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123111967642552909.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

Coleman will be in court this week over numerous issues.  I would obviously prefer to be +225 ahead right now then 225 behind.  The writer in the wall street piece did not detail all the numbers on the challenged ballots, but here they are.

Coleman contested 852 ballots and got 36 votes awarded to him, 687 went to Franken and 129 were over votes.  On the Franken side 472 challenges were made and Franken won 70 votes, 283 went to Coleman and 119 were over votes.  One can only guess that the partisan SOS helped Franken out here.  

I forgot that CIA director had not  been picked yet.  Pencil Leon Panetta in for that spot.  I guess to the winner goes the spoils.  How many Southerners (1/4 of the Nation) will be in the Obama cabinet?  How many from California?  I know I know.  Obama will pick his cabinet based only on who will be the absolute best person for the job with no consideration to race, sex or state of origin.  Red and Yellow, Black and White they are all  precious in his sight.  Obama loves all the little children of the world.  

The Mighty Eagles and Ravens swooped down on their foes over the weekend.  Three cheers for that.  The 12-4 Colts (I think they played in Baltimore at one time) lost on the road to the  8-8 Chargers.  I guess winning four more games then your foe still does not guarantee home field advantage.  There was another playoff game, but I  cannot recall who played or what the score was.

 Obama will be tackling tax cuts and another cabinet pick this week. 

The Minnesota senate saga continues

Congress convenes and comment away

Well Gov  Richardson is out.  Commerce secretary anyone??

 So we are losing one Hispanic cabinet pick even as the senate will be losing of its Hispanic senators when Salazar moves to Interior department. 

 I got some comments the other  day when I ribbed the democratic governor for replacing a rural based Hispanic senator with a young white guy from Denver.  Michael Bennet is superintendent of the Denver city schools and has ivy league degrees plus served in the Clinton administration, but he has never faced the voters or held an elective office.  The Denver mayor seems competent as do several local congresspeople plus several state office holders are also loyal democrats.  Actually there is a woman from CO, named Cary Kennedy , who is the state treasurer.  She has been elected statewide in CO. 

I am a GOP guy so I always amused that when the quota minded democrats who are all about affirmative action and equal pay for equal work have a chance to appoint a 40 year old woman like Cary Kennedy to the US senate.  The Governor ends up appointing a 44 year old white male. 

So the next time somebody really believes the democrats are about hope and change I say look at CO.  

Franken is now +225 ahead and here is the story

http://www.startribune.com/politics/state/37047159.html?elr=KArksLckD8EQDUoaEyqyP4O:DW3ckUiD3aPc:_Yyc:aUac8HEaDiaMDCinchO7DU

Franken was +175 on the absentees counted today.  The absentees were weighted towards the urban and democratic counties so they were bound to favor Franken, but +175 was a surprise to me. 

 Coleman is already in court on several fronts.  He has petitioned the State Supreme court to add more ballots into the absentee fray. 

After that he will go to court over several other counting issues. 

I am still in New York and don’t have a lot of time, but I wanted to make sure I get The Hedgehog Report picks for the first round of the playoffs on the record. Without further ado:

NFL PICKS - PLAYOFFS FIRST ROUND
Philadelphia at Minnesota
Indianapolis at San Diego
Atlanta at Arizona
Baltimore at Miami

All road teams. This weekend is really just a tune up to the Ravens pounding of Tennessee next week anyway….

Back home soon….

Here a place for comments

Just a few political notes.  Is Michael Bennet the school super of Denver headed to the US senate?  To me its an insult to rural and hispanic Colorado to appoint a white urban guy to replace an hispanic/rural person.  Just me, but watch for this mess to brew.

 Gov Bagman is facing impeachment and will Senator Burris be in limbo?

Finally is Caroline Kennedy in?  Rumours are flying.

The  Minnesota  senate recount case is back to court

http://www.startribune.com/politics/national/senate/36994159.html?elr=KArksLckD8EQDUoaEyqyP4O:DW3ckUiD3aPc:_Yyc:aUac8HEaDiaMDCinchO7DU

For those not up to date right now Franken has a 49 vote lead.  There are 1346 absentee ballots that various counties have ruled to be “wrongly rejected”.  The Coleman campaign is going back to court as various counties have different ideas as to what “wrongly rejected” means.

In some counties if the date that someone witnessed a signature is different then the date the voter signed that ballot was wrongly rejected.  Now this seems like a silly point, but an absentee ballot has to be witnessed in Minnesota.  So if someone signs a ballot on 10-01-2008 and then someone witnesses it on 10-02-2008 its clear that the ballot was not witnessed.  Unless one signed it at 11:59 PM and the witness signed at 12:01 AM.  Yet some counties say count that ballot and others do not.  So that’s a court issue.

 Minnesota also does not allow one to vote absentee unless one has a valid reason to do so.  So the reasons are like “I will be out of town” or “I am too sick to go to the polls” or “getting to the polls on election day will be a hardship on me”.  Your absentee ballot has six or seven reasons listed and to cast a valid ballot you have to check a reason.  Many people voting absentee did not select a reason.  In some counties these voters have their absentee ballots in the “wrongfully rejected” pile.  In others the county said “the rules are the rules and this ballot does not count”. 

 These and other issues will be addressed by the court this week.  There may be ballots counted this weekend and then again maybe not.  Either way the Coleman campaign will be back in court early next week. I suspect they will be in court over the following issues

1. Right now Franken’s lead is based on 131 phantom missing ballots in Hennepin county.  At some point in time the Coleman campaign will be in court over this point.

2.  There are also 150 duplicate absentee ballots that the Coleman campaign have identified.  They will be in lower  court on this issue as soon as next week.

Of course there are issues that the Franken campaign can go to court over as well, but for a variety of reasons they may not do so.

1. If they are ahead why bother prolonging anything.

2. If the Franken campaign says they have many duplicate ballots as well then the issue of having no clear winner at all comes up.  In that case a new election is an option and the Franken campaign does not want that. 

Claiborne Pell died-90 year old senator who served  was known for Pell grants.  Less well known was the higher costs that this program created for most middle and upper class college students.  Colleges & universities merely raised tuition to snag the money for Pell grants and then stuck it to the rest of the students.  This is a similar to how every state with lotteries for education have seen tuition rise to snag the lottery money.

 So we have a situation in higher education now where the poor student with decent grades gets a free education, but the great student from a upper middle class family is expected to pay a nearly full price for their education.  Share the wealth intend-

I am not a big New Year resolutions guy as I have lists and lists of five point plans for nearly every aspect of my life.  So why add any more when I am trying to live by thousands of day by day guidelines.  Yet in the spirit of the season here are three  resolutions:

1.  I will be less cynical.

2. I will improve my grammar and spelling skills

3.  I will not blame my poor grammar and spelling skills on my public education and my undiagnosed unknown learning disorder. 

In fact I should learn from this clip not to  be a blame shifter

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MKIaS0lh-uo

Happy New Year and post any resolutions here or just comment away

A shot from when we walked down to Times Square yesterday. They were already setting up for tonight’s festivities.

And a close up shot of the spot for the ball drop later tonight.

And one other shot from Rockefeller Center and the Christmas Tree.

Not as big I guess I thought it would be. I hope everyone has been enjoying their holidays. It has been a fun year for me with this site and hope to continue it into the new year. I wish everyone a very Happy New Year and see you on the other side.

Comment away-I will update the Minnesota recount in a bit.

Happy New Year

UPDATED 10:15  CST  I don’t really have time or inclination right now to update the Minnesota recount.  Somehow they recounted a ballot the other day and Franken dropped from +50 to +49.  Here is the Startribune site for news

http://www.startribune.com/

I did the regular site and not for a specific story as I have been checking this site daily for news and I have become quite enamored with news in the Twin Cities.  There is a great story there about a city worker from rural Polk county.  He was clearing roads on his snowplow when he decided to help clear a path to the boat ramp to help ice fisherman.  Well as he was going downhill the snowplow rolls onto the ice and then broke through the ice. The Plow sinks  to the bottom of the lake.  I guess at some point the driver decided not to go down with the ship.  The city fired him for this error after 28 years of employment. 

Then few days ago there was a riot at a roller rink in Coon Rapids Minnesota which is in suburban Anoka county.  This town has 65,000 people.   I can only assume that Minnesota like Tennessee is bountiful in raccoons.

Sorry for being late but I had to wash the dishes plus family & work time.   No recount update tonight.  Its way too complicated to rush so perhaps tomorrow.  Let me put it this way Minnesota is trying to define what the words “wrong” and “error” mean.

 Talk about error.  Gov. Bagman has appointed Roland Burriss to the US senate or has he? Senator Reid vows not to seat Burriss even as its clear that he is not a weak or tainted choice.  Obama supports Reid and I suspect that’s the end of it. 

 Okay its the 1st over/under.  Tim Russert.  Tim was okay, but really does he deserve all the hoopla  when he died?  Now many year end reviews (certainly at NBC and MSNBC) have him listed 1st or second or in the top ten.  I mean in the political world Jesse Helms died, Bill Buckley and Solzhenitsyn.   So Russert to me is way over estimated.  Am I wrong or what?

 Brett Favre-over/under ?  Mercy this guy has been taken huge hits over all the sport blogs-talk radio-newspapers.  Were the Jets Super Bowl contenders last year?  I think they were 4-12.  This year they went 9-7 and by my Delbov curve calculation thats +5 games.  They were often the center of the football world and just missed the playoffs.  I say way under estimated   for Favre and if he does not return look for a 4-12 for the Jets in 2009.

I signed up on Facebook about two years ago and shortly thereafter, started a “Friends of the Hedgehog Report” page (which can be found over on the left-hand side). For the longest time, I rarely paid attention to it and added “friends” at a slow clip, not really doing much with it beyond that. I will admit in the past few months I became alittle more active on it, but again, mostly adding “friends” and the occasional picture. I rarely used it to give details about my life or personal info that I would rather keep private.

That being said, in the past month I think I have added more “friends”, all of them people that I see on a semi-regular basis or have a legitimate connection through work or personal, than I did in the first two years I was on the site. I’m not complaining about it, just surprised at the sudden surge in people who are signing up including people that I would have never expected to sign up for it. A lot of them are well beyond their college years which is what the entire Facebook premise was originally based on. Did I miss something that caused this sudden surge?

Facebook has it’s benefits and detriments like anything else. Honestly, the biggest benefit to me has been getting in touch with old friends that I have not seen in years, and in some cases decades, that pop up and either find me or I find them through searches. Just in the past three weeks, I have exchanged emails with an old college roommate I haven’t seen since graduation, my college orientation counselor that I haven’t seen or talked to since my freshman year of college fifteen years ago, an old co-worker of mine from a previous company who I had not talked to since I left the company, and more than a few high school friends of mine who I haven’t seen in over fifteen years. Now this isn’t to say I am going to suddenly become close friends with any of these people, but it was nice to catch up to see what they are up to or where their lives took them. And I probably would have never conversed with these people had it not been for Facebook or something similar. Of course, there are the drawbacks as well and the question of why I would be “friends” with some of these people from my past pops up in my mind. But overall, I have found Facebook to be a more positive to me than a negative.

I really don’t have a point to this post other than I really don’t have anything else to talk about that interests me at the moment or hasn’t been covered by rdelbov. I guess as an open-ended question, how many people use Facebook and for those that do, do you find it useful or beneficial at all?

As long as I can remember there has been articles on those pass during a given year at the end of the year.  The LA Times has a great section devoted online to the 2008 deaths 

http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-obits08,0,5839617.htmlstory

I love the old movies so I will comment a little on a few of the giants who passed in 2008

Paul Newman recently died and what a great actor and human being he was.  Its hard to know where to start looking at his movies but perhaps just consider the letter “H” as in “HUD”, “Hombre”, “Hustler” and “Harper”.  Great flicks and “HUD” actually led to the creation of a cabinet department. Who forget “Cat on a hot tin Roof” or “Cool Hand Luke”.  Or the two Redford match-ups in “Sundance” and “Sting”.  Great stuff.  So buy some Newman’s Own salad dressing or his popcorn and rent some DVD’s.  Newman by the way a dedicated liberal who very active in CT’s politics. 

Next is Charlton Heston.  One could argue that his 1st few movies were nearly impossible to top as he soared in deMille’s “Greatest show on earth” and “Ten Commandments”.  Of course ”Ben Hur” gives new meaning to the word epic.  If you want to know what Film Noir is watch “Touch of Evil”.  Or how about “Planet of the Apes” and the primal scream at what electing democrats to office do to the world.   Two other movies that foreshadow the future under liberalism are “Omega Man” and “Soylent Green” . I could go on and on.  Heston was the classic Hollywood liberal for many years as he help organized the movie industry for JFK.  He marched with Dr. King in DC and was  mourner at the funeralof RFK.  Heston believed in all ten of the amendments in the bill of rights and devoted much time to the right to bear arms.  Watch the “Omega Man” flick and you can that guns come in handy in the future. 

Then comes Richard Widmark.  His a tier below Newman and Heston but I have always enjoyed his movies.  Put a hat on that man or a uniform or make him a cowboy.  It just seemed in whatever role he had Widmark was worth watching. 

Finally this month Van Johnson died.   Johnson was tall and good looking as well as a great actor.  He did okay singing and dancing, but his handsome looks and smiles just said “MGM movies-1940’s”.  Watch “a guy named Joe” or “30 seconds over Tokyo” or “last time I saw Paris”.    For drama go see “The Caine Mutiny” with Bogart as Captain Queeg. 

For those who are not classic movie fans I say just wait as you will be one day.  Pardon the pause from politics.  I see a few new movies as the kids have to be  escorted or dragged to them.  I wonder just what Hollywood is thinking these days?  Oh its just not politics, but lousy movies seem so common these days.  Give me good old black and white  movies any old day.

PS  there is a little good nature politcal ribbing in this post.  Tongue in cheek is the word.