__
__
Also, some wise words from the underrated Gail Collins and her “Last Election List“:
… 4) Stop obsessively checking the polls.
This has been going on way too long. Stop torturing yourself! Whatever Colorado is going to do, it’ll do it on Tuesday. Clean the basement. Read a novel. Consider purchasing a new pet. If it’s an Irish setter, you can name it Seamus.
5) Forget about the fact that Mitt Romney once drove to Canada with the family dog strapped to the roof of the car.
If he loses, nobody will care. If he wins, we’ll have so many other things to worry about…
8) Just go ahead and vote.
If we lived in a democracy full of heroic candidates in evenly matched battles, there’d be no challenge to being an energized voter. Everybody would do it! As it is, one of our greatest civic virtues is the willingness to soldier on and participate in elections even when the contests are foregone conclusions or vaguely ridiculous.
Every day on my way to work for the last few months I’ve walked past the Victory for Obama Campaign Center on Broadway and 103rd Street in Manhattan. This is a neighborhood in which every single race on the ballot is hopelessly lopsided. Actually, most of them are uncontested. The state has already been painted blue. The congressman who has been in office for 20 years is being challenged by a person with no campaign funds and whose slogan is “Michael is familiar with politics … but he is not political.”
Yet the place has been full of enthusiastic people selling buttons, handing out literature and staffing the phones. This is what makes America great. True, the people on the phones were calling voters in Ohio. But still. You do what you can.
CA Doc
Good morning! Catching a flight home to CA, and with time zone confusion and Standard time change confusion, I woke up in a panic about an hour earlier than necessary. I hope the Memphis airport has IV coffee.
Nicole
Good morning, also. I was up to drop my stepmom off at the airport. I planned to go back to sleep before catching my early train, but on my way back in through my parents’ garage, I noticed my dad had left the space heater on and the cord was running through a puddle of water.
Now I’m not going to sleep for the next five weeks, worried he’ll burn their house down while she’s gone.
Hal
Nothing better than working a midnight shift when the clocks turn back at 2:00am. I should be leaving in 13 minutes instead of an hour and 13.
Schlemizel
@Hal:
Gack! Its been years since I had to work the overnight. Luckily for us we had a good union and got time and a half for that extra hour. Thats why those were the good old days!
I woke at my usual time which, thanks to the marvels of modern technology is a freakin hour earlier than it has been for the last 6 months. Not got a single plan for today, got home after a 2.5 hour drive back from Duluth (Gopher sweep!) around midnight so hoped to sleep in late.
I imagine I will have plans for the day as soon as the missus gets up – hopefully she will sleep late!
mai naem
Nate Silver’s got Mittman at 14.9 percent. I was kind of hoping to see him at the lowest he ever had him at which is 12.9 percent. I hope the storm doesn’t cause Obama to have a popular vote loss with an electoral vote victory.
Media Matters was doing a radio piece on what Obama’s had to deal with since the beginning of his presidency. I didn’t listen to the whole thing but they did a good bunch on the healthcare stuff and the teabagger stuff with the FOX support. I had forgotten that crap.
TheMightyTrowel
got caught in the afternoon rain storm today in long an. had to wade through city streets full of traffic and shin high water. so much fun!
Betty Cracker
I’m doing GOTV canvassing today, along with my 14-year-old. Fired up and ready to go! But I don’t think people would appreciate it if I started knocking on their doors now…
arguingwithsignposts
I’m sure they’ll put the 40-hour boxed set up on iTunes.
I am just digging out from under work to get busy with … more work! only about a month left of the really crazy until January.
NYT headline of the day: “With Time as Tight as Race, Romney and Obama Zero In”
Horserace now, horserace forever!
JPL
The NYTimes has an article about Paul Ryan’s goal of redefining the role of government if elected. link
Don’t boo, vote.
TS
@JPL:
From your link
His children are of an age that the President’s were 4 years ago – yet he would ignore them every evening. Great family values.
amk
@JPL: Mostly it reads like a fluff piece on voucher ryan’s ‘bipartisanship’. What fucking bipartisanship ? The author seems to yearn for a mittbot presidency with wishful thinking that the dems will lose senate, congress as well as the white house to boot.
Hope this fucker loses twice.
arguingwithsignposts
@TS:
So he plans on being a complete asshole.
jwb
@arguingwithsignposts: I wonder who Ryan is planning on shooting in the face.
JPL
@arguingwithsignposts: The article wasn’t for the faint of heart. Let’s hope Paul is sent back to congress or better yet sent home to reread Ayn Rand. His idea of bipartisanship is my way.
amk
Yet another fraud from VultureVoucher2012.
Mustang Bobby
I voted yesterday morning at the Coral Reef Library in Perrine, Florida. It was to open at 7:00 a.m., so I got there at 6:40 a.m…. and was about #400 in line. It took me almost four hours to get through it, and early voting in Miami-Dade ran until midnight at some places to accommodate all the people in line.
I have hung my Canadian flag outside the house to repel any last-minute door-knockers or canvassers. I wish that would stop the robo-callers.
Gindy51
@TS: Of course he’d ignore them, raising children is women’s work.
Punchy
@arguingwithsignposts: So he plans on getting into 2 wars? Iran and…….Cameroon?
JPL
@Punchy: Don’t forget about Russia.
Maude
@arguingwithsignposts:
Nah, just continuing what he’s is now.
Steeplejack
@Anne Laurie:
Yet another request to adjust your contribution graphic so that the thermometer measures the money, not the number of people who have given. WTF.
Ming
Obots:
This memo from Jim Messina is reassuring… and amazing.
Anne Laurie, feel free to front page it if you like…
the Conster
So excited to vote for Elizabeth Warren on Tuesday! I want to see Brown’s sneering snotty concession speech to the “Professor” so bad I can taste it – it will taste like sweet sweet wingnut tear sauce over nectar of butt-hurt.
aimai
@Betty Cracker:
betty I love you! I can’t take my children with me GOTV today because they both have concerts or work to do but I wish I could. I spent some of yesterday, all today I hope, door knocking in one of the bluest and most beautiful parts of my little city. Tiny little houses with incredible secret gardens, hidden sculptures, red leaves everywhere. People are fired up and ready to vote but they are concerned about the polls. I can’t tell you how badly informed most people are, especially the ones who think they are doing their duty and watching major broadcast news. They are frightened, badly informed, and kneecapped as citizens by the torrent of misinformation they get even as they are intending to vote the right way and basing their voting strategy on pretty damned good theories of policy and politics.
I think I’ll get up now and make a cake or something to take to the office where I’m getting my walk lists–used the killer online phone app for canvassing yesterday. Its mind blowing.
Tonight is pollwatcher training.
aimai
Comrade Jake
Iran has decided to stop enriching uranium.
“This is another sign the terrorists want the Kenyan Muslim socialist to win!” – Rush Limbaugh.
Betty Cracker
@Mustang Bobby: I’m no lawyer, but it must be illegal to deliberately orchestrate a giant clusterfuck in an election process to tilt the playing field in favor of one’s own party. The (P)Rick Scott administration should face federal charges for their work. Maddow Blog has a good post on Scott’s historic suppression efforts here.
Kirbster
@Mustang Bobby:
I’m thinking that the sum total of on-the-ground Republican GOTV efforts will consist of distributing “voter guides” on church property (which should be illegal) this morning. They also seem to have a lot of faith in the efficacy of yard signs and robocalls.
arguingwithsignposts
@Punchy:
Cameroon is Iran’s route to the sea, I think.
TS
@Ming:
I like the NC information & have difficulty seeing that as a Romney state – it will be close but Pres Clinton campaigning there today – could clinch it for PBO.
Jeremy
@mai naem: Don’t worry Obama is going to win the popular vote. The states effected by the storm are already making preparations so people can vote. PPP tracking has Obama with a 3 point lead in the national vote. My prediction is that Obama will win the popular vote by 4-5 points and a EV total of 347.
JPL
@Jeremy: Wow I like the way you think.
the Conster
@Ming:
What I love about this whole OfA GOTV effort is the unlikely to vote numbers they’re turning out, which I believe to be the key to a solid O victory. It would be great to find out that the polling models get IED’d by the unlikely to vote voters who end up voting, hispanics that aren’t polled who end up voting in numbers previously unknown, and cell phone users who aren’t polled.
Conversely, it will be even better when the Village realizes that all that SuperPAC money goes into consultant pockets and not on the ground where it matters, because the entire Republican party has become an Amway operation. Maybe Halperin can write a book about that. Sometimes I crack myself up.
Betty Cracker
@aimai: Mmmmm — cake! I do love that iPhone app too. Kudos to you for canvassing in Mass! I remember how pretty it is up there this time of year.
Kane
When you watch the movies Norma Rae, Erin Brockovich, and Silkwood, which characters do you relate to and sympathize with? Whose side are you pulling for?
arguingwithsignposts
@Kane: Is this a trick question? Or a rhetorical one?
Ming
@the Conster:
Wouldn’t it?!! sweet indeed.
Similarly sweet, to think of the power of money being nullified by the love of money.
hep kitty
Um, nope. I’m not obsessing about the polls, I’m getting my fucking ass out to vote, I reserve the right to remember something that profound that I have known about for 5 years.
I am sick to death of being preached to by the choir as if I am a child
the Conster
@hep kitty:
I think you need to adjust your snark detector on that one – Gail Collins hasn’t written a column where she mentions Mitt Romney without mentioning the dog on the roof, and she’s been doing it for so long she may be the reason why you know about it.
Schlemizel
@Jeremy:
From your lips to His noodley appendages!
Suffern ACE
@the Conster: I was thunking “Now? Why are you stopping now? It’s almost all she could bring herself to write about.”
Glidwrith
@Comrade Jake: Did a quick google-fu check on the suspension of uranium enrichment; story has already been amended that they are not. Something I always find quite interesting is no one ever specifically mentions that the enrichment is for 20% uranium purity suitable for a reactor and not the 90% needed for a bomb. Gee, what motivation could exist for that omission?
YellowJournalism
@arguingwithsignposts: “So he plans on being a complete asshole.”
Mission Accomplished.
IM
Has anyone seen the troll (truthie) in last few days? What happened to avalanche of corporate money?
arguingwithsignposts
@IM: he’s been here all along, under various nyms. just look for PRESIDENT-ELECT ROMNEY” anywhere in the comments.
IM
Ah, so I was just lucky.
dr. luba
Don’t count out Seamus. A woman I met at Halloween party brought him up. She is a dog lover (and professional dog groomer) and was aghast that anyone could treat an animal, much less a family pet, that way. It is probably the main reason she is voting for Obama.
I suspect there are many other people out there, including the members of Devo, who care. How someone treats a helpless animal presages how they will treat other people (especially when they are in a position of power).
Edit: The Romney/Ryan ad at the beginning of the Devo track seems to me to be among the most inauspicious ad placement I’ve yet seen, on par with GOP ads here and at LGF.
Mino
I am profoundly grateful to her for keeping Seamus in the collective consciousness.
Triassic Sands
If Romney wins, I’ll name it Shame-on-us.