Shiny leather

The newspapers are burying the Rally to Restore Sanity. The NYTimes put them as far down on their online front page as possible, then joked about attendance without dropping so much as a clue as to actual turnout. This picture is suggestive, but I’m still looking for a definitive crowd shot.

The WaPost buried their pictures under several from the Marine Corps Marathon, a race I’d never heard of before. Sixty-four pictures but not one from high enough ground to capture the entire crowd. Funny how they were able to do that with Beck and the SEIU.

Ditto the ChiTrib, L.A. Trib and every other newspaper I checked out. Crooks and Liars says 200,000, but doesn’t attribute that number.  Howie the Whore expressed surprise at the size of the crowd before opining:

Maybe Jon Stewart is as big as Glenn Beck. Maybe bigger. Maybe passionate moderation is underrated. Or maybe these hordes of people have nothing better to do on a bright, crisp fall afternoon than to gather in the shadow of the Capitol and shout for sanity.

I’m sure we’ll have an accurate count any day now after Tuesday but in the meantime even AP is saying 150,000+ while Canada’s CTV NewsNet put it at a quarter million people. All I can say is that I know people who were there, and that wasn’t true of either of the earlier rallies. [more from Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson] [Digby] [PZ] [FDL] [Maha]

No, this is our most corporate of media’s hour to shine. Tuesday night ABC will treat us to the analytical ponderings of Andrew Breitbart, but at least ashamedly so. (Very ashamedly so.) Fox’s coverage, of course, will be worse.

More rally pix from TPM. More pix:

UPDATE: Politico admits to 215,000, and this picture certainly says more than Beck got:

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More politics:

DOJ to monitor Sheriff Joe’s turf on Tuesday

The Great Orange Satan has another excerpt from Matt Taibbi’s Griftopia

Another Joe Miller scandal

Phoenix Woman on Alinsky

More economic doom and gloom from Jonathan

Sheer hackery from the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights

Harry Reid?

Russ Feingold?

Prop 19

Time for a new Reformation?

Palin’s latest bluster

Into the abyss

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Recently David Brauer crunched the data and determined that the Strib had, by promoting early sales of their Sunday edition, cannibalized their Saturday edition sales to bump up their Sunday circ.

Here, on cue, is Strib publisher Michael Klingensmith thanking Strib readers for playing along.

Not where I’d spend my advertising dollars….

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Incredibly, D.J. Tice writes something I agree with (buried amidst the usual he said/she said sludge):

Here in Minnesota, if the polls can be trusted, Democrat Mark Dayton stands a fair chance of becoming a bright spot for his party Tuesday. If so, he will have done it with a brilliantly simple, three-word platform — “tax the rich” — that answered “no-new-taxes” and caught in progressive sails this year’s swirling winds of resentment for the powerful.

Dayton has made this look so easy that as a matter of pure political strategy one wonders why national Democrats don’t work the class conflict issue harder. They sound that theme, of course, but somehow Democrats in Washington always seem to pull their punches and change the subject in the end. Maybe they don’t really believe in it.

Democrats need to reinvent themselves as . . . oh I don’t know . . . Democrats?

Jon Tevlin weighs in on Minnesota’s elections and sardonicism is the word.

Me? I don’t have any trouble with my MN ballot choices. DFL straight down the line until you hit Ramsey County Attorney and there I’m voting for Dave Schultz over John Choi, but I have no problems with Choi. I live in the heart of the Twin Cities and with the possible exception of Schultz, everyone I vote for on Tuesday will win.

Yet this is the same city that elected Norm Coleman and Randy Kelly as mayors, and which has helped to re-elect Bob “Weapons of Mass Urination” Fletcher as sheriff too many times (hopefully, not this time).

I still think both chambers of Congress are safe, but if not . . . .

I am tired, I am weary
I could sleep for a thousand years
A thousand dreams that would awake me
Different colors made of tears

Venus in Furs, of course. One of my favorite Velvet Underground songs. The next line is the one I can’t embrace even though it would be our new reality if John Boehner of SS-impersonator pal fame becomes Speaker of the House: Kiss the boot of shiny, shiny leather….

Do so cheerfully: so sayeth the PiPress. And cheerful they should be: election ads probably just gave them their best fiscal quarter in years. Frank Rich talks turkeys:

But whatever Tuesday’s results, this much is certain: The Tea Party’s hopes for actually affecting change in Washington will start being dashed the morning after. The ordinary Americans in this movement lack the numbers and financial clout to muscle their way into the back rooms of Republican power no matter how well their candidates perform.

Trent Lott, the former Senate leader and current top-dog lobbyist, gave away the game in July. “We don’t need a lot of Jim DeMint disciples,” he said, referring to the South Carolina senator who is the Tea Party’s Capitol Hill patron saint. “As soon as they get here, we need to co-opt them.” It’s the players who wrote the checks for the G.O.P. surge, not those earnest folk in tri-corner hats, who plan to run the table in the next corporate takeover of Washington. Though Tom DeLay may now be on trial for corruption in Texas, the spirit of his K Street lives on in a Lott client list that includes Northrop Grumman and Goldman Sachs.

Worst political party ever? Or is that just a subset of worst managed economy ever? The case can and will be made. 2012 won’t be pretty either:

The tempest, however, will not be contained within the tiny Tea Party but will instead overrun the Republican Party itself, where Palin, with Murdoch and Beck at her back, waits in the wings to “take back America” not just from Obama but from the G.O.P. country club elites now mocking her. By then — after another two years of political gridlock and economic sclerosis — the equally disillusioned right and left may have a showdown that makes this election year look as benign as Woodstock.

Or voters could shock the pollsters and turn out for the Dems in large numbers on Tuesday. We don’t lose when everyone votes.

Never forget that.

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Halloween:

An artsy skull

More corporate crime, trick or treat edition

Wolcott on Keith Richard’s Life (I listened to the first chapter of the Johnny Depp-narrated audio book last night and yeah, it took me back)

Squidlanterns

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Etc.:

Russki billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov profiled in the NYTimes Magazine

Got Torpedoed last night (there’s better out there but this stuff is pretty good for the price)

 

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• Bob "Weapons of Mass Urination" Fletcher
• Keith Richards
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