Peter Cownie (R) has won in District 60. The unofficial totals are:

Peter ran a good solid clean campaign. We look forward to his work in the State House.

Congratulations, Peter!

NBC is calling Illinois before the polls are closed there… CNN is waiting. Different comments from the analysts, but personally I hate to see projections before polls are closed.

Granted the projections are coming from exit polls, but as we’ve seen in past elections, early projections can impact late voter turnout, which can impact other races.

The projections themselves are identical, which should be the case.

We’re watching CNN right now and monitoring[...]

Just now, Wolf Blitzer is talking with Jessica Yellin via, get this, Hologram. First time on live TV.

I’m quite impressed with what they’ve accomplished here. Jessica is in Chicago and Wolf is in New York. The image was a little herky-jerky (that’s a lot of data to transmit) from multiple cameras that were surrounding Jessica in a small tent.

I don’t know for sure if the image was actually projected onto the set or just merged digitally, but Wolf gave the impression that he was looking right at the image. And there was a red circle on the floor that appeared as if it could have been part of the projection aparatus.

Bravo, CNN!

Great news! Books For Soldiers made their $70,000 Fund Raising goal and will NOT have to close!

BFS provides an awesome service to our deployed military members, and I hope we can continue to support this vital ministry for years to come!

Thank you to all of you that donated to and promoted this urgent need over the past few months!

2009 fundraising is now in progress… please keep Books For Soldiers in mind as you consider year-end and ongoing charitable giving.

If you need them, free voter tools and endorsement information are in the center sidebar. We want to help you out today as much as possible.
The numbers are not completely up to date yet, but it looks like over 30 million Americans have voted in early balloting (up through November 3) for this election. That’s almost 25% of the total votes cast in 2004! Depending on how and when different states are counting these ballots, Tuesday and Wednesday could be an interesting time… and I doubt that exit polling will have the same level of predictability it had in years past.

Wow.

It’s awesome to see the power of the people brought to bare… the results are certainly unpredictable, but that’s part of the beauty and ultimately the intended process. Everyone has done everything they can and should to promote their parties, their candidates, their positions, and today everyone (who hasn’t already yet) gets to[...]

I’ve only provided endorsements for President and for legislative contests that affect me directly. Unfortunately, personal and work commitments have kept me from providing a broader assessment of candidates.

If you have not had adequate time yourself to interact with candidates or research them at their web sites, I can make a couple of simple suggestions:

There are a number of web sites with candidate assessments from varying perspectives, including general political principals and specific policy areas. Using various Google searches (such as “2008 Congressional candidate comparison tax“) you can[...]

District 60 is currently represented in the Iowa House by Libby Jacobs (R). She decided retire from the house this year and so we have a fresh set of candidates.

Dr. Alan Koslow (D) is a vascular surgeon who has been involved in health related volunteer activities for over 30 years. Without being a legislator, he has authored bills passed by the Iowa General Assembly, focused in the health and child services area. He has worked in missions to El Salvador after an earthquake. He considers himself a Smaller Government-Private Business-Progressive Realist. Koslow’s main focus is Health Care. His positions appear somewhat moderate, although he advocates leveraging our “balanced budget” to stimulate the economy by spending it on teacher pay, improving infrastrucutre, early child development programs.

Russ Gibson (L) is a customer service representative for FBL Financial Group. He states on his web site that he is not[...]

Yes, I am specifically attached to this race since I live in the district currently served by Leonard Boswell (D).

Leonard came into office in 1997. When he first entered Congress, he promised that he would serve no more than 4 terms. He has served 6 already. He votes along party lines over 95% of the time. Although he has supported President Bush on some key bills that served a more conservative agenda, he also voted with Bush on the $700 Billion Bailout. Reviewing his record, he appears to be both socially and fiscally moderate to slightly liberal.

Kim Schmett (R) has served as the chief administrative law judge with the Iowa Department of Inspections and[...]

Less than 72 hours remain until the polls will close across the country, and we’re already getting plenty of messages intended to demoralize McCain supporters. DON’T LISTEN TO A WORD OF IT!

The model for this was set during the primaries… a great analysis and prediction of repeat offenses are described at the HillBuzz Blog. It’s a great read if you have time, but the point of it that they will do anything to convince you to skip voting if you’re planning to vote for McCain. Three core efforts (and tell me you haven’t seen this already) are:

• Calls for McCain to just give up and quit, because the race is over
• Wild claims of Obama winning states that shock and surprise you
• Repeated insistance that blacks and young people will decide this election, and they are all going to vote in record numbers for Obama

The worst part of this is[...]

Just $2,800 left to meet the critical donation level required by the BFS Board of Directors! What’s amazing is that the original deadline was October 31 (they plan to close the operation if the $70,000 is not reached), and you’d have never thought they could get this close by that date!

Fortunately, as we mentioned two weeks ago, the Board extended the deadline to November 30. Can you give $50? $100? Okay, yeah, if you have $2,800 to spare, go for it! This is a vital service to our men and women on active duty overseas, and I know[...]