(Arlo & Janis via GoComics.com)
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… or Blessed Samhain. Or, if you’re in that kind of mood, happy Wednesday.
Some positive news: Per the Washington Post, “Storm doesn’t appear to dampen early voting in Ohio“:
… Only one county — Erie County, on the shores of Lake Erie — reported a power outage at its early-voting site Tuesday morning. An election official said the start of voting for the day was delayed from 8 to 10:20 a.m. Voters have been mailing in absentee ballots and voting in person since Oct. 2.
According to the Ohio secretary of state, more than 1.2 million Ohioans had voted, either by mail or in person, as of Friday. That figure represented more than 20 percent of the total votes cast in the 2008 race…
Most public polling has indicated that early voters in Ohio favor Obama by a wide margin, and Democrats have been pushing the practice especially aggressively, so any weather-related slowdown probably would have concerned Democrats.
Instead, several key Ohio counties reported especially brisk business at their early-voting centers Monday as the storm bore down. Franklin County, home to heavily Democratic Columbus, had its busiest day Monday since voting began, as did the swing county of Hamilton, home to Cincinnati…
Via commentor Lamh35, Bretin Mock at Colorlines on early voting in Florida:
Despite setbacks such as Gov. Rick Scott’s HB 1355, which undercut voter registration drives, reinstated harsh felony voting restrictions and his notorious purge program, voters turned out in record numbers this past weekend: over a half-million people cast early votes statewide by Monday morning. In Hillsborough County, 36,702 early votes Saturday and Sunday—roughly 2,500 of those cast at the C. Blythe Andrews site in Tampa’s historically black College Hill neighborhood. As of last night, over 55,000 voted early.
These numbers far outweighed the historic 2008 election here, when less than 17,000 turned out for the first weekend of early voting, 1,248 at Andrews (then called College Hill Library). Back then, those were considered remarkable numbers. This year, they’ve almost doubled that, despite the odds against them….
There were a few hiccups Sunday, with strange poll watchers—some authorized, some not—showing up at the Souls’ Polls site trying to cause problems. One watcher tried to challenge a voter over her acceptance of fried fish. Stories vary on what happened, but according to Lewis, a poll watcher—a white woman in a sea of black voters—reported to poll judges that a woman headed to the voting line was bribed with a fish sandwich to vote for Obama.
Another poll watcher, described by Lewis as being a Republican Party-appointed watcher, asked poll judges if they “could stop or slow down” the number of voters entering the library because it was getting crowded. Then one poll watcher tried to interrogate an 11-year-old girl about what all the fish serving and gospel music playing was about. In every case, the watcher was confronted by lawyers from the Election Protection team who were at the site in full force, dozens of lawyers, authorized poll watchers and volunteers from the NAACP, SEIU, Obama for America campaign and the Hillsborough County Democratic Black Caucus. The voters were barely disrupted…
I don’t see why those fine Christian Republicans are so prejudiced… against fish sandwiches. IIRC, when their most important Deity held his biggest, most significant political rally, fish sandwiches — well, loaves and fishes — were His choice to feed the crowd!
Finally, once again, Professor Krugman reminds us not to get distracted by shiny objects:
… A lot of political journalism, and even reporting on policy issues, is dominated by the search for the “secret sauce”, as Martin puts it: the insider who knows What’s Really Going On. Background interviews with top officials are regarded as gold, and the desire to get those interviews often induces reporters to spin on demand.
But such inside scoops are rarely — I won’t say never, but rarely — worth a thing. My experience has been that careful analysis of publicly available information almost always trumps the insider approach.
This is sort of obviously true in election season: in a vast, diverse country, no amount of talking with big shots (who are pushing an agenda) — or for that matter hanging out at campaign events and trying to assess the mood — is a substitute for polls that collectively sample tens of thousands of voters…
***********
What’s on the agenda for the morning?
Raven
Just hangin with the pups waiting for walk time!
PreservedKillick
Where do we go to collect our fried fish sandwiches?
Raven
Live remote with reporter on MSBNC. She’s looking at a house where a fire is beginning on a house and she wonders if “she should call somebody”!!!!!!
Schlemizel
@Raven:
So they really are THAT stupid.
Given that TV news sucks IQ points out of their viewers and it is painfully obvious that those IQ points are not going into the people who produce, read or report said news there must be an enormous reserve of intelligence floating around the universe somewhere. If only we could find it we might save the world.
Phylllis
In other news, SC Rep. Kevin Bryant (R-Moran), does not miss an opportunity to show off that he’s an idiot regarding the security breach of taxpayer info:
http://www.thestate.com/2012/10/31/2501976/state-credentials-used-to-access.html
Raven
@Schlemizel: Yea, I mean they have all these people at these locations and I’m sure the damage is incredible but their breathlessness over and over wears on one.
Raven
I always remember that remote shot of the reported in a from a flooded street in a canoe, it looked like a river, when two guys walked by in about three inches of water!
PreservedKillick
@Raven:
That is awesome.
arguingwithsignposts
Why, mah stahs, what ah these quaint customs you people have?
I’m only 8 comments in and the stupidimeter has pegged for the day. @Raven: are they out in their hip waders yet? @Phylllis: head/desk. I guess I need to check and see if my family is in need of those services, since we lived in the Palmetto State part of the period in question. Some real prize-winners there.
Frankensteinbeck
I wish to hear these words more.
Raven
Did you all see Bloomberg’s interpreter? She was incredible!
amk
@Raven: good gawd.
Baud
@Raven:
Apparently, she’s the next new Internet star…
PreservedKillick
More of this, please. Assholes trying to suppress the vote really piss me off.
Geoduck
Once again, I’m so glad that my state has gone to all-mailin voting. Of course, being a suburban white person in a blue state, there was never any of this crap even when we went to polling stations to vote.
Raven
@Baud: I happened to be watching it live and I was intrigued.
sharl
@Raven: Hahaha, excellent! Hope she kept her shoes dry.
Poopyman
I thought she called herself IMH35 (as in “I am age 35”). If only FYWP used Times font there’d be no doubt.
And I know JC’s early post was primarily on Rick Fucking Sanchez, but let’s hear it for the USA Today editor who let this lead sentence through:
… leaving us to wonder how the firefighters managed to injure three people.
Narcissus
Now I could really go for a fish filet
But they’re on the breakfast menu by now
kay
@PreservedKillick:
They’re not allowed to approach voters inside a polling place, which is why they went after the 11 year old girl.
Florida may need to tighten up the laws for the dumbass bullies. Looks like they found a loophole.
Elizabelle
Boo. Watching still version of “London After Midnight” on TCM.
kay
If they ask pollworkers to “stop or slow down” the number of voters in a polling place, they’re trying to get people on line to give up and go home.
They did that in Ohio in 2004. It didn’t work, I think it actually back-fired with college students, because “staying on line” became a sort of defiant act.
JPL
The MSNBC live stream is broken. Who needs Morning Joe anyway?
Citizen_X
Whoa, Mr. Fancy-Pants Professor, that sounds suspiciously like the scientific method there.
Phylllis
@arguingwithsignposts: A mess, it is. And Nikki’s reached the point where opening her mouth is done as an exercise to change feet.
TheMightyTrowel
ot i just got back from seeing Argo. all of you should go too. Ben Affleck has finally redeemed himself for Gigli.
Todd
@Phylllis:
The comments in SC papers are hysterical. Some of it is apparently Obamas fault for being friendly with Putin, the rest is the fault of Democratic SC administrations in the 80s.
Schlemizel
@JPL:
YAY! GOOD NEWS THIS MORNING!
Schlemizel
@Raven:
Saw a new version of this yesterday (reddit maybe?). News crew was in a rubber raft fighting to keep it stable & behind them a guy is walking through ankle deep water. Perception is reality on TV.
Now leave the Brondo & get out. I’m watch OW MY Balls & ‘batin
Punchy
I thought “fish sandwich” was a maneuver they did in pr0n movies….
kay
Sad faces in “Boston” today.
CBS/NYT poll has Obama up 5 in OH.
Obama didn’t win Ohio by 5 in 2008, and he won’t exceed 2008 this time, but I love that they’re still down after the desperate Jeep.lie.
jeffreyw
Mmm… fish sammich
Raven
@jeffreyw: Did you hear that the Southern Dragon died yesterday?
jeffreyw
@Raven: I saw you mention it. I have no particular memories of him though the name rings a bell.
Ash Can
Damn. Now I’m jonesin’ for a Broker’s Inn fish sandwich.
On tap for today? Replacing the pumpkins on the front porch that the squirrels destroyed and otherwIse gettIng ready for trIck-or-treaters, makIng sure Bottle Rocket’s costume is ready for tonight, and getting his science project materials lined up. I’d better get the coffee going rIght now.
Schlemizel
you know its foolish to think the GOP can’t go any lower, they scraped through the bottom of the barrel 20 years ago and are half way to hell as they just keep digging. But here is a new low:
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/10/the-strange-anti-obama-texts-blowing-up-dc-area-cell-phones/264329/#
J.D. Rhoades
I have a feeling “voters bribed with fish sandwiches” is going to become a new Rethuglican talking point.
Another Halocene Human
@Raven: That was a good laugh. GOod start to my morning. :)
Another Halocene Human
@J.D. Rhoades: Yup, African Americans are so simple-minded they decide who to vote for because the church they are a member of provided them with a fish sandwich that their tithes paid for. Okay, so I’m pretty sure the 8 year old is a moocher and a looter in all this since she doesn’t have an income to pay tithes, but I haven’t yet heard that she voted, also, too.
Raven
@jeffreyw: He was a commenter at the Lake way back when and became a front pager after I left. Good guy, brown water navy in the delta.
Maude
@Ash Can:
Tarter sauce? Could eat one right now.
That reporter has to be a Romney voter.
65% of NJ has no power.
Maude
@Raven:
If that reporter is on fire, should we call someone?
Some street lights still out and it was darker than the inside of my heart at 7 a.m.
Schlemizel
@J.D. Rhoades:
You know, that would have to be either a really hungry voter or one hell of a fish sandwich if it could be used to bribe someone to change their vote!
“La-te-da, here I am at the voting booth ready to vote for rMoeny/rAyn . . . pen in hand, all set . . . OH LOOK A FISH SANDWICH OMG! MUST HAVE, WILL DO ANYTHING FOR THAT FISH SANDWICH”
Not sure if the wingnuts are that stupid or if they think the American voter is that stupid (but given 2 W terms the latter is not out of the question)
danielx
On the agenda for today? Doing some interior work for my sister-in-law interior painting and such) instead of what I used to do, which was feasibility analysis and customer satisfaction analysis for senior housing communities. Hasn’t been all that much call for that sort of work since the housing crash, for reasons I’m at a complete loss to explain. I’m in a position to be able to do this since Mrs. X has a job that provides essential benefits like decent insurance. The downsides are that I make a lot less money and have no benefits, the upsides are that I work as much as I want, enjoy what I do and don’t have to deal with corporate dogshit. Also, too, it’s a continual learning process.
Oddly enough, one of the things I’ve learned is that construction quality in many high end custom homes is no better than it generally is in your basic suburban tract homes. Basic structural integrity is usually okay, it’s the little stuff that suffers – missing cabinet screws, failure to prime woodwork, ill-fitting doors, inadequate attention to drainage issues, etc etc. (Item: a finished basement that floods more than once is a problem. Call a specialist, and for god’s sake buy a high end sump pump(s) with a battery backup and alarm.)
Another fact is general lack of basic skills and knowledge on the part of well-to-do homeowners…like how to hang a picture, why you shouldn’t put plants on wooden shelves without protecting the shelves in some fashion, how to fix a sticking door. Since that lack of skills translates to income for me, I have no problem with it – spending a hundred bucks for these folks is like spending a dime for me and my annual income is more like the price tag on something they might consider buying. But it always comes as a surprise to me that someone never learned, somewhere along the line, to use a hammer or that they would rather pay someone twenty dollars to do something rather than spend five minutes of their own time.
Another oddity is seeing the demographics of the various construction trades. In this neck of the woods, framing, roofing, general labor, etc are almost universally performed by Hispanics. Sidebar: the shitheads in the Georgia legislature can say what they like, but Hispanics generally work their asses off.* Trades like bricklaying, paving and concrete work; generally Hispanics and blacks with an Anglo supervisor. Skilled trades like electricity and plumbing are generally Anglo, while tile work and finish carpentry may be performed by either Anglos or Hispanics. All this applies to new construction; interior remodeling is another area altogether – lots more Anglos, probably because there’s a lot more face-to-face interaction with customers and clear communication is absolutely essential. All this is, of course, in my area and my experience, could be and is different in other areas of the country – central Indiana is not, to put it mildly, exactly bulging at the seams with well-to-do Hispanics.
*I knew the labor market was changing twenty odd years ago when I saw, one day, a construction super drop off one wiry little Hispanic dude with a wheelbarrow and a shovel at the house under construction next door to mine. He was moving a single axle dump truck load of pea gravel, and moved it all between 9 am and 3 pm. It would have wasted me in an hour and I was in a lot better shape then.
Phylllis
@Todd: One of my favorites:
I suppose it was just coincidence that it was SC that was hacked, not any other state. You’re doing a helluva job, Brownie
Raven
@danielx: My buddy has a nursery and landscaping business here in the Athens area. He couldn’t make it without the hard work of the Mexicans he employes. But, as you know, it’s not just labor. They are putting a new addition on a church we walk by every day and the skilled dudes are Mexican as well.
eta My friend says that his guy can go down in a hole and dig for 8 hours with tow 15 minute breaks and a 30 minute lunch. It reminds me of a day way back when. A couple of us were in a “position” next to a field in Korea. A little old lady was bent over digging furrows with a little shovel. We decided we’d help her and dig with our entrentching tools. That didn’t last long!
Patricia Kayden
I live in a blue state so don’t have to worry about crazy White people trying to hassle me when I vote.
Hope that the Rethug intimidation tactics spur more Black voters to the polls and that President Obama wins in a landslide.
And yeah. We’re supposed to believe that Black folks were going to vote for The Bot but were persuaded to vote for President Obama because they got some food. RIGHT! Dream on, racists.
Frankensteinbeck
@Schlemizel:
They think African-Americans are that stupid, and the stereotype specifically is that they have no higher interests than cheap, greasy food. I grew up in the South around these stereotypes. I thought that no one was idiot enough to believe them. Needless to say, I was wrong.
EDIT – @Patricia Kayden:
Again, not quite. The stereotype there is that African-Americans can’t possibly be smart enough to care about politics, so they only turn up at the polls at all for the free food – at which point they’ll obviously vote for whoever’s giving them more free stuff.
Okay, admitting I even know how these stereotypes work is depressing me and I’m going back to bed. Yuck. I seriously, seriously thought these were jokes and the joke was ‘Man, we used to believe some crazy shit back in the old racist days.’
indycat
In Indiana you can’t buy alcohol on election day, because we Hoosiers will sell our vote for a beer – goes great with a fish sandwich.
Maude
@danielx:
The owners of my apt bldg have a lot of money. THey never check the building, ever. They refurbed four of the five apts on the cheap. The general contractor did plumbing and wiring. He put the hinges of new kitchen cabinets on the wrong side.
He worked on the third floor bathroom and the bathroom below that had toilet water from upstairs back up into it.
It is obvious that this contractor doesn’t know what he is doing. They think he does.
A lot of people can’t do anything and they don’t know anything.
Oh, the contractors has said a number of times that he doesn’t know what all those pipes under the apt are for and where they go. Need I say more?
Schlemizel
@Frankensteinbeck: I wish I could say I am surprised
NotMax
So the first debate for the 2016 G.O.P. primaries is what, next Thursday?
danielx
@Maude:
Sadly, I can’t say that I’m surprised. One of my nephews is a smart kid, hardworking, but not interested in college. I keep telling him that there’s nothing wrong with being a decent godfearing plumber – a lot of detail, but the basics are simple: crap flows downhill, always wash your hands after work, and anything over forty hours is time and a half. And he’ll always have work.
The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik
Greetig from the void folks. Still waiting on power to return to our corner of Jersey City, but at least mobile service isn’t so swamped like yesterday.
jeffreyw
@danielx: And turds are tapered so your ass won’t slam shut.
sparrow
@Schlemizel: I hate to try to get inside their minds, but my guess is that this racist “poll watcher” doesn’t consider that black people should be anything other than servile children. Thus the “wrong” would be cajoling otherwise non-voting blacks (THOSE PEOPLE) into voting for Obama with food. Like a pied piper scenario. Implicit is the assumption that stupid black people wouldn’t be voting if you weren’t off given’ em sammiches. I mean HOW WOULD THEY KNOW to vote for Obama if someone didn’t tell them? Ugh, I hate these people.
sparrow
@Frankensteinbeck: Noting that I basically just repeated what you said. This.
Gremcat
And yet I am sure that this woman wouldn’t see anything wrong with Republican jackasses threatening people with their jobs if they don’t vote for Romney.
Mnemosyne
Puttin’ on my Batgirl shirt and getting ready to head off to work. I was thinking about being a Sugar Rush racer with the other girls, but all of the good costumes were taken by the time I started considering it (plus I’d already bought the Batgirl shirt), so now I’m an arcade patron. Who is also Batgirl.
CSA (Corporate Service Announcement): Wreck-It Ralph opens this Friday! It’s a really fun movie (and I’m not just saying that because the giant rodent signs my paycheck) so go see it and contribute towards me keeping my job with the Giant Evil Corporation That Devours All!
ruemara
@Mnemosyne: Only if I can use you to submit a script.
To the subject, yes, they really do believe the blacks are SOOoooo stupid and have the mentality of a little child. They most certainly do. We are stupid, immature, ignorant, dirty, shiny object chasing, sexual monsters. America is a very depressing place somedays. I’m glad they got swamped by our side, so let’s keep it up. Can’t wait for the usual suspects to show up to decry the statement that this is racism. Our wonderful blog sociopath community.
evinfuilt
I ‘m not touching those Fish Sticks unless they’ve got custard!
Tone In DC
@Another Halocene Human:
LULz. That was great.
Thoughtcrime
You could almost bribe me to vote for Romney with this “fish” sandwich from Sam’s Chowder House in Half Moon bay:
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-iSjtbtv5jL8/T5S0yXw4rbI/AAAAAAAAEhs/C2t1cczNhW4/IMG_1768.JPG
johnny aquatard
Republicans are attempting to do our voting process what they have done with climate science: create their own alternatives to support their ideologically motivated narratives.
If facts and observations conflict with their ideology, they simply fund organizations and ‘experts’ to create their own.
They have now organized ‘poll watchers’ who will report they found voter fraud, bribes and irregularities. There will be ‘findings’ and ‘independent task forces’ and ‘non-partisan commissions’ and ‘reports’ to give gravitas to the propaganda, and it will be injected into the MSM via the usual suspects of Fox and Rush and referred to in Congress from the usual R wankers.
And so a woman eating a fish sandwich at the polls thus becomes empirical PROOF of voter fraud. (And proof Those People only vote Dem because of the handouts. Two wingnut memes PROVED TRUE with Republican Empirical Science(tm).)
If Obama wins, this bullshit will be used to de-legitimatize the election. They couldn’t delegitimatize his election the first time around — they tried with his constitutional qualification to be president, a la all the birferism. But they couldn’t touch the legitimacy of the election itself. Now they have created their own reality of that as well.