The Commentariat -- Nov. 6, 2012
Returns of the Day
Byron Wolf of ABC News: "The small hamlet of Dixville Notch in New Hampshire ... votes right at midnight.... This year ten voters ... split evenly -- five votes apiece -- for President Obama and ... Mitt Romney.... The other New Hampshire town with midnight voting -- the slightly more populous (32 voters) Hart's Location -- swung towards Obama tonight -- 23 Obama, 9 Romney."
Presidential Race
Nate Silver: "If President Obama wins re-election on Tuesday, the historical memory of the race might turn on the role played by Hurricane Sandy. But while the storm and the response to it may account for some of Mr. Obama's gains, they do not reflect the whole story.... Mr. Obama had already been rebounding in the polls, slowly but steadily, from his lows in early October -- in contrast to a common narrative in the news media that contended, without much evidence, that Mr. Romney still had the momentum in the race. Moreover, there are any number of alternatives to explain Mr. Obama's gains before and after the storm hit." Thanks to a reader for the graphic, which was posted on Daily Kos & elsewhere.... we are at the point where the polling averages in each state are pretty much locked in -- and it is mostly a question of whether the actual results will approximate them, in which case Mr. Obama should claim enough electoral votes between Ohio and other states to win another term." Silver gives Obama a 92 percent chance of winning, which leaves Rmoney with 8 percent odds. Thanks to a reader for the graphic, which appeared on Daily Kos & elsewhere. ...
... Update: the latest from Silver: it's Barack-o-Mentum.
... NEW. Nate Cohn of The New Republic: "Obama leads by at least 3 points with 49 percent of the vote in the states won twice by Kerry and Gore, plus New Mexico, Nevada, and Ohio. These states are worth 272 electoral votes [270 needed to win], and with the exception of a stray poll in Michigan, Romney doesn't lead in a single non-partisan survey in any of those states."
... Jon Cohen, et al., of the Washington Post: "Heading into Election Day, likely voters divide 50 percent for President Obama and 47 percent for ... Mitt Romney, according to the latest, final weekend release of the Washington Post-ABC News tracking poll." ...
... NEW. David Atkins of Hullabaloo immortalizes the GOP predictions of the day, all of which have Romney winning in an Electoral College landslide.
President Obama's last campaign rally, or as Michelle Obama put it, the "final event of my husband's final campaign":
E. J. Dionne: "... Obama is fighting a Republican Party determined to bring the Gilded Age back and undo the achievements of a century. And so, beneath the attacks, the counterattacks, and the billions invested by small numbers of the very rich to sway the undecided, we face a choice on Tuesday that is worthy of a great democracy. My hunch is that the country will not go backward, because that's not what Americans do."
CW: I don't agree with some of the prognosticating in Jayne Mayer's post in the New Yorker on the relative rarity of second-term presidents, but there is some content worth reading, especially this: "Geraldine Ferraro, Walter Mondale's Vice-Presidential running mate in 1984, slugged Washington super lawyer Bob Barnett after her debate preparation."
For you football fans, BuzzFeed has videos of Obama & Romney talking sports (or in Romney's case, "sport") & football on last night's "Monday Night Football."
"Tell Mitt Romney Climate Change Isn't a Joke": This Web ad, produced by Forecast the Facts, has had 630,000+ hits. The group is not endorsing President Obama:
At least Montgomery Burns is totally behind Romney, even if Seamus imcaninators aren't:
Prof. Kevin Kruse in a New York Times op-ed: "... the Romney campaign's ... fundamental disdain for facts is something wholly new.... Win or lose, the Romney campaign has placed a big and historic bet on the proposition that facts can be ignored, more or less, with impunity." Kruse identifies four factors that have encouraged fact-abuse.
The Word According to Andy Borowitz
We're strongly opposed to FEMA and health care, but basically O.K. with rape. -- Official Republican Party Closing Argument ...
... Our argument couldn't be simpler: when God wants to create a hurricane or make a woman pregnant, big government should get out of the way. -- Reince Priebus, Republican party chair, elaborating
Zachary Roth of NBC News: aw, shucks. Chris Christie & Mitt Romney are having a little spat on election eve.
"A Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow":
Now that the campaign is (mostly) over, I can reveal what Barack Obama really thinks:
Congressional Races
Eight Democratic Congressmen Who Are Class-A Jerks. A lovely slideshow by Katie McDounough of Salon. One of them, Joe Donnelly of Indiana, is running for Senate against Dick Moredick, the pregnancy-by-rape-&-divine-will guy. Their platforms, however, are pretty much the same.
Voting Problems
Chicago Tribune: "The Chicago elections website was non-functioning most of the day today, adding to the confusion among voters who didn't realize their polling sites had changed. The Chicago Board of Elections website, which voters could use to check where to vote, went down early Tuesday morning. It was functioning by about 4:00 this afternoon."
New Jersey. NorthJersey.com: "In response to widespread reports that voters displaced by Hurricane Sandy haven't received their email and fax ballots on Election Day, the state has extended the deadline for voters to return those ballots to county clerks to 8 p.m. Friday."
Florida. No Electioneering or Engineering Here. Boca News Now: poll workers in Boca Raton blocked a woman wearing an M.I.T. tee-shirt from entering the polling place because they thought she was wearing a Romney campaign shirt. The college lady was eventually allowed to vote when some poll worker figured out how to spell "Mitt."
Illinois. CW: This is a photo of the ballot a poll worker gave a voter at a South Lake Shore Drive Chicago polling place this morning. The voter, Brittney Edwards, took the photos. I am liking the choices for Cultural Commissioner, even if they are dead. Read the Chicago Tribune story:
Pennsylvania. Charles Pierce has more on the Pennsylvania poll voter obstructionists. From a news report: "An Allegheny County judge issued an order to halt electioneering outside a polling location in Homestead. County officials received a complaint shortly before 10 a.m. Tuesday that Republicans outside a polling location on Maple Street in Homestead were stopping people outside the polls and asking for identification." Pierce notes that these kinds of reports have sent Chuck Todd "to the fainting couch."
New York & New Jersey. David Halbfinger, et al., of the New York Times: "People whose lives were upended by Hurricane Sandy joined other voters on Tuesday to cast ballots after elected officials in New York and New Jersey scrambled to relocate scores of polling places that had become unusable because of power failures, flooding or evacuations."
Pennslyvania. Dan Froomkin reports that Pennsylvania poll workers are turning away voters without IDs even though a court has ruled that IDs are not required in Pennsylvania for this election.
Rhode Island. AP: "Rhode Islanders were facing long lines and, in at least two polling places, the wrong ballots as they began voting Tuesday in a hotly contested congressional race and on whether to allow the state's two slots parlors to turn into full-fledged casinos."
New Jersey. Ryan Reilly of TPM: "Superstorm Sandy is having a devastating effect on voting in New Jersey, Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law executive director Barbara Arnwine told reporters at a news conference on Tuesday morning. Voters were being asked for I.D. even though the state has no law requiring it, voting locations opened late and some locations didn't have ballots, she said. 'In a word, there's just one word to describe the experience in New Jersey, and that is catastrophe,' Arnwine said."
... Ben Smith of BuzzFeed: "New Jersey's last-minute offer of email voting to displaced residents was greeted by concern by security experts, who warn that email offers a fast track to voter fraud. But the system may have another problem as well: County election administrators are, according to anecdotal reports, simply not responding to all requests for ballots. In two major counties, the email address advertised on the website of the county clerk is not even accepting email."
Voter Suppression
"A National Embarrassment"
Jason Sattler of the National Memo: "Democratic strategist Bob Shrum calls the several hours some voters are spending in line waiting for their right to vote a 'poll tax,' harkening to a Jim Crow-era restriction used to keep African-Americans from voting. Poll taxes were specifically banned by the 24th Amendment."
Jeff Toobin of the New Yorker on whether or not there is a Constitutional right to vote.
NEW. AP: an Ohio judge threw out a lawsuit claiming that "experimental" software recently placed on Ohio's vote-tabulating machines -- could alter vote counts. CW: Um, they will be using flash drives to transfer vote-count data. No room for data manipulation there. Holy shit! ...
... AND Mark Warren of Esquire: Ohio Gov. & former Fox "News" guy John Kasich (R) says Romney will win Ohio by 50,000 votes. CW: I wonder if Kasich is the guy holding the flash drive.
NEW. Joseph of Plunderbund: Tea Party-backed "election observers" of True the Vote, who planned to concentrate their "observations" on heavily-African American voting districts in Ohio, "will not be allowed in Franklin County, Ohio, polling locations because the local elections board discovered that True the Vote had forged some signatures on their qualifying forms. ...
... Update: The Columbus Dispatch has the story now.
Libertarian Conor Friedersdorf of the Atlantic: "Hours-long election lines stretching many city blocks are a national embarrassment. And those responsible should be condemned across ideological lines. In Florida and Ohio, state officials arranged things such that citizens had to stand in line for hours to cast their ballot. Asked to extend early voting so that casting a ballot might be a bit less burdensome, they refused. It's an outrage."
NEW. Tim Padgett of Time: Gov. Rick "Scott and the Florida GOP can hand us all the disingenuous reasons they want for reducing early-voting days, including their favorite canard: cracking down on voter fraud. But their real impetus was to reduce Democratic turnout, because Democrats tend to do more early voting than Republicans -- and because they gave Obama a 9-point lead among early in-person voters in 2008.... [Although Scott, et al., have succeeded in bringing early voting down from the 2008 level by almost 10 percent,] Democratic voters, who outnumbered Republicans 46% to 36% in early in-person voting this year, seem to have widened their 2008 lead."
NEW. SEIU: "After receiving information indicating that the Pennsylvania Republican Party and the Pittsburgh Tea Party may be systematically sending poll watchers to predominantly African American precincts in Pittsburgh, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), Common Cause, The Advancement Project, The Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law and the ACLU, together with a number of local community groups, sent a letter to Assistant U.S. Attorney General Thomas Perez, who is responsible for enforcing the Voting Rights Act, asking that the Justice Department 'make every effort to ensure that voters at these targeted locations are able to cast their ballots freely and fairly' and also to ask the Pennsylvania Republican Party about the source of its lists and the basis of its targeting."
Dan Froomkin has an overview of ongoing voter suppression efforts.
What a Difference a State Makes. David Halbfinger, et al., of the New York Times: "Elected officials in New York and New Jersey scrambled Monday to enable displaced citizens to vote in the election on Tuesday, relocating scores of coastal polling places that had become unusable because of power failures, flooding or evacuations. New Jersey and New York both said they would allow voters uprooted by Hurricane Sandy to cast provisional ballots anywhere in their states."
Laboratories of Democracy, Etc.
Abby Rapoport of American Prospect highlights a few if the low lights running for re-election in state legislatures.
Frank Bruni: same-sex marriage opponents trot out the same tired, discredited arguments -- the gays are recruiting your kids, and other fear-mongering oldies. ...
... Josh Voorhees of Slate has some polling on how the gay marriage ballot initiatives may fare.
Reeferendum:
The Home Front
Matt Glassman has some wise & foolish advice for how to spend today -- and tonight. Via Greg Sargent. Do feel free to contribute you own advice, voting experience, whatever.
News Lede
AP: "Gunmen shot and killed the brother of Syria's parliament speaker as he drove to work in the capital Damascus on Tuesday, the state-run news agency reported on Tuesday. Mohammed Osama Laham, brother of Parliament Speaker Jihad Laham, was killed in the Damascus neighborhood of Midan...." CW: excuse me, their names are Osama & Jihad??? I am thinking these are not the Pro-America Laham Brothers.
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Reader Comments (32)
D-Day.
Today we'll see whether the begrudgers and the haters of democracy, the screaming, drooling, knuckle-dragging right-wing orcs will be silenced or whether they'll whoop and holler in blood lust over the body of America.
Today we'll see whether the real Real Americans will stop, at least momentarily, the march of the blood oath racists, haters, oligarchs, moneyed interests and their sycophants.
Today we'll see which America will emerge.
Today we'll see it all.
Ah, thanks, Akhilleus, tell us what you really think!
I'll be gazing at Mount Tamalpais praying fervently that the scenes of long lines of old people and young mothers with babies in arms waiting for hours to vote because some Republican bastard wants to curtail the Democratic early vote will move the whole nation to vote against the Republican bastards.
I am going to keep the faith, and Remember the Supremes! To wit:
Sonia Sotomayer, has not whined
And is set to show her excellent mind.
Ruth Bayer Ginsburg, though sick and old,
Must never be by Romney sold!
Steven Breyer, so wise and kind
We need, when he leaves, a kindred mind
And Elena Kagen, no superstar
But better than a Scalia clone--by far
As my long-dead older brother would say: "You are a poet and you don't know it, because your feet are Longfellows!"
RTFS!
Alphonse,
Oh, what I really think is a whole lot worse, but in honor of the day I'm reining it in a bit.
Well, I'm heading off to vote shortly. Luckily I'm not in a battleground state so there's a pretty good chance my vote will be counted.
Cheers, all.
Akhilleus sorry but regardless of who wins nothing will change. Congress will most certainly be divided and the next POTUS will accomplish nothing (that of course could be good news).
The 'the begrudgers and the haters of democracy, the screaming, drooling, knuckle-dragging right-wing orcs' are going nowhere. They and their follows are in fact half of America. If Obama wins they will just start all over again. I have said this before. There is no longer a country called the United States of America. There are two countries, seriously at war. I am a citizen of the country that actually believes that we are a country, i.e. a community whose common good is managed by government. Half of the population are citizens of another country where they use their religion as an excuse for misogyny, racism, homophobia and greed.
I am not kidding when I say that if it were not for the fact that I have a family to protect from this war, I would pack up and get the hell out of hell.
Re: What a long, strange road it's been...or don't let the door hit you on the way out. Marvin; I can't agree with you more; or less. Take the family and flee, save yourselves, find your green valley and put down new roots, search out open arms and kindred souls...think Swiss Family Schwalb. BUT, ever been an ex-pat?
Sure you have, Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines(guessing not on the last group) maybe a year overseas in college; or hash bummin' in Nepal back in the day? How about the 'Gringo trail' down through Columbia(Kate, red point over gold)Peru too; ah, the purple flake in LaPaz ? Yes? No? All through out the Caribe; still looking for that lost shaker of salt? All those trips had one thing in common; goin' home. Home bound, back to where you started from. Home, where your love lies waiting.
Once you're an ex-pat there's no going home. So start there and really think about being the outsider forever. Stranger in a strange land. It's a hard role. Ask the next taxi driver you hire; or the dishwasher or the gardener or the Phd from the local junior college.
So that's one thing to think about.
And here's where we really go our own ways. Like it or not it does make a difference as to who's President. I can start by mentioning those guys and gals in the black robes that Kate seems to have a thing for. You really want Mitt to pick his fav? I'd rather have Montie Burns to the choosing.
How about foreign policy?
How about the heart beat away? "The new President is coming out on the lawn to address the nation" And it's Paul Ryan? My dumbest Chihuahua would make a better president and that's going some.
How about the environment? Mitt and his buddies with nobody watching the till?
I can go on but you get my point; there's bad and there's wrong.
One more thing. Access. We don't see it or hear it or read about it but access is everything to those in power and those that want policy. Who do you want answering the phone at 1600 hrs? Mitt or Obama? Who do you want calling?
There is a difference Marvin; but hey man; everybody's got the right to be free. Pick up and go, remember one less Marvin is one less of the "good guys". Cut and run, don't blame you a bit.
Bravo! @JJG
Here's another POV simply and well-stated: "Dear America, Please Don't Fall for This Shit Again "
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/adam-mckay/romney-obama-election-2012_b_2080326.html
Marvin,
You're certainly not wrong. Those creatures are not going away and an Obama victory will not in any way blunt their hatred or their determination to stop the country dead in its tracks. In fact, it will, most likely, stir them to stoop even lower, if that's possible, in trying to drive the country to ruin, pouring bags of sugar into our collective gas tank.
I don't know what it is exactly that creates such monsters. It can't just be racism, or their weird Janus thing connecting their senses of victimization and entitlement. It can't just be a hatred of progressive policy direction, or suspicion of the Gay Agenda, the Women's Agenda, the Black Agenda, the Hispanic Agenda. It can't just be their belligerent and baroque misogyny or their fiercely anti-fact, anti-science, anti-rationality attachment to religion. It can't be their sense that they, as Marie suggested, consider themselves to be the only true Americans. But it could be all of these things combined. Not combined in equal portion in all who will vote for a cheap, lying, money-grubbing, whiny, homophobic putz of a Richie Rich and his ludicrously 19th century bug-eyed boy Robin, but enough to create, as you suggest, an alternate universe where, to paraphrase the Rat, they believe that they ARE entitled to their own facts.
But, that being said, and despite the fact these people aren't going anywhere, I'll feel a whole lot more optimistic with an Obama return to the White House. The "Both Sides Do It" crowd are in high dudgeon about how hard it would be for poor Mittens if the Democrats try to short-circuit his worthy agenda of remaking the country as the United States of Bain (ignoring the fact that Republicans have waged scorched earth, no prisoners war on Obama since before the last waltz of the Inaugural Ball). The fact is that Democrats are nowhere near as organized or vicious as Republicans who march in lock step when Teabaggers or Limbaugh or Norquist hand down the orders. Democrats also have a substantial number of conservatively positioned dickheads who would never go along with ham stringing an R&R attack on America. It would never be the same thing. Look at how so many of them knuckled under to President Smirking-Frat-Boy-Deserter.
Well, there's plenty of time to fret over those sorts of things.
Today I'm going to try to maintain an even strain and wait for the results tonight.
But if Romney wins Ohio by 6 or 7 points and Florida by 9 or 10 points, Democrats better Cowboy the fuck up in a hurry and push the Justice Department to immediate and thorough investigations before Romney and his little rats are allowed to scurry into the White House to start stealing shit.
One other thought.
If Obama does win, does anyone here think that the Rat has it in him to stanch the kind of hatred and nasty comments yelled out during McCain's concession appearance? It was, perhaps, the most decent thing McCain did during that entire campaign season, to quell that mini uprising. I have no doubt that Obama, if he loses, would not allow that sort of thing (but I also don't think that his supporters would be quite so hateful and rude, although I could be wrong about that). But the Rat, his gigantic ego on the line, might just go along with it. Might enjoy the enmity and might immerse himself in the poor loser mentality long enough for him to feel properly victimized, yet again, by the unworthy, the unqualified, the moochers. You know, regular Americans.
Anyone know where the Garden of Eden is in Missouri? I want to add it to my vacation bucket list.
I feel a little bit like a cancer patient today. Even though "Dr." Nate Silver seems to think I have a 92% chance of survival, that 8% possibility of dying scares the hell out of me.
I feel a little bit like a cancer patient today. Even though "Dr." Nate Silver seems to think I have a 92% chance of survival, that 8% possibility of dying scares the hell out of me.
David Brooks. Remember that guy?
(Sorry for all the posts...lots of nervous energy today.)
Brooks, in his role as amateur sociology guy, today reminds us, on election day, that all a child needs to succeed in life is a hug. Government policies can't do that. Can they?
I don't think it's an earth shattering discovery to realize that kids who come from homes where they're loved and feel secure are more likely to do better than kids who live in a remote, cold Dickensian household or, as in many modern American homes, one parent households where that parent must find two or even three minimum wage jobs in order to pay the bills and stay solvent. Hugs might be there, but they're few and far between.
Funny then, that Brooks has constantly supported Republican efforts to make sure that the vast majority of children in American homes not lucky enough to be filthy Romney rich, would be thrown to the wolves, to live lives reminiscent of Little Nell from Dickens' Old Curiosity Shop.
Somehow it never occurs to little Dave, or most Republicans, that many families, in the world made by the Modern GOP, are lucky enough to find the two or three jobs they need in order to make ends meet and that good governmental policies are necessary to ensure proper education, opportunity and, in times of greatest distress, support in order that many kids don't suffer the same fate as poor Nell. And, no, government policies don't give hugs, but good ones implemented properly might help stressed out parents time and opportunity and economic room to create those warm homes.
So give Little Dave a hug. Poor man, he's such a sensitive fucker. Too bad after he finishes all that warm, fuzzy sociologizing, he's still just another conservative prick.
JJG, as I have said before I am politically depressed. Given what is going on I really don't believe there is any chance of the USA ever regaining its true identity. Maybe I can blame the response to Sandy. Not the NJ response, not the Fed response but the other response that never happened. It is called climate change, global warming or whatever the new story is. It is just ignored. So the politics are not just about availability of contraception. The serious problem which is literally destroying America is ignored by all.
That is the true sign of the future. You think that if someone stays here and votes Democrat every year this will make a difference? By the time we wake up to reality, it will be too late. In fact it may already be too late. Here is my favorite point. What causes global warming? Human activity? OK so how will we address this? Greenhouse gas tax? Nice but how about the real problem. TOO MANY HUMANS. 80,000+ more a day, every day. Eating, drinking, buying a car, using air conditioning and on and on. But no problem, the purpose of our existence is make as many humans as possible. Just ask the god. We will never, ever touch this or any other real problem. I mean, it is so obvious that the world can handle an infinite number of people. It is over and religion will be the real killer.
And for America, we are at the worst of it because their is no other modern nation where religion rules life. So my idea is the equivalent of hiding in a bomb shelter. At best, all it does is delay the inevitable.
David Brooks has donned his professorial hat this morning and discusses the Grant Project among other things pertaining to the impact of early parental loving and nurturing or lack of. One might like to think he has put politics to rest on this most important day, but if you listen closely––you know, hear those whistles only dogs can hear––there is the ring of small government and men pulling themselves up by their jock straps. Someone should remind Brooks of that other study––take note, Akhilleus––scientists have found a mark in genes that retains memory and discovered RATS that were low licked by their mothers displayed stress while those that were high licked seemed free of it. This gene called Epigenome, the nurturing gene, is linked to behavior. So to answer your query, Akhilleus, as to what creates these monsters in our midst, it might just be the difference between those that were low licked or high licked. Or not.
@James Singer. Sorry, can't help. Would love to join you but am busy working on contingency plan to visit taxpayer-funded Noah's Ark in Kentucky. If Romney wins, the Noah's Ark theme park should get me in the proper mood for his administration by reminding me that most of the country believes in a god who would annihilate almost every living thing because he figured he'd screwed up his little project. It's such an uplifting story that parents give the kiddies Noah's Ark toys to scare the living daylights out of them. Note to parents: if your little tyke runs away screaming when you mention it's bathtime, you might want to ditch the ark & the animals.
I'm thinking the park will make me feel better about Romney, who wishes he could drown only 47 percent of us. I'm not sure, BTW, whether I fall into the 47 or the 53 percent: I do pay taxes, which would make me a responsible, worthwhile human being, but I also get Social Security, which puts me in the lowlife moocher class. (Medicare is another fuzzy area: I get it, but my premiums are higher for Medicare than they were for my university policy.) Life is a lingering quandary.
Marie
PD,
I read a story about that rat study. I'm tempted to make a joke involving cow licks or salt licks to go along with the low licks and the high licks, but the gene controlling my punning ability has been dimmed today (I'll also refrain from any attempts at epi-jean humor, the inclusion of items of clothing being a pun too far).
Is it time for results yet?
Maybe I got it wrong. I just returned from voting and came down a side street where we ran into one of the town's big Republican politicians standing in front of his house directing the crew that was removing the giant tree that fell onto his roof!
Good stuff from Charles Pierce blog, which is mounting an running report of voting. Writ, as Pierce says "knock the shit off", to poll intimidation in PA and refusal to allow True the Vote in 30 precincts in Ohio for "improperly filed" requests. Democracy-hell yeah!
http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/
There's one good thing from this past year. Regardless of who wins billions of dollars have been extracted from the 1% to finance the campaigns and some of that money will have stimulated the economy. Perhaps giving an 0.1% drop in the unemployed? Not all of that money will have been offshored by the media moguls but spent locally.
Mind you, if Mitt wins that 1% will earn a few thousand percent on their investment.
Here's something that's wicked fun! WAPO has an interactive tell us who you voted for and create your own button app. The Obama buttons FAR FAR outnumber the Rat's. And, some pithy button slogans are appearing there.
http://apps.washingtonpost.com/politics/i-voted/home/?hpid=z3
Thanks to Dan Froomkin, Charlie Pierce, and a host of others, it appears that Republican and Teabagger vote suppression tactics are going full force in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida, and very likely many other states. The number and variety of these slimy tactics are staggering. If only Republicans put this much ingenuity, creativity, and leg work into actual governing as opposed to stealing elections, we might all see some benefit. But then I have to slap myself and remind myself that Republicans don't care to benefit anyone but themselves.
No telling how many votes have been suppressed so far.
Step two, the actual stealing, deletion, alteration, and manipulation of votes is going on behind the scenes. Slimy Weasel Jon Husted (that's his official title, by the way) is no doubt testing out those new last minute software "patches" on electronic voting machines in Ohio to see just how easy it is to rig the vote. He can probably flip entire districts from his smart phone. I bet that's technology right-wingers can all get behind. No science deniers there, when science is helping you game a presidential election.
Democratic lawyers will have their hands full today trying to get court orders to force the thugs to cease and desist from intimidating voters. Don't know how well they'll do if the Rat comes in with a purloined landslide, but we'll see.
Maybe the Obama voter turnout will be enough to overcome the gangsters, weasels, and thugs. One can only hope.
Re: Brass on the Titanic; Marvin; So you know, I firmly believe Mother Nature is going to sweep the human race into the dust bin of the universe. That's flat line. But I will be the ant that clings to the side of the shovel even though the ant hill is gone. Why? Because it's the only philosophical choice. I am because I don't give a damn.
Oh, one thing I find hilarious is that a gang of Teabagger thugs from Steal the Vote were denied access to ply their trade in polling places in Franklin County, Ohio.
The plan of these assholes is to stick cameras in voters' faces, demand to see their IDs, ask for their "papers" to prove where they live, etc and "record" the information on iPads, the idea being to frighten voters before they even get inside.
The problem was that their own papers were not in order due to things like falsified names and signatures (imagine that!). I suppose it wouldn't be very professional for the Franklin County Board of Elections to issue an "Eat shit and die, douchebags!" letter, but it would be fun.
If you want to avoid the gasbags, C-SPAN will have election return coverage, 9:20 to 2:00 ET.
Nervous energy is good, Akhilleus. Here we are so nervous we are practically catatonic. Perhaps that is because we are in Ohio.
But so amused by the Ratner family attack on their new relative Josh Mandel! I love the idea that so much filthy outsider money is being poured down a rat hole that is Mandel's campaign. Even the Columbus Dispatch endorsed Sherrod Brown.
Re: Change for a vote; How great! For years dead people in Chicago voted for live people, now we got the living voting for the dead.
Voting in this small New England mostly white, mostly Republican town took exactly ten minutes from start to finish– pencil in ballots–-press down hard instructions say––and I did. Driving away I couldn't help thinking of all those others who are standing for hours in line––getting jerked around by those without scruples, without concern for their fellow man–––the same people who would tell you they live in the greatest country ever and maybe give you little flag pins to display. Shameful! Oh, for the mouth of Akhilleus, but the washing my mouth out with soap for saying "shit" lingers––it's that damn early childhood thing again––lots of licks, but always act like a lady. Sigh~~~~~
We watched "All the President's Men" this afternoon, and at the end
of the movie when the sentences were handed out, we replaced the
names with, like, McConnel, Rove, Norquist and on and on. Of course it will never happen again with this court system. The day was
spent practicing packing the van for a quick getaway to B.C. (Beautiful Country). Missouri?? Spent six weeks there at basic
training and I really don't think Jesus would like it, with all the
prostitutes, winter of mud and ugly landscape. He should stick
to Jerusalem. Time for another drink.
Marie,
I live in the Super Red state of Kentucky, where there is no early voting and polling hours are 6 am to 6 pm, and felons are disenfranchised for life.... which is how they ensure staying Red, since 20 percent of blacks are disenfranchised and most blacks have the kind of jobs that make it hard to vote within those limited voting hours.
However, in my own pretty much lily-white suburb, I witnessed what has to be a profile in courage at my polling center. An elderly black woman barely able to walk using her two canes, struggled through the door; she had two younger family members with her to help. But, I had to admire her grit, to vote for Obama even though she had to know her vote didn't really matter, not here in Kentucky. But she voted, dammit.
Kenneth Blackwell on MSNBC--my son's head just exploded. We did not listen to him, but when I turned back, Ed was saying something negative about Blackwell's own record. Why on earth would they let one of the architects of the 2004 Bush "win" in Ohio appear on their show?
Looks like Mandel is getting his just desserts in the Senate race here, at least.