New Yorkers cast their ballots for the pro-America candidate, Barack Obama. CNN currently projects the state at 74% pro-freedom, 26% McBush. Probably going to tighten a little bit, but not by that much.

Congratulations, New York. Once again, you've done your duty to the country.

Alrighty: to prepare for the final push, we're going to start collecting and publishing resources for New Yorkers to get active online and offline. Here's some groups you need to be in on Facebook. If there's a title but no link, there's no extant group, something we'll try to remedy and update going forward.

Federal Races:

Barack Obama (One Million Strong for Barack)

Bridge to Somewhere: A Brooklyn Evening for Barack Obama

DailyKos Kossacks

Eric Massa for Congress '08 (NY-29)

As we noted when it came out, the recent Siena poll showing a close race in New York precipitated some anxiety among core Obama volunteers, leading apparently to a come-to-Jesus meeting between activists and state director Dave Pollak.

I sent this email to one of the participants on September 15th.

Here's my take: we've seen, since their convention, a weakening in Obama's poll numbers and strengthening in McCain's. That trend peaked and reversed itself about three days ago. Now, we're seeing Obama gaining, interestingly enough, even in some of the state polls that were in the field until yesterday.

I prefer not to do forecasting, but my guess would be that Obama's going to regain the lead in the national tracking polls uniformly in the next week, and that New York right now is roughly Obama 53%, McCain 42%. The Siena poll is perfectly fine methodologically, but apparently, they didn't push leaners, which in terms of the gap benefited McPOW more than it did our guy, since McScumbag was enjoying a bounce, and people moved from Obama to undecided. Note how Siena counts 13% undecided/other, which is very high. The vast majority of those undecideds should be considered Obama leaners.

A new Rasmussen poll today confirms that New York currently goes to Obama, 55% to 42%.

In a stinging rebuke to immigrant-bashing Lou-Dobbs-wannabe ex-republican Jack Davis, 2004 Presidential nominee and Massachusetts Senator John Kerry came out hard for Jon Powers today.

Via Daily Kos:

It will be three years ago this fall that I met Jon Powers and there isn’t a more impressive young man getting involved in public life today. [...]

I first met Jon at a screening I attended of the documentary Gunner’s Palace. When I heard his story, and I talked to him, I was blown away. I then asked him to give the introduction to the speech I gave on dissent and patriotism at Faneuil Hall in Boston.

Jon later told me that he remembers that day because it helped inspire him to run for Congress, a fact that I’m very proud of.[...]

His primary opponent is a self-funded millionaire who is responsible for the gutting of the Millionaire’s Amendment – and who has launched a slew of misleading attacks – so please do what you can to help.[...]

Why is this personal to me? Because I believe in the courage and character of a young man who was a platoon leader in the First Armored Division in Baghdad during the early years of the Iraq war. His commanding officer described Jon as, “one of the most talented officers I have known in twenty-two years of service in the Army.”

Support Jon Powers - click here. This isn't just a fight about who's going to run in NY-26 in November; it goes to the root of the question of what kind of party we want to be. Me, I'd prefer not to nominate the ultra-rich former Cheney crony - until he was removed from a Cheney event for being annoyingly disruptive, that is - who went all the way to the Supreme Court to gut the millionaires amendment.

You hear a lot about political machines - for example, my friend Roatti on Albany Project writes about the subject - and at the risk of acid commentary from machine-owned bloggers, I have some thoughts on it as well.

Machines exist in what is essentially an apolitical space, which is surprising, given that they operate on the field of politics. But the deep relationships that seem to enmesh the machines of both parties, especially in the outer boroughs and in some regions upstate, suggest that they exist mainly for the maintenance of jobs and revenue to a selected group of insiders. It is, essentially, the professionalization and unionizing, if you will, of the exercise of political power. Machines are, literally, a closed shop.

It's worth pointing out that the results aren't all bad. For example, some machine politicians have a sterling record on affordable housing. That's not a small thing. In minority communities, machines have proven an effective mechanism for guaranteeing disadvantaged ethnicities a seat at the table.

The downside of machine politics is equally clear: in a system that consists of, essentially, a professional class supported by carefully chosen voters, the central systemic benefit of the democratic process, of a feedback loop between the people and their representatives, erodes.

Per The New York Times, Governor Paterson will speak to New Yorkers about the appalling fiscal outlook caused by the unhappy marriage of the Bush economy and the Bruno/Silver budget.

“There will be no confusion about the gravity of the situation,” said Mr. Paterson, who has been sounding the fiscal alarm repeatedly in recent months, as state budget officials began forecasting large budget gaps and a prolonged and deep recession in the state.

Risa B. Heller, a Paterson spokeswoman, said that the governor would do more than merely warn of worse times ahead.

“The governor will put forth proposals to both get the state’s fiscal house in order and ease the burden on New Yorkers,” Ms. Heller said.

The state budget office’s last official estimates, issued in May, projected a $5 billion budget gap next year, increasing to $7.7 billion for 2010 and $8.8 billion for 2011, owing in large measure to layoffs and billions of dollars in losses at Wall Street firms, which account for a fifth of state tax revenue.

Between the announcement of the largest Federal deficit ever, the weakest consumer confidence reading since 1992, and a weakening currency that's lost half its value since Bush walked into the Oval Office, that's probably not going to be a very happy speech.

Via brownsox on Daily Kos comes word of Jack Davis, officially disfavored contender in NY-26, and his newest foible.

Words fail to describe it, so please check it out, here.

And when you're done, and have calmed down somewhat, check out a real Democrat - Jon Powers for Congress.

Do an experiment today: ask any New Yorker whom you know or meet randomly on the street who their state representatives are. The odds are very good that they won't know. This is because that knowledge makes little pertinent difference in their lives.

The ramifications of that simple fact are laid out in two Daily News pieces today that should make you cringe. One is headlined Ex-staffer says top Shelly aide raped her and Silver did nothing about it, the other, New York burns while Albany fiddles.

The first piece deals with an alleged rape incident in the State Assembly.

[Alleged rape victim Elizabth] Crothers, 32, was a young staffer for an upstate Republican assemblyman when she brought an internal complaint in 2001 with the Assembly that she was raped by Silver's then-counsel Michael Boxley.

Crothers and her boss met directly with Silver, who she said was callously eating pretzels as she recounted her story.

Boxley later in an unrelated incident pled guilty to misdemeanor sexual assault.

Wow. And on a Monday, too: Bruno won't seek re-election.

"He will not run for re-election. It's still open as to whether he will serve out the term until Dec. 31 or leave early."

UPDATE: Another GOP Senate source tells DN Capitol Bureau Ken Lovett that Bruno will definitely remain in the Senate through the end of the year because if he leaves, the chamber will be tied. The fate of his leadership, however, remains unclear.

This source told Lovett Bruno decided to tell his members today because it's the last day of session and he wanted to inform them of his decision when they were all together.

Bruno, who has served in the Senate since 1976 and has been leader since early 1995, when he took power from Ralph Marino in a coup with then-newly-minted Gov. George Pataki's support, has been coy of late about whether he would run this fall.

Here's what's fun: this morning, Albany Project noted that it sure looked as if Bruno was clearing the gangways.

Several people will have their situations drastically altered by Bruno's retirement. One, the older republican Senators, the Trunzos of the world, will now head for the exits. Bruno's kept them in office to preserve his majority. That's over, and this will not be the last retirement to come.

Two, Sheldon Silver in the Assembly, first elected the same years as Joe Bruno, 1976, now faces the near certainty of a Democratic Senate that will operate under different rules than Silver's own chamber.

Three, New York republicans might as well hand in the towel. It's over for them. Done.

Yes, it's time for another installment in the expanding file about media stories marked "Who the hell cares?".

In this case, the story - here's an extended discussion of it - that David Paterson supposedly

described Mayor Bloomberg in private as a volatile, Spitzerian, untrustworthy, out-of-touch, self-destructive billionaire bully.

Even if true, who. The. Hell. Cares?

Seriously?

This is the kind of media circus that prompts voters to despair. It's not as if there's a war on, and maybe the economy isn't really collapsing, maybe we don't have over 4,000 dead Americans (and dead Iraqis in their thousands, but we don't even count them), a President who broke the laws of the land with impunity, global warming, 4,000 kids in Brooklyn who don't even know whether or where they'll be going to school next year, the list goes on.