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!

10/31/08: Americans agree: Goodbye Palin!

For the regular reader(s) of this column, it is no secret that I think Sarah Palin is supremely unqualifed to be the VP. In fact, I think she is unfit to be Governor, or hold any public office at all. She is clearly drunk on her own power and thinks that ignorance is a virtue. She has abused her power at every level, and has left a trail of corruption, rancour, divisiveness, abuse and cronyism in her wake. OK, I think you get my drift! This is not news.
But this is big news: 59 % of Americans now agree with me that Palin is unfit for VP! Up by 9% in less than a month. This merely confirms what I've been saying for a while - that picking Palin was a huge and stupid gamble for McCain that has not paid off - in fact, all evidence says she has dragged down the ticket. Bob Cesca on HuffPost agrees:
But what's almost as thrilling [as the end of Bush] is the prospect of Sarah Palin finally going away. Next Wednesday at this time, it's entirely possible that we'll see the last of Sarah Palin on the national stage. At least for now.

Sure, she's provided us with a bottomless cup of blogging material and, more importantly, she's a huge drag on the McCain campaign. And this week, with the Conga line of McCain campaign insiders dishing out leak after delicious leak about Palin, the slow-motion McTrain-wreck has been especially entertaining. But ultimately, the schadenfreude and the hilariously inexplicable interviews are merely distractions from the truly awful things that Sarah Palin represents.

I've seriously had enough of the winking, the giant-chinned-smirking, the too-sibilant forks-on-a-chalkboard "s" sounds, the "nookyooler," the "you betchas," and especially her Romper Room-like penchant for naming and labeling everyone in her audiences: "Romper bomper stomper boo, tell me, tell me, tell me, do! I see Joe the Plumber, Roscoe the Racist, Zed the Gimp..." Yeah, she's not unserious enough as it is. Give her something really stupid to do on the stump. Good call, McCain people.

Today, Palin continued to provide evidence of her vast ignorance of the US Constitution and of her unshakeable faith that all laws were written only to serve her whim: she claimed that her "First Amendment rights may be threatened by "attacks" from reporters who suggest she is engaging in a negative campaign against Barack Obama." Constitutional law expert Glenn Greenwald has this to say:
Somehow, in Sarah Palin's brain, it's a threat to the First Amendment when newspapers criticize her negative attacks on Barack Obama. This is actually so dumb that it hurts.
The First Amendment is actually not that complicated. It can be read from start to finish in about 10 seconds. It bars the Government from abridging free speech rights. It doesn't have anything to do with whether you're free to say things without being criticized, or whether you can comment on blogs without being edited, or whether people can bar you from their private planes because they don't like what you've said.

If anything, Palin has this exactly backwards, since one thing that the First Amendment does actually guarantee is a free press. Thus, when the press criticizes a political candidate and a Governor such as Palin, that is a classic example of First Amendment rights being exercised, not abridged.

This isn't only about profound ignorance regarding our basic liberties, though it is obviously that. Palin here is also giving voice to the standard right-wing grievance instinct: that it's inherently unfair when they're criticized. And now, apparently, it's even unconstitutional.

According to Palin, what the Founders intended with the First Amendment was that political candidates for the most powerful offices in the country and Governors of states would be free to say whatever they want without being criticized in the newspapers. In the Palin worldview, the First Amendment was meant to ensure that powerful political officials such as herself would not be "attacked" in the papers. Is it even possible to imagine more breathaking ignorance from someone holding high office and running for even higher office?

UPDATE: The Constitution also guarantees freedom of association. Thus, by Palin's "reasoning," when newspapers -- or Palin herself -- criticize Obama for his associations, they're threatening his constitutional rights.

All I can say is, while Palin has provided a lot of fun for me blogging here, I can't wait to toast her exit from the national stage in less than 4 days! And I hope that the good people of Alaska have the sense to impeach her and make sure she never holds public office again.

10/30/08: Obama big hit live and on TV, while McCain buses in schoolkids for rally!

Obama's half-hour TV spots last night were watched by 26.3 million people last night (30 million including the Spanish Univision)- handily beating out the regular programming which would been seen by ~23 million! In case you missed it last night, here's the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GtREqAmLsoA
UPDATE: 33 million watched the Obamaercial, according to Nielsen. Rasmussen says 55% of voters watched at least some of it!
Obama was also interviewed by Chares Gibson on ABC, AND later appeared on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart - see it here if you missed it - Obama gave the Daily Show its biggest audience ever, with 3.6 million viewers, 600,000 more than the last record set on Oct 8, when the guest was - Michelle Obama!! Obama totally dominates the airwaves! AND if you have MSNBC on your cable, don't miss Obama tonight at 8pm on the brand-new hit show hosted by Rachel Maddow! It should be fun!
Finally last night, Bill Clinton appeared on stage with Obama in Kissimee, FL, for the first time since the convention - he gave a terrific warmup speech and Obama took it from there - there was good energy between the two. Obama pointed to enthusiasm he's encountering in Florida by noting the crowd of 40,000 people who showed up for the midnight rally!

Meanwhile McCain buses in school kids to fill his rally! They actually had to bus in school kids from the surrounding area in order to fill the rally in Defiance, Ohio. A local school district official confirmed after the event that of the 6,000 people estimated by the fire marshal to be in attendance this morning, more than 4,000 were bused in from schools in the area.
What's more, when Sen. John McCain called out for his new buddy Joe the Plumber to stand up, there was only confused silence. Even Joe the Plumber wasn't there.

10/29/08: Obama endorsed by Alaska's biggest paper and conservatives' leading thinker

The latest big-name Republican to break ranks and endorse Sen Barack Obama for President is Francis Fukuyama , writing in The American Conservative, advisor to Ronald Reagan and one of the stalwarts of the neoconservative movement. This is the guy who bragged that “the End of History” was at hand when the Soviet empire collapsed, and who has now endorsed the man McCain and Palin are calling “a dangerous communist”?? Well, get in line, Francis; you’re only the latest in an increasingly long line of prominent Repubs who are so disgusted with McCain’s repulsive campaign and his atrocious choice of Palin for his VP, that they would actually turn around and endorse Obama. As Fukuyama says:

It is hard to imagine a more disastrous presidency than that of George W. Bush. While John McCain is trying desperately to pretend that he never had anything to do with the Republican Party, I think it would a travesty to reward the Republicans for failure on such a grand scale.

McCain’s appeal was always that he could think for himself, but as the campaign has progressed, he has seemed simply erratic and hotheaded. His choice of Sarah Palin as a running mate was highly irresponsible.
McCain’s lurching from Reaganite free- marketer to populist tribune makes one wonder whether he has any underlying principles at all.

By the way, Obama had a great comeback to McCain’s most recent allegations:

“He's been spending these last few days calling me every name in the book. Lately he's called me a socialist for wanting to roll-back the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans so we can finally give tax relief to the middle class. I don't know what's next. By the end of the week he'll be accusing me of being a secret communist because I shared my toys in kindergarten.”

Major newspapers endorsements for Obama/Biden have also increased dramatically since I last reported on this. Currently, the Democratic team now leads by 231 to 102,a better than 2-1 margin and an even wider spread in the circulation of those papers - the Obama-backing papers have 21 million, compared with McCain's 7 million. At least 46 papers have now switched to Obama from Bush in 2004, with just four flipping to McCain Three of the top five dailies in deep red state Texas have switched from Bush to Obama this time, as has Alaska's major newspaper, the Anchorage Daily News. Concluding (reluctantly) that their homegirl Palin is not ready to be President, ADN says:

Like picking Sen. McCain for president, putting her [Palin] one 72-year-old heartbeat from the leadership of the free world is just too risky at this time.
It is Sen. Obama who truly promises fundamental change in Washington. You need look no further than the guilt-by-association lies and sound-bite distortions of the degenerating McCain campaign to see how readily he embraces the divisive, fear-mongering tactics of Karl RoveSen.

Barack Obama, the Democratic nominee, brings far more promise to the office. In a time of grave economic crisis, he displays thoughtful analysis, enlists wise counsel and operates with a cool, steady hand.

Well put. I couldn't say it better myself.