For those of you on the West Coast planning to settle in for a night of poll watching, here are poll closing times today (all times given PST):

Vermont: 4:00pm (polls close 7:00pm EST)
Ohio: 4:30pm (polls close 7:30pm EST)
Rhode Island: 6:00pm (polls close 9:00pm EST)
Texas: Most polls close 5:00pm (7:00pm CST), but polls in El Paso area close at 6:00pm (7:00pm MST). It is not clear whether precinct results will be made availalbe to the press from any precinct before all polls close. Caucuses continue starting at 7:15pm local time.

What we expect to see:

This is a follow-on of sorts to a post I made three years ago, The Art of Fake Budgeting.  Bush has released his budget for 2009, and what it amounts to is a three trillion dollar tissue of lies.  They're not even trying to hide the lies anymore.  Here are the most egregious phoney assumptions in the plan:

1. Gross Domestic Product (GDP) forecasts.  They don't get much better than this.  At a time when the word "recession" is on everyone's lips, Bush assumes a healthy 2.2% growth in GDP.  This GDP prediction table says it all.

The British sailors and marines are safe at home now. But they would be tried for cowardice if some neo-cons got their way (see this National Review editorial here). The article linked to is written by a British ex-pat turned naturalized American who is more ideologically eclectic than most conservative columnists. But the core values are there: hypocrisy and intolerance. See his wikipedia bio here.

This admitted illegal immigrant to the US is a fierce opponent of other illegal immigrants and amnesty (although as a currently naturalized citizen, he has benefited from what he opposes). He's also a self-described racist and homophobe who is married to a Chinese woman (now there's a foundation for healthy relationship). This guy is easily dismissed as a crank. However, I awoke recently to CNN doing an interview with the British sailors and marines actually justifying why they surrendered to the superior fire power of the Iranian forces that captured them. He must be reflecting the sentiments of enough people out there to warrant a response. To the extent that this view is common, it is an interesting development.

There's an interesting Op-ed in the New York Times today about the upcoming French election, which starts off promising but then goes wrong.  The central question is, why is centrist candidate François Bayrou climbing in the polls?  The author gives two explanations: the first is that Bayrou is the son of farmers.  I don't think this can be overlooked; the French feel a real rapport with "les paysans", which is why agricultural subsidies will never go away in France.  But he also posits that Bayrou's strength is that he is boring; specifically, that "[t]hey want things to stay the way they have always been."  I'm sorry, but I don't buy this at all.  It's much more complicated than that.

This was posted at TPM but deserves a bigger audience.  Congressman Fred Upton, a Republican, recently came out against the surge.  A TPM reader called to say thanks and reached a staffer who had been overwhelmed with negative calls.  Why not let him know what his constituents think? You can find his contact info here, but if you're lazy:

Kalamazoo District Office: (269) 385-0039
Saint Joseph District Office: (269) 982-1986
Washington D.C. Office: (202) 225-3761

Please reward him in this way!

So now it seems the government is snooping on the entire internet.  I'm no expert, but from the article it looks like everything you do on the internet goes through an NSA computer.  They can read your e-mail, find out what web sites you've visited, etc.  Is it constitutional?  Is it legal?  I don't know.  But it sure is creepy, and I wouldn't want ANYONE to read my e-mails except for me and the person I'm sending it to.  So if you're like me, you might want to consider encrypting your e-mails.  It's easier than you might think, and if you follow me below the fold, I'll give you a primer.

I learned these things from my time representing oil companies (I did for a couple of years, ashamed I am to say). It was interesting to learn about gasoline patents and the chemistry and sales issues. All of this is public information, at least insofar as it is not protected by any attorney-client privilege.

(Cross-posted at The Citizens)

Slobodan Milosevic is dead. In referring to the longevity of some evil people, I so often remark that "the Devil takes care of his own." Sometimes, the devil calls them home. On behalf of all the survivors of Srebrenica and Gorazde: rot in hell. I am sorry he was not convicted before he died. I doubt he was killed while in the Hague. Far more likely is some form of suicide. His father committed suicide when Slobodan was 15.

This also is a time for a bit of personal reflection. We saw, I saw, genocide happening right in front of us on television. The UN soldiers stood by while Serb forces surrounded Gorazde and massacred the people... then Srebrenica. The USA should have done more - a lot more. Sadly, Bush was committed to doing nothing when war broke out in Bosnia in April 1992, and Clinton inherited a do-nothing policy, and did no better. Republicans took over Congress in 1994 and opposed intervening in Bosnia. We were told repeatedly that there was "no national interest" in this region.

Hey folks. I am as sick as everyone here about the ... let's be generous ... misinformation circulating about the whole Abramoff situation. Unfortunately, I have found that debunking these lies is not as easy as I would like, mainly because the documentation is not very easy to find. I would like to make a master post on my blog (The Citizens) linking to documents that clearly show exactly what we are trying to tell people about this issue. But I need your help, since as I said, the documentation is not very easy to find. So, if you know of a good link, please help me find:

• Documentation showing all of Abramoff's personal contributions
• Documentation showing that he directed his tribes to reduce their donations to Democrats (or at least, something that shows that they did reduce their contributions after working with him)
• A good bio of Jack and a timeline of events, for any clueless readers we might get
• Anything else you think would make a good post.

Once I get everything, I will cross-post a diary here and make sure to give you credit if you helped out. Thanks so much!