Quote from the award winning best selling book by Nobel Laureate Al Gore, The Assault On Reason:

Right now many of us -- maybe even most of us -- are working furiously to affect the results of the elections now less than a day away.  Volunteers, staffers, and candidates alike have had their fill of cold pizza, stale donuts, and bad coffee.  But this is it, the ninth inning, the home stretch, the final push toward victory.  We can all sleep when it's Wednesday, and the United States has made the first step toward returning to sanity.

As part of this last push, candidates have rolled out their final set of ads.  Those with comfortable leads are giving delivering friendly little homilies and wrapping big grins around their thanks to the little people.  Those who aren't enjoying the upside of the polls are desperately applying poison to their blades and slashing in all directions, hoping against hope to make a fatal stab.

This is the game.  This is politics.  And you know what?  I hate it.

This diary was written expressly for Daily Kos, but I thought other progressive bloggers might find it interesting.

Yesterday I was devastated. A friend told me my favorite TV show Stargate, had been cancelled. This was actually announced last week, but I'm not involved in online fandom, so I had to get the 411 the old fashioned way. My friend is entrenched in online fandom, so I guess I'm in the second tier for info propagation from Stargate fandom ground zero. This is approximately where I would put myself in the progressive politics information stream, as well. Not in the room, but an interested party with my nose stuck to the window.

The word "devastated" might strike some as grotesque hyperbole in the context of a cheesy sci fi show. Wouldn't it be more appropriate for me to be devastated over Darfur or the warehousing of the poor in the U.S.? I've been pondering this for the last 24 hours, and I believe I've come up with some insights that may be of use to Kossacks and other people involved in political campaigns.

Say you are running for office and your opponent is formidable (maybe even superior). How do you most easily undermine his or her candidacy?

Sure, you can take years to rig the infrastructure of the vote or intimidate the opponent's constituency at the polls. Maybe you could even send out a "notice" to the opponent's constituency telling them that they can vote several days after the election. Heck, you can claim that the "injuns" cheated you. Who knows what they do on those "secret" reservations. Little doubt it's voter fraud.

Sure you could do these things, but if you really want to have some fun, and claim selfless bipartisanship at the same time, then it's high time you learned about the "Bush-Nader" technique. You see, why waste all that money and energy attacking a formidable opponent when you can undermine his or her election with a few, strategic acts of support for his in-party or third party opposition.

The idea is this: In most races, each party has a primary. It is before this primary that you begin your attack. Within the opposition party's primary there is typically a front-runner and the rest of the crowd. Assuming that you believe the front-runner to be your most threatening challenge, you must hit him or her with preemptive attacks:

"Brian Keeler is one of the most intelligent and dedicated people in internet politics, and his devotion to making people's lives better, every day and in every way, cannot be too highly praised."

--Sterling Newberry

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Click image for link to www.keeler2006.com

After clacking away at the keyboard for ePluribus Media, Political Cortex, Dailykos, My Left Wing and Booman Tribune, I was inspired by Markos and Jerome to push it aside and Crash a Gate or two myself and run for the New York State Senate. This Thursday, I'm announcing my candidacy at Waryas Park along the Hudson River in Poughkeepsie, New York.

The New York state government is, like so many others around the county, a total mess and completely inaccessible. Decisions are made behind locked, back rooms doors of Albany, and the only people who are allowed in to play are those who pay. The result? We end up with the best government their money can buy. It's totally alienating to the citizens of the state. We have no say in the important issues that concern our daily lives...Health Care, Property Taxes, Education and the Environment. Literally, a sad State of affairs.

I've been waiting for someone here to stand up to my 16-year Republican incumbent and challenge him to do more for the people of New York, not just the special interests who line his campaign pockets...but I'm not the kind who would ask someone to do something I wasn't willing to do myself. So last month, I stood up and and said, "No more!"

On a cable access show called "The Young Turks" the Generals son is full throttle to the mat on what his opinions are on the Democratic Party, and on the Republican Party.

I don't know if the General knows his son, is this blunt, but to me it is a refreshing thing to hear from some one so young, maybe he should consider running for office.......

This story is just plain psychotic.

MACON, Miss. -- Lean, lanky and a fast-talking blur of perpetual motion, Noxubee County Democratic Chairman Ike Brown has roamed the political landscape of eastern Mississippi for 25 years with one clear aim: electing Democrats who are really Democrats.

Brown has no time for moderate white Democrats who might get elected but who would then support Republican policies. "To hell with 'em," Brown says of people he calls "Dixiecrats." "They're not doing me one bit of good."

Brown's lawyer, Wilbur Colom, says he is simply "a tough politician." But the U.S. Justice Department says Brown's take-no-prisoners brand of politics has crossed the line into discrimination against white voters and candidates.

The Justice Department has launched a landmark lawsuit against Brown -- the first time the federal government has used the 1965 Voting Rights Act to allege racial discrimination against whites.

The title of Mica Sifry's article on AlterNet is The Best $24.95 MoveOn Ever Spent.  What they got for their money:

. . . if by some chance you stumble onto one Flickr member's home page, you'll discover a very odd-seeming list of tags in its cloud, led by antiroverally, approved, candlelight, cindysheehan, faceamerica, great, memberadded, mothers, photopetition, and vigil.

Welcome to the public Flickr account of MoveOn.org. With little notice, the giant liberal advocacy group has dipped its toes into the social networking slipstream, and so far it's quite enthralled with the experiment.

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The larger lesson for other organizations is this: As social networking sites like Flickr, del.icio.us (also just bought by Yahoo!), and MySpace attract millions of users, it may make sense to go where the people already are and start playing with the same tools, not only because those tools may offer all kinds of benefits to the organization, but also to see what unexpected benefits may engage people. What MoveOn is doing with Flickr is just a beginning.

We don't need no stinking media giants.