11/4/08: Obama Wins Pennsylvania AND Ohio!!

Let's welcome President Barack Obama!!!!!

8:00 pm, Nov 4, 2008: A HISTORIC MOMENT!!
CNN just projected Sen. Barack Obama the winner of the 2008 election! And I'm glad it was CA and the West that put him over the top!!! In my own little way, I contributed! And I'm sure most of you reading this feel that way too!!!
I'M POPPING THE CORK NOW!!!!
And he just won Virginia - and didn't even need it - but it feels great anyway!!! Take a look at the maps above - truly, this is an unifying leader - it hasn't looked this diverse since Carter!
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WoooohooooOOOO !!!! OK I don't need the big V no more!! NO Republican (well since Lincoln) has EVER won the election without OH!!! I think this election is done!
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CNN projects that Obama wins Pennsylvania AND OHIO !!! Wow, that was an early CNN projection - with only 17% counted in OH - but the exit polls must be very very strong to project this early.
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CNN projects that Obama wins Pennsylvania!!! Yaaaaaaaaay!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
OK, I'm adding some more ice to the champagne bucket - waiting for the second and final nail to fall - you know what I'm talking about - the big V!!

11/4/08: ELECTION DAY - and Obama wins very first town called!

Yes, you read that right!! Obama wins 15 of 21 votes cast in Dixville Notch, New Hampshire!!

Dixville Notch has spoken: It's Obama in a landslide

This was the first time in decades that this little town has gone Democratic - and it did so overwhelmingly!! Be warned however that this town has not been a reliable predictor of the ultimate winner!!!
Well anyways, with that soothing news, try and grab some sleep so you can be prepared to party hard and long tomorrow night! Hopefully, I can soon sleep peacefully every night once more - and so can the rest of us. In the meantime, if you're having one last sleepless night and are up reading my blog (!), here's a soothing article for you to read:
Don't Panic--Reassurances From a Poll Neurotic

11/4/08: ELECTION NIGHT WATCH!!

Election night watch:
The action begins at 6 PM EST when polls close in portions of Indiana and Kentucky. But for me the real action begins at 7 PM EST (4pm PST). Polls close in Virginia and Georgia, as well as most of Florida and most of New Hampshire. Then at 7:30 PM EST Polls close in Ohio and North Carolina. And finally, at 8 PM EST (5pm PST). Polls close in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Missouri. Use the poll closing times map to the right to find the remaining times.

What this means is that this election could be over before I get home tomorrow. If Obama wins EITHER Virginia or Pennsylvania, I think it's all over for McCain. If either or both are too close to call, we could be in for a nailbiter. And if BOTH are called for McCain early, I'd call out the troops.

11/3/08: Virginia : The "Other" Key State

Even if McCain wins Pennsylvania ( a remote possibility, see my earlier post), it would seem that he can't win without Virginia. And all indications are that Obama's more likely to win Virginia than any other swing state, including OH, FL and even CO. This would be great news, except for 2 factors:
1. Like PA, VA also uses primarily the "hackable" electronic voting machines (76% - PA is 82%)
2. Like PA, VA also has little or no early voting.
Actually, all the 4 reasons I stated for PA earlier also apply to VA. This is why I'm more confident in FL than I am in VA!
Since VA polls close at 7pm Eastern, if it goes to Obama early, I'm pulling out the champagne cork.

11/2/08: Pennsylvania: The Keystone State IS the key to this election!

In the last week, the McCain campaign has spent enormous time, money and effort in Pennsylvania, the Keystone State, even more than in other battleground states where he was much more competitive such as Florida, Ohio or North Carolina. Why?

1. Pennsylvania's 21 electoral votes are the ONLY realistic path left to McCain, given that early voting indicators are that McCain will lose many states that Bush won in 2004, including Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada & Iowa.

2. The McCain campaign believes that there is a deep thread of bigotry running through the rural areas - they're counting on the typical "Bradley Effect" (in which most or all undecided voters "break" to the white candidate, even though they may have polled otherwise). They think that Hillary Clinton's win over Obama in the primaries here gives this credibility. Hence also the Rev Wright ads that are airing here in spite of McCain's "promise" not to do so.

3. Pennsylvania uses primarily electronic machines for voting, which are prone to rigging as has been demonstrated in previous elections. Here's more info on the machines used in each state. And an analysis sent to me explaining how this could be exploited, published earlier.

4. Pennsylvania has no early voting. So unlike in many other states, votes couldn't be locked in. Plus it makes voting much more susceptible to devious rigging techniques, including broken or malfunctioning machines, last-minute voter "checks", mysteriously "slow" voting, especially in crowded urban areas (which are overwhelmingly Democratic), resulting in polls closing before thousands of voters have exercised their fundamental right.

On Oct 31st, this startling analysis published on HuffPost showed how the election could still be stolen in PA in spite of the near-double-digits leads for Obama:
So, has all this helped McCain close the gap in the Keystone State?
Not according to the polls. And here's an analysis at fivethirtyeight.com that says the same thing.
But as we know well by now, in the final tally, only the one on Nov 4 counts - all others mean zilch.

So here's some useful advice for Tuesday from the author Erica Jong:
To summarize:
Get a paper ballot if at all possible. If not, make double sure that the electronic machine shows your choice BEFORE you hit submit. Take your cellphone/camera with you and take pictures: of your ballot (or screen), of the voting clerk and supervisor and of the scene in and out of the polling station.
IF YOU PRESS OBAMA AND MCCAIN LIGHTS UP, TAKE A PICTURE. IF YOU COMPLAIN TO A SUPERVISOR AND SHE OR HE SAYS YOU JUST DIDN'T PRESS HARD ENOUGH, DON'T DO IT AGAIN AND GIVE MCPALIN A SECOND VOTE. JUST GET ALL THE INFO, THE PHOTO, THE NAME AND ADDRESS AND EMAIL AND TELEPHONE # OF THE VOTING CLERK.
Keep all records!!! BE PREPARED!!!

11/1/08: Perfect Storm Pennsylvania: the new Ohio and Florida?

Here's a thoughtful analysis (sent to me by a friend) of the electronic voting machines in PA and how this could help "steal" the election there:

Perfect Storm Pennsylvania: the new Ohio and Florida?
In early October, McCain abandoned Michigan due to Obama's
double digit leads in that state. Soon afterwards, McCain
declared that Pennsylvania -- where Obama leads with double
digits -- will be won by him in November. Evidence of
McCain's simple bravado, denial, or perhaps something far
more sinister?
Pennsylvania with its 82% unverifiable electronic voting
machines and accompanying abysmal machine error rate offers
terrifying possibilities. Pennsylvania with its 21 electoral
votes remains the largest East Coast state ready to be
plundered by electronic voting. NY, with 31 electoral votes
casts its votes with paper ballots and are not vulnerable to
electronic hacking. The two other East Coast electoral rich
states -- FL(27) and OH(20) -- well, we know their part in
recent election history.
ELECTRONIC VOTING 101
In 2006, 40% of all US voters voted on Direct-Recording
Electronic (DRE) Machines. The move towards paperless ballots
began in 2002 with the deceptively named Help America Vote
Act, designed to rid the country of punch ballots. HAVA
passed with a Republican House, Senate and President, and
close to 4 billion in federal funds were alotted for this
reform. Currently NV, VT, LA, NJ, DE, MD, SC, GA are all
100% DRE machines; the states of MS, TN, IN, VA, KY range
from 74-95% DRE machines (http://dvice.com/voting/index.php).
Pennsylvania? It has 82% DRE'S, which makes its results
vulnerable to manipulations and therefore suspect.
LIVE FREE OR DIEBOLD
Consider the havoc banks would wreak if they decided to forego
giving their clients records of ATM money transactions.
"Trust us," the banks would say with a sincere smile, "We'll
get the money you deposit to your account. Don't worry."
As it turns out, our votes have been handed to electronic
voting companies who give similar reassurances. Call it
"faith based voting" since the electorate has to have a great
deal of trust that the machines are accurately tallying the
votes.
Diebold (now renamed Premiere Election Systems) remains one
of several major electronic voting machine manufacturers.
Although Diebold creates ATM Machines and their receipts,
they claim they can't provide any paper record for voters,
declare their software to be "proprietary" and refuse outside
inspection. On election day, only Diebold people can touch
machines, so they have in essence privatized that segment of
the vote. If there's a close election? There will be no
recount whatsoever since the electronic machine results will
spit out the same results it offered before.
2.
Diebold's partisan streak runs deep; in 2003 Diebold's
President Wally O'Dell expressed his desire to "Personally
guarantee the electoral votes of Ohio" to George Bush in
2003, a full year before the fateful 2004 election. Kenneth
Blackwell, who in 2004 was the honorary co-chair of the Bush
re-election committee and then Ohio's Secretary of State
admitted to holding 178 shares of Diebold stock, albeit
"accidentally"; Diebold donated $50,000 towards Blackwell's
"political interests".
775 PROBLEMS AND COUNTING
Can we as a country rely on electronic voting? In July, Ars
Technica reported a French study which compared voting systems
and found electronic DRE machines to have a 30 percent error
rate compared to the 5% found with paper. One website which
has recorded every voting error reported in the media since
2004 has now documented a whopping total of 1,070! 75% of
these errors are machine related and include an abundance of
"flipped" votes -- where votes for a Democrat or Libertarian
are cast by a voter and a Republican name flashes on the
screen instead. It has been revealed that more nefarious
methods were used in Ohio, where a "man in the middle" company
had the chance to look at Ohio votes and likely manipulate
the votes before sending them back to Ohio.
Stephen Spoonamore, a lifelong Republican and former CEO of
Cybrinth was not permitted to investigate Diebold System's
secretive software architecture recently said, "They're lying,
they're lying. Diebold is lying. There is no System
electronic in the world that cannot be hacked. I have spent
my entire life building or hacking electronic systems...
[and] secure electronic systems don't exist."
Meanwhile in an ironic twist, Florida -- the state where
voter confidence first began to get shaken -- Republican
Governor Charlie Christ ironically returned to 100% paper
ballots in the form of optical scan votes.
WHAT CAN BE DONE?
With so many flaws with electronic voting systems and so few
days before the election, what can be done to insure there
are ways to check how people actually vote so that public
faith in voting doesn't continue to fade? The best answer
in a murky state such as Pennsylvania is to have a system of
scientific checks which can act the final arbiters in
contentious elections.
Exit polls are scientific and have been used for 40 years
with incredible accuracy. An exiting voter answers an
anonymous paper ballot which gets placed in a cardboard box
and later gets tallied. The accuracy between exit polls and
the actual counted ballots is high; usually there is at most
a 1% difference between the two.
3.
Exit polls are also so sensitive that a two percent difference
has been enough to detect election fraud; on that basis Colin
Powell rejected Ukranian election results in 2004. It is
ironic (or tactical?) that Karl Rove has denigrated the method
of exit polls here in the US.
So how can Pennsylvania be stopped from becoming part of a
perfect electoral storm? By keeping a sharp eye on the exit
polls, allowing exit polls to be the final arbiter, and by
relying on that science based method to challenge the
innacurate faith-based voting DRE machines with which we
have been saddled. Only when we have voter confidence will
our damaged Democracy be truly restored.

11/1/08: Palin Pranked big time! You HAVE to hear this!!

Seriously, I'm telling you - you've GOTTA hear this! If you ever needed more proof what a moron Sarah Palin is - listen to her talking for nearly 6 minutes with a Canadian radio prankster pretending to be French President Nicholas Sarkozy! And here is the transcript - in case you missed some great lines!
Seriously, how can a potential VP be so dumb??? You don't think "I'd love to go hunting with you. We could go try hunting by helicopter, like you did, I never did that.I just love killing those animals. Mm, mm. Take away a life, that is so fun!" would make you a little suspicious?
Or how about "You know we have a lot in common also except that from my house I can see Belgium."
Or "You know my wife is a popular singer and a former top model and she’s so hot in bed. She even wrote a song for you.[sings] It’s his life, Joe the Plumber..."
Or dear God - EVEN THIS: "I must say, Governor Palin, I love the documentary they made on your life, you know, Hustler’s "Nailin Palin."
SP: Oh, good, thank you. Yes.
FNS: That was really edgy."

My forehead hurts - from slapping it so often! I mean, I'm a loss for words! They only ended it because they ran out of material!! I'm sure they never in a million years imagined they would get this far with her!!! How dumb is this woman? And she says she'll run for President "maybe in eight years?"
I don't think so! Let's see, between being found guilty of power abuse, being blessed by a witch doctor in her own church, being associated with a secessionist party, not to mention the hilarious interviews with Gibson and Couric, and now this, she's buried on the national scene.
All I can say is: O Canada! Thank you for the final "nail" in her coffin!