Romney is telling voters that it’s a nice little country they’ve got there, and it would be a shame if something were to, you know, happen to it. Ryan told an evangelical group founded by uber-crook Ralph Reid that the president’s policies undermine “Judeo-Christian” values.
What other whoppers will they lob before the day is out? Perhaps we can gauge their desperation by how close they come to screeching about a Mandingo eating their baby…
[X-posted at Rumproast]
Robin G.
We’ve still got, what, 32 hours left to hit Ni-CLANG? Not to mention concessions speeches. I have faith.
Jeff Spender
Ryan has taken the less active way of calling Obama a Muslim.
Romney has shown that he’s just a rich asshole terrorist.
And yet they stand even a small chance of winning the election. This country has lost its shit.
JPL
Vote for me or the repubs will hold the debt hostage. We’d rather ruin the economy than have a democratic president.
How does that thing called democracy work?
Napoleon
I just read Romney will still be campaigning in Ohio on Tuesday.
rlrr
Looking at the last 2000 years of history, Judeo-Christian “values” could use some undermining….
lamh35
@Napoleon: Ok, someone explain to me this. Yes there are confirmed reports that Romney will be campaining on election day in Ohio tomorrow. I assume he’ll be in a GOP county and will get voters from rally to polls?? But wouldn’t that mean that voters will be at rally rather than polls???
I’m confused, I can’t decide if this is good strategy or not? My gut is telling me it’s an act of desperation
J.
Why I am voting for Barack Obama. A friend posted this on Facebook a few weeks ago, and I had to share. Says so beautifully and succinctly why it’s so important to vote for the President.
NotMax
Much as I despise and loathe her (long story), Hawaii will be electing Tulsi Gabbard to the House in tomorrow’s election – the first practicing Hindu elected to Congress.
trollhattan
Reparations and gun confiscations, bitchz. Oh yeah, UN is throwing up internment camp fencing in the Heartland(tm) as I type this. Frog marches conducted by real frogs.
Alexandra
@Napoleon:
I find that odd, perhaps because I’m not an American, but because all the countries I’ve lived in, campaigning on election day itself is illegal, or at the very least, highly irregular.
Still, if Romney was confident about Ohio, I guess he’d be putting his feet up on election day somewhere nice and warm, instead of going on the stump.
Napoleon
@lamh35:
I will take a wild guess that what they will go is go to Hamilton county, the second most populated county in the state and it happens to be situted in the heavest Rep leaning section of the state (Cincy area) and do something like shake hands of commuters getting off buses during the morning rush in the hopes that TV and radio cover it first thing in the morn. It would act as a reminder to get out and vote for him. Maybe then repeat that in Columbus around lunch (3rd most populated) and maybe even Cleveland during evening drive.
NotMax
@lamh35
Remember the truck of purchased goods Romney’s campaign supposedly sent off to NJ?
Not fiscally efficient to have it return empty.
Just sayin’.
aimai
Oh, betty, I llove you forever for “Mandingo ate my baby.”
aimai
Cris (without an H)
I was really surprised to begin seeing Presidential-election TV ads here in Montana this past weekend. While our Senate race is tight and high-profile, the Presidential race has been a foregone conclusion from the beginning. And yet, finally Crossroads or whoever has started running anti-Obama spots.
My wife’s hypothesis is that it’s about turnout — they know that the Presidential race is how you attract voters for the races where turnout does matter.
EconWatcher
@trollhattan:
My wife and I took a class for obtaining concealed carry permits last week, and absolutely everyone there (including the instructor) was convinced that this was their “last chance” before Obama begins taking your guns away.
(I asked the instructor what the point was of taking the class, in that event, and she said people who already have guns and permits will be “grandfathered in.” So apparently it’s a very selective and fastidious form of fascism that we’re facing.)
Napoleon
@Alexandra:
I can not recall a presidential candidate doing it. It happens all the time in local elections, but for President. Like you say it tells you where they think they maybe.
Scott S.
@Robin G.: I’m kinda expecting one of the more unstable Fox pundits to hit the Ni-CLANG button sometime during election night coverage.
trollhattan
@Alexandra:
He should do a photo-op Scrooge McDuck style–bathing in a tub filled with crisp new hundreds, surrounded by sister wives.
That’s what I’d do. I’d also take up drinking and tell everybody that for a hundred-million Ubertithe, the church says it’s “okay.”
Also, too, that hundred-million was the boys’ trust fund.
LAC
How low will they go? Low enough that they will have to crawl up the back of a cockroach in order to stretch and reach the curb. Or, like every day of the Romney campaign.
trollhattan
@EconWatcher:
Good ol’ Wayne LaPierre somehow keeps them revved up to a virtual blur. I don’t know how he does it–when I hear him speak he comes across as a feckless little troll. At least Heston had actorish gravitas.
Anonymous
http://nomoremister.blogspot.com/2012/11/republican-monkey-business-next.html
Steve M. raises a good point: to counteract Silver, Wang, and the rest, look for the GOP to use that Citizens United money to prop up baby Rasmussens to skew aggregators. Either Silver, Wang, and the rest let these polls in, or they don’t. If they do, the GOP gets what they want: control of the polling narratives. If they don’t, the GOP will get most of what they want: RCP, TPM, and others will let the polls in anyway, while Chuck Todd will grandstand about how he’s letting every poll have a say, unlike the liberally-biased 538.
Violet
One of the things I’ve noticed this election that seems a bit different from 2008 is that being a Republican is not cool. Republicans are old and white and crazy. Who wants to be associated with that except other old, white, crazy people? At least in 2008 they had Sarah Palin who added a bit of interest and some flash. This time it’s Old Lying White Guy or Young Lying White Guy. Boring. A bit embarrassing. The crowds are so white. Not cool.
Spaghetti Lee
I had a kind of surreal experience on campus today. I ran into someone video-interviewing people for a journalism class, so I said sure, figuring it will be standard election pablum. The interviewer kept asking me what I thought of Clinton as Vice President. Now, I’m assuming (hopefully) that someone who’s far along enough in the journalism school would do some research beforehand about stuff like who the vice president is. So I thought maybe it’s one of those Punk’d things, where they show how uninformed people are? Didn’t have the guts to ask though.
I’m well past give-a-fuck mode, so I basically said I’m voting Obama because Romney and Ryan are both huge assholes. I might end up in some journalism class video project as an example of Intolerant Partisanship, but I’m somehow OK with that.
Joel
Jim Fallows interviews Samuel Popkin again today. Popkin’s analysis fits my own, which is why it’s so refreshing to read him.
This time next week, I’ll be in Easter Island, checking out the moai. Pretty dramatic shift from where I am now…
JPL
@Napoleon: Romney had planned to be in NH tomorrow. The only way he wins Ohio according to the polls is if voting is scarce in democratic areas. With such a strong gotv team, I don’t see that. hmm
trollhattan
@Anonymous:
That’s awfully eleventy-dimensional chess for Republicans, but if (when) Silver and Wang come out of this cycle looking like they’re…what’s the word…right, There Will be Blood.
Perhaps astroturf polls can be filtered or at least adjusted, based on their track record? Ras gets mocked pretty regularly.
JoyfulA
Just got a call from OFA, making sure we know where the polls are tomorrow.
Is Pennsylvania the only state where we can vote only on Election Day?
blingee
Nice little Springsteen speech.
http://youtu.be/iTKgotsxUEg
The Moar You Know
@Robin G.: There will be no concession speech. That would require class, which is something a nouveau riche scumbag like Romney doesn’t understand, much less possess.
Roger Moore
@Robin G.:
Don’t expect a concession speech on Tuesday. I’m waiting for the “we shall fight in Ohio, we shall fight in Virginia, we shall fight in North Carolina and Florida, we shall never surrender!” speech.
Cassidy
I think it’s safer to ask how low they won’t go. These fucks will rape a baby on the 50 yard line during Super Bowl halftime if they thought it’d keep blah people from voting and Democrats out of office.
quannlace
I was about to retort ‘But the dingo really did eat her baby,” then.. ‘oh, wait. Never mind.”
Election coverage is softening my brain.
Violet
@Anonymous: I think Silver and Wang will be able to do their thing and leave out polls that are crap. In the end, what matters is who is right. Wingnuts can create all the polls they want, but if they are wrong, they lose credibility. They’ll be discounted next time.
Maybe Nate and Sam could have a “polls we know and trust” analysis and leave the new polls out or create an alternate analysis with them. Then when those polls are shown to be crap,they’re ignored the next time. New pollsters have to prove themselves, otherwise anyone can just make up numbers and claim something that isn’t true.
Capt. Seaweed
@Violet:
Both true.
trollhattan
@Joel:
Ooh, trip of a lifetime!
Give my best to Willard’s giant stone head.
Judas Escargot, Bringer of Loaves and Fish Sandwiches
@JPL:
A lot depends on how many of those Democratic votes should mysteriously disappear between now and tomorrow.
And yes, I still expect Romney to mysteriously “win” OH against all polls and evidence… Hoping that Obama’s cushion in the other swing states will counteract that.
1badbaba3
@lamh35: Everything they do in regards to Obama is an act of desperation. EVERYTHING.
Roger Moore
@trollhattan:
Sorry, but Scrooge McDuck was more of a Ron Paul type. He swam in gold coins, not C-notes.
MazeDancer
@JoyfulA:
There are other states that still have the old system of voting on Election Day only and you have to give a reason to qualify for an absentee ballot. Massachusetts is one.
Just heard Romney say in a speech something about having “a better tomorrow tomorrow.” Really. Not a spoof. Not a Colbert SuperPac. He said that: “better tomorrow tomorrow.”
Mitt’s not hoarse like the President and Mr. Clinton. But maybe campaign taking its toll.
Cacti
Romney is leaking stories about how Christie was always his first choice for VP.
Ryan is leaking stories about his non-VP plans after the election.
Does this sound like the behavior of a campaign that believes it is primed for victory?
Nina
Holding a rally on election day itself is a huge diversion of resources that should be used to fan out to individual polling places, drive other voters to polls, stand at corners waving signs, and generally pester the neighbors.
So I hope their rally is really really big, and that it turns out they’ve lost the state by exactly the number of people who attended the rally.
trollhattan
@Violet:
Silver, I’m certain, is primed and ready to lay on the wood, as required. Thing about polling is their work is out there for everybody to see and measure against reality.
http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2010/05/blast-from-rasmussen-past.html
The Moar You Know
@trollhattan: The mailers. Took them years to stop sending them to me. They’re good. Always bringing out the old familiar villains, Boxer, Feinstein, Hillary, Ted Kennedy – even if they’re dead they still get included, about the closest thing to immortality you’ll find is the baddies list in an NRA hit mailer.
And of course these people are sending each other the chain emails nonstop, so that helps.
I’d love to get their mailing list and send out a brief summary of what the NRA has actually done to help gun fans get more and better guns. Turns out that answer is not just “nothing”, but that the NRA frequently settles on terms favorable to their “opponents”.
I wonder why they’d do that?
Lotta money on the table in that game. The suckers keep anteing up!
Anonymous
@trollhattan:
I think this is the way to go, especially the way Violet puts it:
@Violet:
But even then, I note that Republicans will take any attempt to add a human element as liberal bias, and the Chuck Todds and Jennifer Rubins of the world will nod their heads vigorously. The goal, I think, would be to discredit Silver, Wang, and the rest as biased (they were unbiased in the past, but now that they’ve decided to exclude polls, they show their true colors!), and my fear is that very few, if any, in the media will even try to call them out on it.
Roger Moore
@Anonymous:
That might help with Wang (who uses a median to filter his data and could be overwhelmed by biased polls) but Silver tries to calculate and correct for partisan house effects in the pollsters. New outfits are given a low credibility rating to start with, and he can calculate an approximate house effect by comparing their results with established pollsters polling the same population. That makes Nate’s model surprisingly robust, even to deliberate attempts to influence his results.
ding dong
@NotMax: i want to know why. I looked her up the other day and I love the first hindu in congress part but my gut feeling was that she was a young woman in an awful hurry and the dad being a social conservative anti gay repub switched to dem and the home schoolling smelt wrong.
Cacti
@lamh35:
Count me with Nina on this being a poor strategy.
Drawing people to a central location, then dispersing them to the polls seems a waste of time and manpower, since getting the vote out is a very decentralized process.
gbear
@lamh35: It’ll be a problem for Romney voters on tueday if campaign pulls a stunt like last night where they wouldn’t let people leave the rally even if they were freezing or had to go to the bathroom.
Romney probably lost a shitload of potential voters last night after that stunt.
trollhattan
@Roger Moore:
Hey, I see a few bundles poking out from among the Krugerrands! But never mind that, I’m now distracted by my new life’s goal: meeting this person.
http://www.inquisitr.com/151380/billionaire-tamara-ecclestone-literally-rolling-in-money-photos/
JPL
@Judas Escargot, Bringer of Loaves and Fish Sandwiches: With the sec’y of state pulling out all the stops, it is difficult not to worry. Obama can win without VA, NC or OH.
JasonF
As long as this is an open thread, here’s an unrelated thought:
Remeber a little over 7 years ago when Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans? There were a mix of reactions to the event and the aftermath, but one of the major reactions in that mix was something like “People are stupid for living in New Orleans given that its geography; it was only a matter of time before something like this happened; why do they live there anyway?”
(The answer, of course, is that they live there because it’s the mouth of the Mississippi, and therefore the location of the busiest port in the country).
Isn’t it interesting that we haven’t heard similar complaints and blame directed toward the people who choose to live in lower Manhatten, Staten Island, Long Island, and New Jersey? I wonder why that is (he asked rhetorically).
For what it’s worth, the natural inclination may be to think back to Kanye and the fact that the bulk of those affected by Katrina were black while the bulk of those affected by Sandy are white. That may be part of it, but I think it’s got more to do with the fact that our elites were personally affected by Sandy, or know people who were. Sandy hit them at their home, so of course they are not asking questions about why people live there. It’s where they live, so ipso facto it’s an appropriate place for people to live.
Joel
@Anonymous: The window for that is mostly closed, I think. Wang might have a hard time accounting for a flood of right-leaning polls because of his method, but Silver could credibly make the house effect adjustments, and his credibility is considered largely unimpeachable because he predicted even larger republican margins than many republican-leaning sites did in 2010. Never mind the fact that many republicans have already taken to using him as a reference point.
At RCP, while Jay Cost may be a lunatic, Sean Trende is not. And there’s guys like Blumenthal (Pollster) who easily identify these “baby Rasmussens” pretty quickly (think Mason-Dixon, Susquehanna). Keep in mind that relative to these guys with somewhere up to +5 republican leans, Rasmussen (typically ~2 point republican lean in any cycle) is pretty close the middle.
The polling aggregate community is robust, in other words.
SiubhanDuinne
@lamh35:
Can we hope that he’ll be cited for campaigning within 100 feet (or whatever) of a polling location? That would be amusing.
lacp
There was a group here in PA that studied Oregon’s system a couple of years ago. IIRC, the conclusion was that Pennsylvanians preferred voting in person at the polls (though I don’t remember any explanation why we couldn’t have early voting). Don’t know who they talked to – it sure wasn’t me. And I’m luckier than a lot of folks here, since the polling place is only a block from my apartment.
Violet
@Anonymous: All that counts in the end is being right. That’s why Rasmussen, Gallup, etc. are moving to showing that Obama is winning. Because their credibility is on the line. The polling outfits know this. So so Silver and Wang and any other person like that who decides to get in the poll analysis business. Being right is what counts. Otherwise you lose your credibility and maybe your job.
BTW, what’s up with the Unskewed Polls guy? How’s he doing?
Cacti
Since it’s an open thread, how many swing states will Rasmussen “the most accurate pollster” get wrong on Tuesday?
In 2008, he most accurately predicted Florida, North Carolina, and Indiana for McCain, with Ohio tied.
hueyplong
Nate Silver has demonstrated that he can take care of himself.
As for Edward_75 and his Romney-by-12 California poll, I too have a pole that goes off if it’s properly maniplated.
And it’s important, too. Politico says that without my pole, there is no mandate. You know, because it’s white.
russell
He’s a venture capitalist, it’s how they roll.
Joel
@JasonF: Agreed on that point. I think it’s an example of “crows come home”. The flooding in manhattan affected people who are connected to the upper echelons of society. That causes people to wake up, if only just a little bit.
Otherwise, one of the ironies of climate change is that the people affected most are usually those who contributed least (think Bangladesh, central Africa, southeastern Asia).
dr. luba
@Joel:
One of the coolest places I’ve ever visited. Would go back in a heartbeat.
Will you be traveling individually or with a group? I was lucky enough to go with a group led by Jo Ann Van Tilburg. Her books are worth reading before you go, and to take along.
martha
Just got back from the Obama/Baldwin rally in Madison (and Springsteen was great, spoke eloquently, sang 4 songs). Gorgeous day, very large crowd (20K +). Fingers crossed.
1badbaba3
@Cacti: Don’t you mean VICTORY, lib?
JoyfulA
@MazeDancer: Thanks—I was feeling all alone! I could have gotten an absentee ballot because I’ve been in a full-leg brace and on a walker since August (missing the doorknocking I love!), but I like going to the polling place in person.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
@Violet:
When your base is overwhelmingly white folks and few others, this is a feature, not a bug.
Face
Really? Can a modern-day President candidate really not give a concession speech? This seems unpossible. But then again, I’m not a complete asshole.
amk
Another 36 hours before this craven cowardly corrupt clown show is shut down. Hopefully for ever.
Chris
@Face:
No, no, no. If they lose, they’ll definitely give a concession speech. Romney doesn’t want to pass up an opportunity to bitch at how unfair the country is and how the darkie probably stole the election and how we’re all doomed and God knows what else.
Roger Moore
@JasonF:
In fairness, the geology is pretty different, too. New Orleans is built on alluvium, is gradually sinking, and is below the level of the river that runs through the city. It has to be constantly pumped out to avoid flooding even when there isn’t a storm. The city is a disaster waiting to happen, whether by a river flood, a major storm, or a levy failure. New York is mostly built on bedrock (Manhattan, Bronx) or a glacial moraine (Queens, Brooklyn, Staten Island) that’s solidly above both the river and normal sea level. The only parts that need to be pumped out are the tunnels under the city. It’s currently at risk only during major storms, which also happen to be less common there. It’s a big difference.
catclub
@Roger Moore: “We shall fight in the country clubs, we shall fight in the prep schools, we shall fight in the gated communities….”
Tom Q
@trollhattan: I’ve been thinking over the past few days, what if the electoral margin turns out better for Obama than expected — if, say, GOTV moves the numbers so RV is more representative than the various LV models, all of which are less favorable to Obama? This would push national margins to, say, 3-5%, and make the swing states even more firmly Democratic.
You’d think such a scenario would cause our “it’s a dead heat” pundit class to stop and reconsider the blather they’ve ben spewing the past few weeks. But I’m betting they’d use it as a club to beat Nate Silver with — “Silver missed that margins by a couple of points! His models were wrong!” And maybe even “Those margins could have been that far off in the other direction! Romney could have won! We were right; it was a dead heat!”
peach flavored shampoo
That’s debatable.
Sly
A hopelessly modern and artificial political invention if there ever was one.
By 1791, the year in which the last of the original 13 colonies (Rhode Island) ratified the Federal constitution, 11 out of the new 13 states had religious tests that forbade Jews from holding public office. Some of these tests demanded that office holders espouse an officially recognized brand of Protestantism, while even the most generous religious test (such as in Pennsylvania) required the person to profess a belief in the divinity of Jesus Christ or the divine authorship of “the Old and New Testaments.” The remaining two were Connecticut, which had no official test (and perhaps didn’t need one as Congregationalism was the established religion there), and Virginia due to the recently enacted Statute on Religious Freedom explicitly banning religious tests. Non-denominational tests became the norm in the 19th century, largely due to the influx of Catholic immigrants from Europe, and stayed on the books in most states until religious tests were unequivocally banned by the Supreme Court in 1961.
And that’s speaking only of the de jure prohibition against non-Christians holding office. The first Jewish Senator and Congressman were elected in 1845. The first Jewish Mayor in 1873. The first elected Jewish governor in 1887. Distrust of Jews, and antisemitism in general, was a core American value for, at the very least, the first half of the Republic. And it wasn’t exorcised from America’s religious conservatism (at least the virulent bits, anyway, like the blood libel and the charge of deicide) until well into the latter half of the 20th century. By then idiots like Pat Robertson wised up and framed their paranoid conspiracies in terms of “European financiers” and “gold traders from Easter Europe” instead of secret cabals of Jews, and even bigger idiots like Irving Kristol deemed this sufficient enough to, in the words of his then-protege Michael Lind, declare the American Right to be “kosher.”
kindness
I’m thankful to be voting for Obama tomorrow and I’m thankful this election is going to be over….hopefully before the Super Bowl.
JPL
@Tom Q: There is no MSM. It died during the Reagan years. Romney showed that the new and dangerous media will allow lies.
AxelFoley
@NotMax:
Nah, bro, you can’t leave us hanging like that. Spill it.
andy
@trollhattan: Fear makes the best sauce.
Cassidy
@JasonF: It’s interesting you bring that up, as I was / am a little one of those people. I never blamed the residents of New Orleans for living there. Who wouldn’t live in NO given the oppurtunity! But, I did always wonder why people didn’t evacuate. No one woke up and went “oh shit, there’s a hurricane!”. But, is what it is, and a tragedy is a tragedy. I wasn’t there and it’s unfair for me to judge.
My lack of sympathy only extends to people who go on TV to tell us they’re going to weather the storm (Galveston) or large Republican areas that vote to gut social and public services and then wonder why life sucks after a disaster (Tornado Alley).
GregB
One of the scumbag outside groups is running a final ad where Romney riffs about Obama’s campaign of fear and division.
Please let us defeat these scumbags.
Comrade Luke
I think the reason that they’re running ads in states where it’s a foregone conclusion is as a last-ditch effort to win the popular vote.
That way they have an excuse to spend the next four years blocking everything, saying it’s not a mandate, etc.
It’s just so stupid that there’s so much cash that they can do this crap, but that’s life for the time being I guess.
GregB
Unskewed politics has the entire country plus Canada going for Romney.
Obama wins Kenya, Indonesia and Mecca.
Schlemizel
@Face:
Willard will have to say something. Not for himself but for the 1% who still run the GOP clown car & need to keep the wheels on it for the time being. His speech will be the usual boiler plate and he will deliver it with all the grace and style he has shown on the trail (that is to say, almost none). ITs expected & he will deliver.
What will follow will be the forces of darkness that feed off the GOP. They will appear on FAUX and the Sunday chats as well as in print and online with their nasty business. They will whisper about voter fraud and stolen elections and illegitimate President and all the filth that they always bring to these occasions.
Bokonon
Maybe Romney intends to be in Ohio for other reasons than a last minute get-out-the-vote drive?
Like, possibly directing efforts to challenge the election results (if things are close, and there are lots of provisional ballots)?
Think about it, folks.
NotMax
@ding dong
Without going into morbid detail*, you’ve correctly mapped the tip of the iceberg.
*Will let slip that a part of it (for me) involves her and her family’s observed attitude and interactions with the hoi polloi at their overpriced health food market/cafe.
Maude
@Spaghetti Lee:
Did you sign a written release for them to use your interview? If not, they can’t use it and also I’d be suspicious of who was doing the interview.
Always ask to see ID and know who is doing the filming.
Joel
@dr. luba: No group tour, just don’t have the time. However, Dr. Van Tilburg will be in Easter Island at the same time. I wonder if I could contact her and arrange some “jump on”. Probably not. I’ll look into the books, however.
PreservedKillick
Look for open polling to start happening. What PPP is doing is not rocket science, nor is it terribly expensive. Get a few groups together, run your own robo polls, maybe cross with something like what RAND is up to, mix in some liveops polling (a la what OFA is doing with GOTV calls), and go from there. Completely open data, shared.
This could actually be worse for the GOP, should they decide that skewing polls helps them. We’d all see exactly what they are up to.
Donut
@Violet:
Unless I am mistaken, what you are describing is the basic methodology that TPM Polltracker utilizes. Rather than absorb all the polls, regardless of their source (as does Wang), or adjust for past shitty results (as does Silver), I believe the Polltracker folks use “editorial discretion” and toss out some pollsters they know or think they know are doing sub-par work.
SiubhanDuinne
@JoyfulA:
Oh, I do too! It’s an important part of my personal ritual.
That said, I totally support early/easier voting — the other is merely my personal preference, not anything I would try to impose or even try to persuade other people to do.
Hope you are back on you own two unassisted feet very soon, JoyfulA!
Robert
If anyone is interested in a good scare go here…http://amymacpherson.wordpress.com/
I grew up with this shit and I.am.scared…I have faced all sorts of danger…but this………
pseudonymous in nc
@Comrade Luke:
I think that’s more a rationalisation of there being nothing other than national buys and smoke-em-if-you-got-em local buys available, even at full card.
EconWatcher
All the triumphalism makes me nervous. I hope y’all are knocking on wood as you write.
Romney has a better chance of being elected president than you have of getting “heads” three times in a row when you flip a coin, according to Silver’s probabilities. Obama is ahead by a good margin, but not nearly safe enough to breathe easy.
amk
@GregB: lulz. What, no pakistan?
catclub
@Cassidy: “I did always wonder why people didn’t evacuate”
Did you know that some people do not own cars? Like, at all?
Amazing but true. Not everyone who did not evacuate, but many. There was lots of news about various buses that should have been organized to do evacuations, but were not, after Katrina. There was news about using trains to evacuate.
There was news about the fact that just telling people who do not have cars, to evacuate, makes little sense.
Yutsano
@andy: I thought the saying was hunger is the best sauce. But fear works too.
trollhattan
@GregB:
Thought all the punchlines had been delivered, but you proved me wrong. A golf clap for you, sir!
gnomedad
@Robin G.:
Nah. “Everything but Ni-CLANG” is their “Get Out Of Racism Free” card.
Napoleon
@JasonF:
I think it simply is because 1) NOLA gets hit by those storms way more often (even though its long been known that NYC could get hit with a big one) and 2) significant portions of the city are below sea level, unlike NYC.
Quite frankly if the people who founded NOLA had any idea that when they showed up that area happen to be in an unussual dry period that obscured how bad of a site it was for a city and had any idea of how stormy it is there they never would have built a city there, but you really can not say the same for NYC.
trollhattan
@Donut:
Extrapolating from that, one could have a policy that “you have to earn your way into our aggregation” based on a solid track record. Wouldn’t that keep the neobarbarians outside the gate? “Look, a giant rabbit.”
NotMax
So guess no photo-ops Tuesday of Mitt emerging from his son’s basement to trot over to the precinct and cast a vote?
MikeJ
@Napoleon:
It’s where one of the biggest river systems in the world meets the ocean. There was going to be a city there even if there were giant radioactive lizards in the way.
CW in LA
@gnomedad: This.
Plus the constant “Are they gonna drop the N-bomb yet? How ’bout now? Now?” gets both really old and more than a little creepy.
muddy
@catclub: It was the end of the month as well. Social Security doesn’t come until the 3rd.
CW in LA
@Napoleon: My understanding too is that, with all the extraction of oil in southern Louisiana, the ground itself is some feet lower than it was when New Orleans was founded. Plus sea level is getting higher.
NotMax
Didn’t Andy Jackson wipe out the last of those in 1815?
Cassidy
@catclub: Really? Are you sure about that? Thanks so much for pointing out that obscure fact.
Personally, yes I’d have walked. But walking long distances is not an outrageous concept to me. As I said, it isn’t fair for me to judge and I don’t.
trollhattan
@EconWatcher:
I cast my ballot and settled on a nice, weeklong nap, done with stressing about tomorrow. Here’s Taibbi from May 7:
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/is-this-the-most-boring-election-ever-20120507#ixzz2BNPgZMHM
Woodrowfan
with his bare hands!
SFAW
@russell:
For the Nth time: he was NOT a venture capitalist. VC people have more skin in the game, so-to-speak, and their fortunes rise or fall depending on how well the start-up company does.
With the possible exception of Staples, all Romney had done was find a new way of stripping existing assets out of a company, plus loading them up with debt to make him and his buds at Bain a shitload of dollars without commensurate risk.
VCs like Kleiner, Perkins have a shitload more honor in their left wingtip than Rmoney has in his entire body, mansions (both with and without elevators), Aflac-a, and mini-Mitts combined.
The sooner he can be put out to pasture, the better off America will be. And that goes for his little zombie-eyed granny-starving dog,
TotoRyan, as well.Enhanced Mooching Techniques
So 36 until the start of the 2016 Election.
Donut
@trollhattan:
Yeah, I got no problem with that, but no is asking me what I think, so there is that …
I’m really nerdily excited to see whether Silver or Wang comes up better on their predictions. Wang really puts himself out there, credibility-wise. He made his final predictions a month ago, while the Village media was still in the throes of Romeny’s non-existent momentum hype.
http://election.princeton.edu/2012/10/05/predictions-october-5th-presidentsenate/
Napoleon
@Donut:
I don’t think they do that. Just last week (or two) they had one come in that meet their stated criteria and they used the results but JM put up a post explaining that since it meet the stated criteria they would use it that for X reason he though the poll was crap.
1badbaba3
@CW in LA: Speaking as a Black (Soul) Man, it’s not the “Dreaded N-word” that frightens me (it’s really not that bad – tastes just like chicken) as much as the threat of Meat Loaf being unleashed, once again, on the unsuspecting public.
Won’t someone please think of the children?
1badbaba3
@CW in LA: Speaking as a Black (Soul) Man, it’s not the “Dreaded N-word” that frightens me (it’s really not that bad – tastes just like chicken) as much as the threat of Meat Loaf being unleashed, once again, on the unsuspecting public.
Won’t someone please think of the children?
Napoleon
@MikeJ:
Not really, it could have been built a little more inland.
Heck Houston which is something like 40 miles upriver replaced Galveston (sp?) after it was hit.
Ed Drone
@Capt. Seaweed:
And in 2012, we have Chris Christie, who’s added interest and real flesh!
Ed
NotMax
@1badbaba3
Christie/Meat Loaf ’16
Because Bigger Is Better
(removing tongue from cheek now)
J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford
This thread bores me…now is the time on Sprockets when we dance!
Anoniminous
@Napoleon:
The Mississippi shallows out and broadens into a swamp not too far north of New Orleans. Sailing ships could consistently reach as far as NOLA’s location and that little bit of difference made all the difference.
SatanicPanic
@GregB: You left out Cuba and the Soviet Union.
Napoleon
@Anoniminous:
I take you at your word, but still if the subject is “why are people more likely to think it is stupid to live in NOLA” I really do not think is is class, race or economic/social status but that people are far more likely to think of NOLA as a uniquely crappy location when in comes to natural disasters in a way they are not use to thinking of NYC. I really think you need go no farther then that.
trollhattan
@Donut:
Dr. Wang has been the best “discovery” for me this election, much like Silver was in ’08. He adds a lot to the discussion. Confess I’m limited to how deeply I understand their methodologies, as it’s been decades since my last stat class.
scav
@Napoleon: @Napoleon: That just sounds like their editorial discretion is A) rules based and B) the editor used his discretion and decided to follow their pre-established rules, while making a statement. No cherries were harmed in that exercise. Caveat: I’m not following the whole sub-thread closely, this just jumped out at me.
Joel
@EconWatcher: Triumphalism sure beats defeatism. And it’s not like 2004, where people were hanging on to outlier results to wishcast Kerry past Bush. Well it is, kind of, but the roles are reversed.
SatanicPanic
@trollhattan: I called it during the summer of 2011, no chance, no way for Romney. And people were saying “well what if _____ gets into the race?” No. Not happening. It’s going to be Mitt and people are going to hate him. Only one more day before I can start the gloating FB posts.
GxB
@J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford: So I assume there will be no monkey touching.
artem1s
Could be Rmoney is fluffing Mandel for his 2013 VP bid. That’s the only reason I can think they are in OH tomorrow. Unless it just so happens the Koch’s are stopping in drop some $$,$$$,$$$ and Rmoney is there picking up his share.
Also.too. dropping their post election strategy of tying up the President’s agenda for 4 more years just might be the only time RMoney has told the truth during this whole campaign.
Chris
@Sly:
Totally.
I always laugh when I hear the “Judeo-Christian nation” shit, knowing that as late as fifty years ago, the “Real Americans R Us” alliance would have hit the ceiling in outrage at that definition. Up until that point, it would have simply been “Christian nation,” with the very clear understanding that Catholics weren’t Christian.
I’m not a fan of people who think our foreign policy should be based on what Israel wants, or of people who think the Catholic Church should be able to dictate health care, but it does give me some amusement to imagine how furious many of these people’s grandparents must be.
McJulie
@Cassidy:, @JasonF:
The disastrous Katrina flooding was caused by the failure of the neglected federal levee system.
Yeah, New Orleans floods in a moderate way a lot of the time — they have a high water table and the city is flat and they get very heavy monsoonish rains pretty regularly, and they’re hit by many a lesser hurricane. But they’re used to that and they’re ready for it. They have a pumping system, no basements, no subways, no underground burials, etc.
Katrina was a failure of the federal levee system, and a failure of the federal response to that failure. It was caused by (Republican) neglect of infrastructure, and by Republican general incompetence at doing anything of actual value to US citizens.
Katrina was a failure of the federal levee system, caused by Republican policies. Repeat that until you’ve got it memorized.
lamh35
ok, now there is reporting that Romney will be campaigning in Cleveland and Pittsburgh tomorrow??? WTF?
Cassidy
@1badbaba3: He really would do anything.
Joel
@artem1s: Could just be appearances. If Romney weren’t going to Ohio, people would think he’s given up on the state.
artem1s
@lamh35:
Jeebus please not Cleveland.
I got it. He’s trying to foul up traffic for the last 12 hours the polls are open?
Cassidy
@McJulie: You are mistakingly assuming I’m blaming the people for their own demise. Assumptions are bad. Repeat until memorized.
It is possible to wonder why people didn’t take certain action(s) that I would have, not blame them for government indifference and failure, and sympathize with what happenned to them at the same time.
JustAnotherBob
@Chris: Judeo-Christian doesn’t have anything to do with Jews.
It’s about the right of Christians to reach back into the Old Testament and select out ancient pre-Jesus laws to justify their beliefs and hates.
While ignoring Jesus’s pinko-liberal-hippie teachings.
1badbaba3
@NotMax: Very nice. I am so using that, with full credit given, of course.
I was going to suggest 2 Tons of Dumb, but I don’t want an angry Martha Wash on my case.
artem1s
@McJulie:
Katrina was also a force 5 Hurricane. Sandy was what 1/2?
Imagine the devastation in NJ/NY if the wind had been 3 or 4 times what it was. And the surge.
that’s another bit of the climate change puzzle the Luddites don’t get. You raise the sea level and temp even a few more inches/degrees and suddenly a whole lot more of the eastern seaboard is looking at being at risk.
Roger Moore
@CW in LA:
It’s not the oil pumping that’s causing the subsidence. It happens just about anywhere you have alluvial deposits. The weight of the layers at top compresses the stuff below them, resulting in the ground level gradually falling. In a natural river system, you’d get occasional floods that would deposit more sediment across the whole delta, making up for some of the subsidence, but channelizing the river and trying to prevent floods has kept that from happening. Of course, if the river were left to its natural evolution, the main flow would have been captured by the Atchafalaya decades ago.
YellowJournalism
@Enhanced Mooching Techniques: Fuck off.
(Only because you’re right. Shoot the messenger and all.)
1badbaba3
@J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford: Can it be a Snoopy VICTORY dance for tomorrow? Judges say Yes We Can!
SFAW
@artem1s:
Well, maybe, but it’s not as if any Real Americans live there. Or at least not north of the Mason-Dixon.
Now if Kansas, Nebraska, and Oklahoma flooded …
trollhattan
@SatanicPanic:
Yup. At the risk of sounding like Taco, other than the Rick Perry threat–which I believed was real, right up to the moment he first opened his yap on the national stage–I didn’t see how any of that pack of lunatics could beat Willard for the nom. All Willard had to do was stand there doing the 737-lands-on-his-shoulders trick while they all self-immolated. And that’s what happened.
Every time Willard spoke, he became weaker. Funny, that.
Lurking Canadian
Is that picture of Romney photoshopped? He appears to have the eyes of Beelzebub.
Bill Arnold
@Cassidy:
Many of the people who did have cars where Katrina hit had lousy cars. As in, could go maybe 5 or 10 miles without overheating.
Cacti
@JustAnotherBob:
This.
Whenever a righty starts yammering about “Judeo-Christian values” it’s never a lament over the lack of Judaism in our national discourse.
askew
@JoyfulA:
MN is the same way.
johnny aquitard
@Nina:
It’s a huge diversion of resources if Romney thinks he still has a decent chance to win.
It makes more sense if he decides that Plan B is to contest the results of what he already knows is coming.
IOW, Plan B for losing the election is not a concession speech. It’s going to be an organized fraudulent denunciation of a genuinely legit election accompanied by every wingnut shill and fucking MSM tool in the media shrieking ‘we wuz robbed’.
To pull it off he’s going to need a certain threshold of ‘grassroots’ voices backing him up. Hence, the rally.
Romney needs to keep a core of fanatic supporters whipped up and believing they got it in the bag so they go apeshit when reality hits. These useful idiots will be the ‘grassroots’ freakout GOP operatives will use to back their challenge of the results. They’ve already laid the groundwork for their ‘claims’ of fraud with their True the Vote operation.
If he can’t win the election, then he’ll break its legitimacy.
That was Romney’s modus operandi at Bain: He either gets what he wants out of the company or he destroys it trying. Can’t help but think he’d do the same to our election process.
Patricia Kayden
@Scott S.: Which one? They’re all such jerks that I cannot pick one.
I love how Conservatives always try to frame Christianists as victims in a country where Christians make up 80%+ of the population and run pretty much everything.
johnny aquitard
@johnny aquitard: I’m not trying to go tinfoil hat territory here. It’s just that it wouldn’t surprise me if that’s what Romney is doing. That’s what the man is about — it’s all mine mine mine and fuckall if I can’t get it. The man wants power so bad, it’s frightening.
But I hope to FSM the rallies on election day is just stupidity and hubris manifesting itself.