Cutting Taxes is Code for the N-Word?

Lee Atwater, former advisor to Ronald Reagan and veteran of South Carolina politics was tape recorded in an interview in 1981, while he was working in the Reagan administration, by a Case Western Reserve professor. The recording has been in hiding until now, and has been outted by James Carter IV, President Carter’s grandson  - the same person who released Mitt Romney’s infamous 47% video.

 

What Atwater revealed is truly astounding. Atwater opined to the prof an analysis of how the Republican Party can appeal to racists in an era where overt racism is political suicide.

Take a listen to this YouTube recording, your hair will stand on end.

What Atwater essentially said was that you could appeal to racists in 1954 by shouting the N-word, but not in 1968 – nor 1981, nor now. Now, Atwater said, you have to be more abstract, more coded.

The code at the time, as revealed by Atwater was “forced busing” and “state’s rights.” Either of these codes appealed to racists. But now, or in 1981 (and apparently ongoing until this day), Atwater claims that a more abstract, but equally appealing code word that appeals to racists is “cutting taxes.”

Cutting taxes, he explains, is an economic issue but an abstraction that appeals to racists as it hurts African-Americans more than most of us. How that happens I will leave up to the racists.

So it’s quite a revelation, isn’t it? All of this talk of cutting taxes is just code words to appeal to racists to vote for the Republican Party.

As if they needed a code word.

 

Houston: the Next West Berlin

Have you seen all of the petitions at Whitehouse.gov requesting that this or that state be allowed to secede from the union rather than tolerate 4 more years of a Barack Obama presidency? There’s one from every southern state and a couple of redneck western states. Oh, and New York.

 

New York, the state that gave Obama 3,875,876 (and counting) votes, that’s 62.6% of the vote, and 29 electoral votes.

But oh well, who’s counting.

Not surprisingly, Texas is in and among the crowd with its own petition, one that Governor Rick Perry, lately of the secessionist movement of 2011 has disavowed. And therein lies the present story.

Apparently there is a group of Houstonians who have answered to the Texas petition and have their own petition at Whitehouse.gov beseeching the federal government to allow the City of Houston to secede from the seceders and remain a part of the United States of America.

The text is a delight to read.

“We petition the Obama Administration to: Peacefully grant the city of Houston Texas to withdraw from the state of Texas & remain part of the United States.”

“We, the city of Houston, think those asking for secession of the state of Texas are mentally deficient and do not want them representing us. We would like more education in our state to eradicate their disease. Thank you. Please help us with these people.”

Imagine the possible outcomes should all of these petitions be granted. Texas would become a sovereign state, or a state allied with other states run by delusional people. I even have a name for such an alliance of states: The Delusional States of America.

But Houston would be an island, a city within another country much like West Berlin during the bad old days of the Cold War.

Should another hurricane hit the area, Houston would have FEMA, but the surrounding areas would have to wait for private enterprise to restore power and infrastructure let alone get food and water to the impacted areas.

Should Houston become a haven for Texas escapees who tunnel under the Houston Wall to freedom (or education) they might have to endure an airlift program from the USA to bring in supplies.

And like the wall that these people want to build along the Mexican border, the United States will likewise have to build a wall between them and Delusionals. And not to keep their citizens in, but to keep the Delusionals out. Such a wall will not necessarily be forbidding in its structural soundness, but more in the way of a repellant.

I suggest one made of scientific textbooks and watchtowers blaring hip hop music day and night.

Dump Your Kroger Stock Now

Here’s a stock tip. If you own Kroger stock right about now you may have noticed that since its announcement this morning that it was setting up to limit the hours of some of its 350,000 employees nationwide, because of the increased costs it would have to pay for Obamacare, its stock went up half a point, but then around mid-afternoon, someone realized the true implications of this announcement, and the stock went back down to finish where it started today.

It seems that the good news about lower labor costs, and the business was being proactive in handling the costs of fair health insurance for its third of a million employees, met with the obvious bad news as investors realized that a lower labor force meant longer checkout lines, dirtier aisles, unattended to spills, shopping basket pileups in the parking lot, and meat and produce that was less fresh.

News that did not escape the notice of Houston area rival HEB markets, whose stock price started to rise in the mid afternoon.

Houstonians and suburbanites who have the choice to frequent both will have the opportunity to decide whether to continue shopping at Kroger, which apparently has little concern for its employees, little concern for their health and welfare, and are willing to play off this lack of concern for customer service and customer satisfaction. They apparently have little concern for their customers whom they hope won’t notice any difference in service.

So if you have stock in Kroger, sell it, and buy HEB who have yet to make such an unpatriotic announcement.

Better yet, do all of your shopping at HEB from now on.

The produce section is better and cleaner anyway.

Disclaimer: I am not a stock expert or a licensed stock broker. You take my financial advice at your own peril. The stuff about a better produce section at HEB is an absolute fact, though.

UPDATE: A reader called me on this posting, which I knew to be rightwing claim without basis. See the comments.

Karl Rove’s Tantrum

On November 6^th, at ten minutes after 10 PM Central Time, every network news organization in the universe declared Barack Obama the winner of the 2012 Presidential Election, having won Ohio’s electoral votes, putting his count over 270.

 

Campaign advisor Karl Rove, however, wasn’t so sure.  Mitt Romney, in Rove’s rabid mind, was a shoe-in to win the thing, and a declaration of victory for Obama was clearly premature. I am thinking that Rove must have had Al Gore’s premature concession in 2000 in mind when news organizations gave Florida to George W. Bush, when there were problems too numerous to mention in the Florida vote count.

Bush eventually carried Florida by 537 votes.

Not so in Ohio. In Ohio, the vote wasn’t even close.

Obama beat Romney in Ohio by over 107 thousand votes.

But Karl Rove was adamant, and this vexed Mitt Romney even more than he already must have been. Mitt thought he was going to win, too, and had his transitional government website live and online. At Rove’s insistence, Mitt Romney refused to concede to Obama for what seemed like an eternity to those of us who could see that he didn’t have a chance after Cuyahoga County votes started coming in.

And now Bart Simpson is weighing in.

 

 

On November 6^th, at ten minutes after 10 PM Central Time, every network news organization in the universe declared Barack Obama the winner of the 2012 Presidential Election, having won Ohio’s electoral votes, putting his count over 270.

 

Campaign advisor Karl Rove, however, wasn’t so sure.  Mitt Romney, in Rove’s rabid mind, was a shoe-in to win the thing, and a declaration of victory for Obama was clearly premature. I am thinking that Rove must have had Al Gore’s premature concession in 2000 in mind when news organizations gave Florida to George W. Bush, when there were problems too numerous to mention in the Florida vote count.

Bush eventually carried Florida by 537 votes.

Not so in Ohio. In Ohio, the vote wasn’t even close.

Obama beat Romney in Ohio by over 107 thousand votes.

But Karl Rove was adamant, and this vexed Mitt Romney even more than he already must have been. Mitt thought he was going to win, too, and had his transitional government website live and online. At Rove’s insistence, Mitt Romney refused to concede to Obama for what seemed like an eternity to those of us who could see that he didn’t have a chance after Cuyahoga County votes started coming in.

And now Bart Simpson is weighing in.

 

 

On November 6^th, at ten minutes after 10 PM Central Time, every network news organization in the universe declared Barack Obama the winner of the 2012 Presidential Election, having won Ohio’s electoral votes, putting his count over 270.

 

Campaign advisor Karl Rove, however, wasn’t so sure.  Mitt Romney, in Rove’s rabid mind, was a shoe-in to win the thing, and a declaration of victory for Obama was clearly premature. I am thinking that Rove must have had Al Gore’s premature concession in 2000 in mind when news organizations gave Florida to George W. Bush, when there were problems too numerous to mention in the Florida vote count.

Bush eventually carried Florida by 537 votes.

Not so in Ohio. In Ohio, the vote wasn’t even close.

Obama beat Romney in Ohio by over 107 thousand votes.

But Karl Rove was adamant, and this vexed Mitt Romney even more than he already must have been. Mitt thought he was going to win, too, and had his transitional government website live and online. At Rove’s insistence, Mitt Romney refused to concede to Obama for what seemed like an eternity to those of us who could see that he didn’t have a chance after Cuyahoga County votes started coming in.

And now Bart Simpson is weighing in.

 

 

On November 6^th, at ten minutes after 10 PM Central Time, every network news organization in the universe declared Barack Obama the winner of the 2012 Presidential Election, having won Ohio’s electoral votes, putting his count over 270.

 

Campaign advisor Karl Rove, however, wasn’t so sure.  Mitt Romney, in Rove’s rabid mind, was a shoe-in to win the thing, and a declaration of victory for Obama was clearly premature. I am thinking that Rove must have had Al Gore’s premature concession in 2000 in mind when news organizations gave Florida to George W. Bush, when there were problems too numerous to mention in the Florida vote count.

Bush eventually carried Florida by 537 votes.

Not so in Ohio. In Ohio, the vote wasn’t even close.

Obama beat Romney in Ohio by over 107 thousand votes.

But Karl Rove was adamant, and this vexed Mitt Romney even more than he already must have been. Mitt thought he was going to win, too, and had his transitional government website live and online. At Rove’s insistence, Mitt Romney refused to concede to Obama for what seemed like an eternity to those of us who could see that he didn’t have a chance after Cuyahoga County votes started coming in.

And now Bart Simpson is weighing in.

 

 

On November 6^th, at ten minutes after 10 PM Central Time, every network news organization in the universe declared Barack Obama the winner of the 2012 Presidential Election, having won Ohio’s electoral votes, putting his count over 270.

 

Campaign advisor Karl Rove, however, wasn’t so sure.  Mitt Romney, in Rove’s rabid mind, was a shoe-in to win the thing, and a declaration of victory for Obama was clearly premature. I am thinking that Rove must have had Al Gore’s premature concession in 2000 in mind when news organizations gave Florida to George W. Bush, when there were problems too numerous to mention in the Florida vote count.

Bush eventually carried Florida by 537 votes.

Not so in Ohio. In Ohio, the vote wasn’t even close.

Obama beat Romney in Ohio by over 107 thousand votes.

But Karl Rove was adamant, and this vexed Mitt Romney even more than he already must have been. Mitt thought he was going to win, too, and had his transitional government website live and online. At Rove’s insistence, Mitt Romney refused to concede to Obama for what seemed like an eternity to those of us who could see that he didn’t have a chance after Cuyahoga County votes started coming in.

And now Bart Simpson is weighing in.

 

 

On November 6^th, at ten minutes after 10 PM Central Time, every network news organization in the universe declared Barack Obama the winner of the 2012 Presidential Election, having won Ohio’s electoral votes, putting his count over 270.

 

Campaign advisor Karl Rove, however, wasn’t so sure.  Mitt Romney, in Rove’s rabid mind, was a shoe-in to win the thing, and a declaration of victory for Obama was clearly premature. I am thinking that Rove must have had Al Gore’s premature concession in 2000 in mind when news organizations gave Florida to George W. Bush, when there were problems too numerous to mention in the Florida vote count.

Bush eventually carried Florida by 537 votes.

Not so in Ohio. In Ohio, the vote wasn’t even close.

Obama beat Romney in Ohio by over 107 thousand votes.

But Karl Rove was adamant, and this vexed Mitt Romney even more than he already must have been. Mitt thought he was going to win, too, and had his transitional government website live and online. At Rove’s insistence, Mitt Romney refused to concede to Obama for what seemed like an eternity to those of us who could see that he didn’t have a chance after Cuyahoga County votes started coming in.

And now Bart Simpson is weighing in.

 

 

Wingnuts are Having a Chat

Now, I think I have written before on this site that I do not watch Fox News. I only see them when someone else sends me a YouTube clip link or I see clips on MSNBC. The reason I don’t watch Fox News is pretty simple. It makes my head explode.

 

And now I am sure of it. There is a Right Wing(nut) chatroom right here that is chock full of people who watch Fox News, and it seems that what I suspected all along is true, because it appears to me that every single chat participant in that chat room has an exploded head.

It is, in short, completely nutso crazy.

The talk of the evening is getting an online petition signed with 50,000 signatures asking for an official recount of last Tuesday’s election.

You know, the one that Obama won by three million votes of actual people and 336 electoral votes.

They want a recount and they are absolutely certain of voter fraud. Certain of it. All of this despite the Machiavellian efforts on the parts of several state governments to keep “the dusky people” from voting.

And here is the icing on the cake. They aren’t watching Fox News anymore. They apparently suspect that Fox is in cahoots with the mainstream media, who all ought to be charged with treason.

I could go on with all of this crazyspeak, but it is starting to make my head explode, and the last thing I want to have happen is end up agreeing with all of these people, let alone contributing to their hopelessly naïve and unintelligent diatribe.

And I need to say it here because I won’t say it there: jlformitt, the word is not seeseede, it is spelled secede, and it’s not Lusiana it’s Louisiana.

Just Say NO to Papa John’s Pizza

Papa John’s CEO John Schnatter has laid down the gauntlet now that Barack Obama has been re-elected, and the law of the land, Obamacare, is now set to take full effect in 2014. Schnatter says that he is going to cutdown on his employee’s hours, and the cost of a Papa John’s Pizza is set to rise by 11 to 14 cents per pie.

 

Schnatter says that this is what happens, you pass on additional costs to the consumer.

“That's what you do,” Schnatter sneered. “You pass on costs. Unfortunately, I don't think people know what they're going to pay for this.”

Unfortunately for Schnatter, I don’t think HE knows that people are not going to buy his pizzas if he decides to grandstand this and take the milk out of babies’ mouths.

I have actually eaten a Papa John’s pizza. You could literally squeeze a cup of oil out of the entire pie and that is amazing because it comes with extra lard to pour over it. Papa John’s pizza is probably the worst thing for your health other than a Triple Double with bacon and cheese.

People on Obamacare who eat John Schnatter’s pizzas are a burden on others in the exchanges. So if you love Papa John’s pizza then please don’t sign up on the Obamacare Healthcare Exchanges. It would just make it more expensive for the rest of us.

And the rest of us need to boycott Papa John’s Pizza. Let’s pass on the costs of John Schnatter’s hatespeak to John Schnatter.

Truth in Name-Calling

I am torn by a recent story that I read on HuffingtonPost about a young California woman who now finds herself a person of interest by the US Secret Service because of a status that she posted on Zuckerberg’s website. It seems that she used the N-word and applied it in context for a wish that the President be assassinated in his next term.

 

Quoting this often-reposted status:

“Another 4 years of this [N-word]. Maybe he will get assassinated this term.”

Torn.

I am torn because the young lady obviously doesn’t know that when you post things on the internet, people read them, react to them, and yes, act on them.

And other people investigate you.

I am torn between that and the fact that the woman is being very up front in her racism where others have used code-words to convey the very same racist thoughts: Kenyan, Muslim, Food Stamp President, witch doctor, tar baby, take my country back, Barack Hussein Obama, Tiger Woods, spear chucker…the list goes on and on.

All of these other people get off scott-free hiding behind code words that mean nothing more than what the young woman wrote. They are just as racist, just as divisive, just as cruel.

White people can be very cruel.

OK, she went over the top then and wished for the president’s speedy demise. I’ll give points to that. But in the end, all of these racist references, coded or in-your-face, need to stop. Give it up. America spoke again, and again went for the Democrat and an agenda of freedom, peace, choice, and fair treatment.

Republican racists: STFU.

Looney Republicans Nearly Elect a Felon-to-Be

Here in the craziness that is the Republican Party of Fort Bend County Texas, we have an electorate that very nearly elected a man who will soon be up on charges of felony voter fraud.

 

Multiple counts of felony voter fraud.

Multiple if only the statute of limitations on voter fraud went beyond 2 years, that is.

Republican voters in Precinct 1 of Fort Bend County very nearly elected Bruce Fleming, a crony of recently elected Rick Miller, who has been shown to have voted twice in the same election in both Texas and Pennsylvania, and on one occasion in Texas, voted in both the Republican and Democratic Primaries.

That’s a 3^rd degree felony. The first thing the county would have had to do was to hold a special election to replace Fleming, had he been elected, as he goes before the judge to answer for his crimes.

But it appears that Republicans also have low-information voters out there. They had a perfect opportunity to rally around and re-elect a competent public servant in Richard Morrison for a second term. But these people are so virulently anti-Democratic that they will even vote for a potential convicted felon instead. Morrison barely edged out Fleming by something like 600 votes, and that’s a smaller margin that got him elected in 2008, smaller by 200 votes.

I am nearly speechless. I can’t come up with words to express my outrage over the behavior of Republicans in my county. OK, I can come up with one word.

Stupid.

The State of Voting Blue in Texas

Now I’m no Nate Silver, Nate Silver plays in another ballpark and on a different plane of existence it would seem, but still I like to look at how things are going in Texas vis-à-vis the state of Democratic Party voting in Texas. Straight ticket voting for the most part.

 

I use high-disinterest statewide races to do my math. High-disinterest (aka low interest) races reflect straight ticket voting trends like nothing else. This year it’s hard because there is only one race that attracted a Democratic challenger in a Supreme Court race.

This year, Nathan Hecht outpolled Michelle Petty, the Democrat on the ballot, by 4,116,066 to 3,208,434 votes, or just a little over 900,000 votes, in Supreme Court Justice Place 6.

In 2008, Texas Supreme Court Justice in Place 8, Phil Johnson, garnered 4,018,396 to Linda Yanez’ 3,428,179 votes.

A little less than a 600,000  vote difference.

And I know that’s just two races and I am ignoring Sam Houston’s race, but with a name like Sam Houston you have to assume what I have come to call the “Schwarzenegger Effect.”

But things aren’t looking any too good for future prospects for a Democratic Texas governor or a US Senator, and I have a theory why this is happening: the Republican Party is becoming a truly regional party. It is becoming a party of the Solid South (except for Florida). Statewide offices occupied by Democrats are going to be as rare as hen’s teeth for a few more years to come until we can get some truly game-changing changes in our demographics.

So for a while at least, I am going to have to be satisfied with watching Democratic gains from the sidelines. Watch as other states send “binders full of women” to the US Senate, and all of the other good things that happened in everywhere but Texas last Tuesday.  

All Ashore That’s Going Ashore

In high school, many decades ago, I had an American Government teacher who was very liberal. I think she was a socialist. After Richard Nixon was elected my teacher decided that the America was finally going down the tubes and arranged to emigrate to New Zealand.

I went to the Port of Los Angeles one summer day to see her and her family off. She was going via steamer. It was the one and only time in my life that I paid attention to the call “All ashore that’s going ashore” and then threw streamers across to my teacher’s family as a last farewell.

History repeats itself, it seems, because we are now hearing that tea baggers are making noise that they need to leave the country now that Barack Obama has won another term in office.

Four more years of Barack Obama is too much for them to take so they are now talking of leaving.

So I just wanted to provide a public service to those who are itching to leave this Obamanation for greener pastures and a taxless society.

Preferably where they speak English, because, you know… they have that thing about the English language.

Be prepared to stand in line though. Australia and New Zealand don’t take just anyone. They want people with skills that don’t include whining.

Go here to start the emigration process to the Land of Oz.

Want to emigrate to New Zealand? Sheep will outnumber you, and I don’t mean the two-legged kind that you are most familiar with.

But beware. New Zealand and Australia might just have some of the things that you are running away from in the Obamanation.

 

Funny, But the Truth

OK I am doing tonight what all politics geeks are doing. We are all glued to our television devices watching the election returns. I am also logging on to the county elections website to check in every once in awhile about the local races.

 

This cartoon is by far the best summary cartoon of the election to-date. It is a good swan song for this election no matter who wins or who loses (Nate Silver or no Nate Silver, it ain't over until the woman with excessive adipose tissue sings.)

 

Here you go. Now go watch the President get re-elected.

True the Vote: Actions vs. Words

Just a little while ago HuffingtonPost reported on what “True the Vote,” the Teabaggers’ conspiracy to obstruct the democratic process at polling places from coast to coast, is actually trying to accomplish, and that is nothing more than what everyone has always suspected from the beginning: to put the skids on minority voters’ ability to vote.

 

Their public statements have always been that they are just making sure that the votes are fair and no polling place shenanigans are taking place. But now we have actions to match up against their words,  because as in the old saying, actions DO speak louder than words.

And what HuffingtonPost is reporting is that “True the Vote” is applying to post poll watchers at “primarily minority voting precincts on Election Day.”

"‘We've been concerned from the beginning that the efforts of True the Vote and aligned groups were going to be targeted largely in communities of color,’ said Eric Marshall, manager of legal mobilization for the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. ‘We've seen in the past where these kinds of tactics can lead to intimidation and harassment of voters.’"

“A potentially even greater concern now is that the groups will use the voter challenge process ‘for the express purpose of creating lines and confusion,’ Marshall said”.

“Prohibitively long lines, particularly where Democrats are in the majority, are a net plus for Republicans; extraordinarily long lines for early voting in South Florida resulted from Republican Gov. Rick Scott's rollback of early voting days there”.

Closer to home, in Houston, a “True the Vote” poll watcher phoned in a complaint that individuals wearing clearly marked T-shirts indicating that they were volunteers for the NAACP were manipulating people standing in line at early vote locations.

Reported True the Vote poll watcher Eve Rockford:

“I started seeing them pulling people from different areas, and when I saw them moving people right through those e-slate machines to that front desk, I was like ‘there is something seriously wrong with this.’”

From KHOU:

Who was pulling voters? Rockford says it was three people wearing bright blue logo shirts of the NAACP, who she says “took over” the polling place.

And what were the scurrilous NAACP volunteers doing in their heinous actions? Identifying disabled people standing in line and moving them to the front. Disabled voters, you know, can’t stand around in line like those of us with our health. A disabled voter, faced with a long line, might just give up and go back to their rooms at the rest home.

So what this tea bagger wanted to do was to keep disabled people from voting. Disabled people might be a little defensive of their health care. Might be wary of a Republican scheme to privatize that which they have paid into all of their lives.

The Tea Party, in short, has devolved into a subspecies of humans that discriminate against minorities, the aged and the crippled. The next thing you know they’ll start decrying the federal bailout of New York in the wake of Superstorm Sandy.

Oh, wait, yeah, they’re already doing that, too.

The Early Vote in Texas is Done

Early Voting is a fait accompli in Texas. No more voting here until Election Day.

 

No “Souls to the Polls” occurs in Texas on the Sunday before Election Day. This is, after all, Texas, and Texas, a former Confederate State, knows how to keep its Black voters from voting after attending church services – a meaningful act that just does not happen here.

So the polls are closed and the totals are posted.

This year, a total of 153,090 voters cast their early votes, and from the voter registration number available to me from the July Primary, that represents approximately 47.8% of the total vote in Fort Bend County.

And including those who voted by absentee ballot, 20,535, the total as of today is 173,625 or just over 54% of the total vote.

That’s phenomenal.

In 2008 the total voter turnout was 68.6% of all registered voters. This year’s vote seems to be on track to best that mark.

What it all means, I guess, is for us to find out late Tuesday night.

Mitt the “Chosen One” and His White Horse

The craziness just gets crazier as we pass into the weekend before the Presidential Election that seems to be a near sure thing to re-elect President Obama. I’ve just spent the past hour in fantasy land poring over one website that requests that all True Christians to “write in” the name “Jesus” in the ballot position for President of the United States.

 

No mention of who is to be the Vice President, but then there are three of Him, right?

All of this craziness because Mitt Romney is a member of a true American cult – the Mormons.

And from there I read about the Mormon “White Horse Doctrine,” something I knew about, but what I didn’t know was that Romney’s peers in college called him “The Chosen One.” That is, the one who would save the United States Constitution as it hung by a thread as thin as silk, as prophesied by Joseph Smith, the founder of the Church of Latter Day Saints.

Romney, it seems, as seen by some of his college brethren, is to save the country, and most importantly, our constitution which is endangered as in no other time in our history.

Which, by the way, is not too far off the mark. Voter ID laws in many states, and the anti-voter turnout efforts now ongoing in Florida and Ohio are attacking our number one constitutional right, the right to vote in free and fair elections. Really, cutting back on the number of early voting days is nothing more than an effort to deny the vote to Democrats, who vote early more than Republicans do.

So yes, our constitution is under attack by a scurrilous group of anti-American usurpers who thirst only for power. And Mitt Romney, “The Chosen One” the White Horse of Mormon theocracy, is the leader of the party committing this crime on our democratic process.

You like irony? If, so enjoy this story which drips of it.

Why Would ANYone Vote FOR Mitt Romney?

The notion has occurred to me from time to time that Republicans are afflicted with the wrong man running for president this year. Even Ann Coulter, who I hate, commented that if Chris Christie or Jeb Bush are not the party nominees that Republicans will lose in November.
 

Republicans are having a hard time rallying around their standard bearer, Mitt Romney, because he is a flawed candidate with no core beliefs other than the fact that he believes that he wants to be president.

This came home to me big time this morning as I read my friend Susan’s status on Zuckerman’s website, that she was working validating the absentee voter ballots in my county, but overheard her Republican counterpart say quite loudly on her phone that she was there “to see that Obama [was] not re-elected.”

Get that? It wasn’t “I’m here to make sure that Mitt Romney is elected,” is it? No one is saying that.

Republicans are not voting this year FOR a candidate. In truth they are voting against the incumbent and will vote for a telephone pole for president if it means that Barack Obama leaves the White House next January. Because, in reality, there is little difference between a telephone pole and Mitt Romney in the area of likeability or in the area of self-identification with his core beliefs.

And then someone at the Obama campaign shared a photo montage on Zuckerman’s website that really and truly drives it home. Re-shared here (too).



538 Gonna Break 80

I usually tune in to Nate Silver’s 538.com blog on the New York Times to see how my president is doing in the polls. Nate Silver picked Barack Obama’s victory well within the margin for error in 2008 and I assmume he is still on his game this year.

I took heart with the fact that he had my president as a 83% certainty of winning the present election, but since his magnificent flop in his first debate with Romney, Obama’s chances went south faster than a Canadian Goose in January.

Soon we saw Barack Obama’s chances of retaking the White House fall below 80, then 70, then flirting with sub-60%. And with that came my thoughts of winning the Electoral College, but losing the popular vote.

Here's the heartening graphic from Nate Silver:

Well I still don’t think we are out of the woods yet as far as the popular vote, but today I took another look at Nate Silver’s blog, and noted that he has now rated the possibility of an Obama win back at 79% with a possible 300 electoral votes.

 

That is, verged on breaking 80 percent again.

 

As I said, we are not out of the woods yet, and have yet to see what happens in reaction to Governor Chris Christie’s apparent bus-thrusting of Romney’s chances. Especially given what we see in this interesting little statistic, that Mitt Romney has a fairly good chance of winning the popular vote as seen on this graphic, also from 538:

So I am uncharacteristically optimistic. I think the country just might pull out of the near-crisis of having a weather vane take the highest office in the land.

And who knows, maybe I have an 80 percent chance of getting enrolled in one of the plans offered by Obamacare in 2014. At that point, freedome will truly ring for yours truly:

UPDATE: Today (November 2nd) it broke 80. Today's 538.com projection is that President Obama has an 80.9% chance of getting 303 electoral votes.