The Ledes

Friday, October 4, 2024

CNBC: “The U.S. economy added far more jobs than expected in September, pointing to a vital employment picture as the unemployment rate edged lower, the Labor Department reported Friday. Nonfarm payrolls surged by 254,000 for the month, up from a revised 159,000 in August and better than the 150,000 Dow Jones consensus forecast. The unemployment rate fell to 4.1%, down 0.1 percentage point.”

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Public Service Announcement

Washington Post: "Americans can again order free rapid coronavirus tests by mail, the Biden administration announced Thursday. People can request four free at-home tests per household through covidtests.gov. They will begin shipping Monday. The move comes ahead of an expected winter wave of coronavirus cases. The September revival of the free testing program is in line with the Biden administration’s strategy to respond to the coronavirus as part of a broader public health campaign to protect Americans from respiratory viruses, including influenza and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), that surge every fall and winter. But free tests were not mailed during the summer wave, which wastewater surveillance data shows is now receding."

Washington Post: “Comedy news outlet the Onion — reinvigorated by new ownership over this year — is bringing back its once-popular video parodies of cable news. But this time, there’s someone with real news anchor experience in the chair. When the first episodes appear online Monday, former WAMU and MSNBC host Joshua Johnson will be the face of the resurrected 'Onion News Network.' Playing an ONN anchor character named Dwight Richmond, Johnson says he’s bringing a real anchor’s sense of clarity — and self-importance — to the job. 'If ONN is anything, it’s a news organization that is so unaware of its own ridiculousness that it has the confidence of a serial killer,' says Johnson, 44.” ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: I'll be darned if I can figured out how to watch ONN. If anybody knows, do tell. Thanks.

Washington Post: “First came the surprising discovery that Earth’s atmosphere is leaking. But for roughly 60 years, the reason remained a mystery. Since the late 1960s, satellites over the poles detected an extremely fast flow of particles escaping into space — at speeds of 20 kilometers per second. Scientists suspected that gravity and the magnetic field alone could not fully explain the stream. There had to be another source creating this leaky faucet. It turns out the mysterious force is a previously undiscovered global electric field, a recent study found. The field is only about the strength of a watch battery — but it’s enough to thrust lighter ions from our atmosphere into space. It’s also generated unlike other electric fields on Earth. This newly discovered aspect of our planet provides clues about the evolution of our atmosphere, perhaps explaining why Earth is habitable. The electric field is 'an agent of chaos,' said Glyn Collinson, a NASA rocket scientist and lead author of the study. 'It undoes gravity.... Without it, Earth would be very different.'”

The New York Times lists Emmy winners. The AP has an overview story here.

New York Times: “Hvaldimir, a beluga whale who had captured the public’s imagination since 2019 after he was spotted wearing a harness seemingly designed for a camera, was found dead on Saturday in Norway, according to a nonprofit that worked to protect the whale.... [Hvaldimir] was wearing a harness that identified it as “equipment” from St. Petersburg. There also appeared to be a camera mount. Some wondered if the whale was on a Russian reconnaissance mission. Russia has never claimed ownership of the whale. If Hvaldimir was a spy, he was an exceptionally friendly one. The whale showed signs of domestication, and was comfortable around people. He remained in busier waters than are typical for belugas....” ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: Oh, Lord, do not let Bobby Kennedy, Jr., near that carcass. ~~~

     ~~~ AP Update: “There’s no evidence that a well-known beluga whale that lived off Norway’s coast and whose harness ignited speculation it was a Russian spy was shot to death last month as claimed by animal rights groups, Norwegian police said Monday.... Police said that the Norwegian Veterinary Institute conducted a preliminary autopsy on the animal, which was become known as 'Hvaldimir,' combining the Norwegian word for whale — hval — and the first name of Russian President Vladimir Putin. 'There are no findings from the autopsy that indicate that Hvaldimir has been shot,' police said in a statement.”

New York Times: Botswana's “President Mokgweetsi Masisi grinned as he lifted the diamond, a 2,492-carat stone that is the biggest diamond unearthed in more than a century and the second-largest ever found, according to the Vancouver-based mining operator Lucara, which owns the mine where it was found. This exceptional discovery could bring back the luster of the natural diamond mining industry, mining companies and experts say. The diamond was discovered in the same relatively small mine in northeastern Botswana that has produced several of the largest such stones in living memory. Such gemstones typically surface as a result of volcanic activity.... The diamond will likely sell in the range of tens of millions of dollars....”

Click on photo to enlarge.

~~~ Guardian: "On a distant reef 16,000km from Paris, surfer Gabriel Medina has given Olympic viewers one of the most memorable images of the Games yet, with an airborne celebration so well poised it looked too good to be true. The Brazilian took off a thundering wave at Teahupo’o in Tahiti on Monday, emerging from a barrelling section before soaring into the air and appearing to settle on a Pacific cloud, pointing to the sky with biblical serenity, his movements mirrored precisely by his surfboard. The shot was taken by Agence France-Presse photographer Jérôme Brouillet, who said “the conditions were perfect, the waves were taller than we expected”. He took the photo while aboard a boat nearby, capturing the surreal image with such accuracy that at first some suspected Photoshop or AI." 

Washington Post: “'Mary Cassatt at Work' is a large and mostly satisfying exhibition devoted to the career of the great American artist beloved for her sensitive and often sentimental views of family life. The 'at work' in the title of the Philadelphia Museum of Art show references the curators’ interest in Cassatt’s pioneering effort to establish herself as a professional artist within a male-dominated field. Throughout the show, which includes some 130 paintings, pastels, prints and drawings, the wall text and the art on view stresses Cassatt’s fixation on art as a career rather than a pastime.... Mary Cassatt at Work is on view at the Philadelphia Museum of Art through Sept. 8. philamuseum.org

New York Times: “Bob Newhart, who died on Thursday at the age of 94, has been such a beloved giant of popular culture for so long that it’s easy to forget how unlikely it was that he became one of the founding fathers of stand-up comedy. Before basically inventing the hit stand-up special, with the 1960 Grammy-winning album 'The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart' — that doesn’t even count his pay-per-view event broadcast on Canadian television that some cite as the first filmed special — he was a soft-spoken accountant who had never done a set in a nightclub. That he made a classic with so little preparation is one of the great miracles in the history of comedy.... Bob Newhart holds up. In fact, it’s hard to think of a stand-up from that era who is a better argument against the commonplace idea that comedy does not age well.”

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A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves. -- Edward R. Murrow

Publisher & Editor: Marie Burns


Monday
Nov052012

Congressional, Gubernatorial Races

Congressional Races

By State, in Alpha Order

NBC projects that Democrats retain control of the Senate. At noon Wednesday, Democrats now have 52 seats in the Senate. The North Dakota Senate seat, where Democrat Heidi Heitkamp is leading, is the only Senate contest that the networks or the AP haven't called.

     ... Update: the AP has called the North Dakota race for Heidi Heitkamp, bringing the total number of Democratic Senators to 53, with two Independents, one of whom is Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who causes with the Democrats; the other is Senator-Elect Angus King of Maine, who has been cagey about his plans.

NBC projects that Republicans will retain the House. As of noon Wednesday, Democrats have picked up 5 seats. Currently AP-confirmed totals are Republicans 232, Democrats 191.

Arizona Senate: Rep. Jeff Flake (R) defeats Democrat Dr. Richard Carmona to fill the seat vacated by Sen. John Kyl (R). Another shame.

California Senate: Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D) retains her seat.

Connecticut Senate: NBC calls the race for Rep. Chris Murphy (D) in what was expected to be a close race against the self-funded Wrestling Lady Linda McMahon (R).

Delaware Senate: Sen. Tom Carper (D) retains his seat.

Florida Senate: Miami Herald: "Democrat Bill Nelson strolled easily into reelection for a third term Tuesday, demolishing Republican challenger Connie Mack IV by a wide margin in a bitterly fought and expensive contest. Nelson, 70, will return to Washington as the only Democrat in statewide office in Florida...."


Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/11/06/3085076/nelson-appears-headed-to-easy.html#storylink=cpy

Florida House: Orlando Sentinel: "Look out, Congress. Alan Grayson is coming back. The fiery Orlando Democrat won a double-digit victory on Tuesday night, besting Republican Todd Long in Florida's newly created 9th Congressional District... His victory was all but assured once the Aug. 14 primary was over. The 9th Congressional District, which includes Osceola County and parts of Orange and Polk, is heavily Democratic, and Grayson raised $3.5 million in campaign funds to Long's $91,000.... Grayson also drew one of the weaker candidates in the Republican field — in part because he spent more than $110,000 in the GOP primary to help sink John Quiñones, the Hispanic chair of the Osceola County Commission."

Florida House: Newsweek: "One of Congress's top Islamophobes, Republican Rep. Allen West, lost his reelection bid to Democratic challenger Patrick Murphy early this morning. With 100 percent of votes in from South Florida's 18th District, Murphy edged out the Tea Party freshman West by less than 2,500 votes, despite lopsided fundraising. West spent more than $17 million to Murphy's $3.6 million, and both candidates poured money into ads that made the race one of the country's nastiest." ...

     ... Dan Amira of New York: "With 100 percent of precincts reporting, but with some provisional and absentee ballots yet to be counted, West trails political newcomer Patrick Murphy by .74 percent, or 2,456 votes. Murphy's campaign has declared victory, while West has yet to concede and is demanding a recount in one county which he claims has shown 'hostility and demonstrated incompetence.' However, in Florida, recounts are triggered when the winning margin is .5 percent or less, not when a candidate wants one really bad." (CW Note: West ran in a nice, new GOP-friendly district. During redistricting, the Florida Republican legislature attempted to make West's district Republican-safe.)

Hawaii Senate: Rep. Mazie Hirono (D) defeats former Gov. Linda Lingle (R).

Illinois House: the wonderful Tammy Duckworth (D) defeats the hideous Joe Walsh (RTP).

Indiana Senate: Indianapolis Star: "Democrat Joe Donnelly used a message of bipartisanship to earn an unlikely victory amid a Republican tide Tuesday night -- a win also aided by campaign comments by his opponent, Richard Mourdock, that troubled some voters. Donnelly now must try to ... hold onto a seat that Republicans will be eager to take back in six years. His win helped Democrats retain their majority Tuesday might, and he received a congratulatory call from former President Bill Clinton."

Maine Senate: NBC calls it for Angus King, an independent who will probably caucus with the Democrats & favors ObamaCare.

Maryland Senate: the AP calls the race for Sen. Ben Cardin (D).

Massachusetts Senate: Boston Globe: "Elizabeth Ann Warren, a fierce consumer advocate who galvanized liberals across the nation, won a decisive victory over Senator Scott Brown Tuesday, avenging the Democratic Party’s bitter loss ­at the hands of Brown in 2010, an upset that jolted the national political landscape. Buoyed by a strong showing in urban strongholds and liberal suburbs, Warren made history: She will become the first woman to represent Massachusetts in the US Senate.... With 91 percent of the precincts reporting, Warren led Brown by 8 percentage points, 54 percent to 46 percent."

Michigan Senate: Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D) retains her seat.

Minnesota House: Bummer. Washington Post: "Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), founder of the Tea Party Caucus and an unsuccessful candidate for the GOP presidential nomination, hung on to her House seat by narrowly defeating challenger Jim Graves."

Minnesota Senate: Sen. Amy Kobuchar (D) retains her seat.

Mississippi Senate: Sen. Roger Wicker (R) retains his seat.

Missouri Senate: Sen. Claire McCaskill (D) beats Rep. Todd Akin (RTP) & retains her seat.

NEW. Montana Senate: Sen. Jon Tester (D) retains his seat.

Nebraska Senate: Republican Deb Fischer bests former Nebraska Sen. Bob Kerrey (D). This is a pick-up for Republicans; the seat is currently held by ConservaDem Ben Nelson.

New Hampshire: All of the leadership in New Hampshire -- Governor, U.S. Senators, Congressmembers -- are women. Gov.-Elect Hassan is the only female governor in the country now. I believe in 2008, the New Hampshire state senate became majority women. There's something great about New Hampshire.

New Jersey Senate: Sen. Bob Menendez (D) retains his seat.

New Mexico Senate: Rep. Martin Heirich (D) wins seat to replace Democratic Sen. Jeff Bingamin.

New York Senate: Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D) retains her seat.

NEW. North Dakota Senate: on Wednesday afternoon, the AP finally called North Dakota for Heidi Heitkamp, the Democrat.

Ohio Senate: Sen. Sherrod Brown (D) retains his seat. Whew!

Oregon Senate: Sen. Maria Cantwell (D) retains her seat.

Pennsylvania Senate: NBC projects Sen. Bob Casey (D) as the winner.

Rhode Island Senate: Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D) retains his seat.

Tennessee Senate: NBC calls the race for Sen. Bob Corker (R).

Texas Senate: Republican Tea Partier Ted Cruz is the projected winner.

Utah Senate: Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch retains his seat.

Vermont Senate: the AP has called the Vermont Senate race for Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders. CW: I'm awfully happy Bernie is the first Senate call of the night.

Virginia Senate: Washington Post: "Timothy M. Kaine defeated George Allen in Virginia’s Senate race Tuesday night, the climax of an intensely watched matchup that cost more than $80 million."

West Virginia Senate: NBC has called the WVA Senate race for Sen. Joe Manchin, a so-called Democrat who often votes with Republicans.

Wisconsin Senate: Wisconsin State Journal: "U.S. Rep. Tammy Baldwin, D-Madison, became the first openly gay person elected to the U.S. Senate late Tuesday. Baldwin beat longtime former Republican Wisconsin Gov. Tommy Thompson after a bruising campaign that included tens of millions of dollars in negative ads. Baldwin also is the first woman elected to the Senate from Wisconsin."

Wyoming Senate: Sen. John Barrasso (R) retains his seat.

 

Governors' Races

By State, in Alpha Order

Indiana: horrible Rep. Mike Pence (RTP) takes the governorship. Bad choice, Hoosiers.

New Hampshire: Concord Monitor: "Maggie Hassan will become the 81st governor of New Hampshire after defeating Republican Ovide Lamontagne yesterday, keeping the corner office in Democratic hands as Gov. John Lynch steps down after an unprecedented four terms."

North Carolina: Republican Pat McCrory wins an open seat, vacated by Democrat Beverly Purdue.

North Dakota: Gov. John Dalyrymple (R) retains his seat.

Vermont: Peter Shumlin (D) wins governorship.

Utah: Gov. Gary Herbert (R) retains his seat.

Monday
Nov052012

The Commentariat -- Nov. 6, 2012

Returns of the Day

Byron Wolf of ABC News: "The small hamlet of Dixville Notch in New Hampshire ... votes right at midnight.... This year ten voters ... split evenly -- five votes apiece -- for President Obama and ... Mitt Romney.... The other New Hampshire town with midnight voting -- the slightly more populous (32 voters) Hart's Location -- swung towards Obama tonight -- 23 Obama, 9 Romney."

Presidential Race

Nate Silver: "If President Obama wins re-election on Tuesday, the historical memory of the race might turn on the role played by Hurricane Sandy. But while the storm and the response to it may account for some of Mr. Obama's gains, they do not reflect the whole story.... Mr. Obama had already been rebounding in the polls, slowly but steadily, from his lows in early October -- in contrast to a common narrative in the news media that contended, without much evidence, that Mr. Romney still had the momentum in the race. Moreover, there are any number of alternatives to explain Mr. Obama's gains before and after the storm hit." Thanks to a reader for the graphic, which was posted on Daily Kos & elsewhere.... we are at the point where the polling averages in each state are pretty much locked in -- and it is mostly a question of whether the actual results will approximate them, in which case Mr. Obama should claim enough electoral votes between Ohio and other states to win another term." Silver gives Obama a 92 percent chance of winning, which leaves Rmoney with 8 percent odds. Thanks to a reader for the graphic, which appeared on Daily Kos & elsewhere. ...

     ... Update: the latest from Silver: it's Barack-o-Mentum.

... NEW. Nate Cohn of The New Republic: "Obama leads by at least 3 points with 49 percent of the vote in the states won twice by Kerry and Gore, plus New Mexico, Nevada, and Ohio. These states are worth 272 electoral votes [270 needed to win], and with the exception of a stray poll in Michigan, Romney doesn't lead in a single non-partisan survey in any of those states."

... Jon Cohen, et al., of the Washington Post: "Heading into Election Day, likely voters divide 50 percent for President Obama and 47 percent for ... Mitt Romney, according to the latest, final weekend release of the Washington Post-ABC News tracking poll." ...

... NEW. David Atkins of Hullabaloo immortalizes the GOP predictions of the day, all of which have Romney winning in an Electoral College landslide.

President Obama's last campaign rally, or as Michelle Obama put it, the "final event of my husband's final campaign":

E. J. Dionne: "... Obama is fighting a Republican Party determined to bring the Gilded Age back and undo the achievements of a century. And so, beneath the attacks, the counterattacks, and the billions invested by small numbers of the very rich to sway the undecided, we face a choice on Tuesday that is worthy of a great democracy. My hunch is that the country will not go backward, because that's not what Americans do."

CW: I don't agree with some of the prognosticating in Jayne Mayer's post in the New Yorker on the relative rarity of second-term presidents, but there is some content worth reading, especially this: "Geraldine Ferraro, Walter Mondale's Vice-Presidential running mate in 1984, slugged Washington super lawyer Bob Barnett after her debate preparation."

For you football fans, BuzzFeed has videos of Obama & Romney talking sports (or in Romney's case, "sport") & football on last night's "Monday Night Football."

"Tell Mitt Romney Climate Change Isn't a Joke": This Web ad, produced by Forecast the Facts, has had 630,000+ hits. The group is not endorsing President Obama:

At least Montgomery Burns is totally behind Romney, even if Seamus imcaninators aren't:

Prof. Kevin Kruse in a New York Times op-ed: "... the Romney campaign's ... fundamental disdain for facts is something wholly new.... Win or lose, the Romney campaign has placed a big and historic bet on the proposition that facts can be ignored, more or less, with impunity." Kruse identifies four factors that have encouraged fact-abuse.

The Word According to Andy Borowitz

We're strongly opposed to FEMA and health care, but basically O.K. with rape. -- Official Republican Party Closing Argument ...

... Our argument couldn't be simpler: when God wants to create a hurricane or make a woman pregnant, big government should get out of the way. -- Reince Priebus, Republican party chair, elaborating

Zachary Roth of NBC News: aw, shucks. Chris Christie & Mitt Romney are having a little spat on election eve.

"A Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow":

Now that the campaign is (mostly) over, I can reveal what Barack Obama really thinks:

Congressional Races

Eight Democratic Congressmen Who Are Class-A Jerks. A lovely slideshow by Katie McDounough of Salon. One of them, Joe Donnelly of Indiana, is running for Senate against Dick Moredick, the pregnancy-by-rape-&-divine-will guy. Their platforms, however, are pretty much the same.

Voting Problems

Chicago Tribune: "The Chicago elections website was non-functioning most of the day today, adding to the confusion among voters who didn't realize their polling sites had changed. The Chicago Board of Elections website, which voters could use to check where to vote, went down early Tuesday morning. It was functioning by about 4:00 this afternoon."

New Jersey. NorthJersey.com: "In response to widespread reports that voters displaced by Hurricane Sandy haven't received their email and fax ballots on Election Day, the state has extended the deadline for voters to return those ballots to county clerks to 8 p.m. Friday."

Florida. No Electioneering or Engineering Here. Boca News Now: poll workers in Boca Raton blocked a woman wearing an M.I.T. tee-shirt from entering the polling place because they thought she was wearing a Romney campaign shirt. The college lady was eventually allowed to vote when some poll worker figured out how to spell "Mitt."

Illinois. CW: This is a photo of the ballot a poll worker gave a voter at a South Lake Shore Drive Chicago polling place this morning. The voter, Brittney Edwards, took the photos. I am liking the choices for Cultural Commissioner, even if they are dead. Read the Chicago Tribune story:

Pennsylvania. Charles Pierce has more on the Pennsylvania poll voter obstructionists. From a news report: "An Allegheny County judge issued an order to halt electioneering outside a polling location in Homestead. County officials received a complaint shortly before 10 a.m. Tuesday that Republicans outside a polling location on Maple Street in Homestead were stopping people outside the polls and asking for identification." Pierce notes that these kinds of reports have sent Chuck Todd "to the fainting couch."

New York & New Jersey. David Halbfinger, et al., of the New York Times: "People whose lives were upended by Hurricane Sandy joined other voters on Tuesday to cast ballots after elected officials in New York and New Jersey scrambled to relocate scores of polling places that had become unusable because of power failures, flooding or evacuations."

Pennslyvania. Dan Froomkin reports that Pennsylvania poll workers are turning away voters without IDs even though a court has ruled that IDs are not required in Pennsylvania for this election.

Rhode Island. AP: "Rhode Islanders were facing long lines and, in at least two polling places, the wrong ballots as they began voting Tuesday in a hotly contested congressional race and on whether to allow the state's two slots parlors to turn into full-fledged casinos."

New Jersey. Ryan Reilly of TPM: "Superstorm Sandy is having a devastating effect on voting in New Jersey, Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law executive director Barbara Arnwine told reporters at a news conference on Tuesday morning. Voters were being asked for I.D. even though the state has no law requiring it, voting locations opened late and some locations didn't have ballots, she said. 'In a word, there's just one word to describe the experience in New Jersey, and that is catastrophe,' Arnwine said."

     ... Ben Smith of BuzzFeed: "New Jersey's last-minute offer of email voting to displaced residents was greeted by concern by security experts, who warn that email offers a fast track to voter fraud. But the system may have another problem as well: County election administrators are, according to anecdotal reports, simply not responding to all requests for ballots. In two major counties, the email address advertised on the website of the county clerk is not even accepting email."

Voter Suppression
"A National Embarrassment"

Jason Sattler of the National Memo: "Democratic strategist Bob Shrum calls the several hours some voters are spending in line waiting for their right to vote a 'poll tax,' harkening to a Jim Crow-era restriction used to keep African-Americans from voting. Poll taxes were specifically banned by the 24th Amendment."

Jeff Toobin of the New Yorker on whether or not there is a Constitutional right to vote.

NEW. AP: an Ohio judge threw out a lawsuit claiming that "experimental" software recently placed on Ohio's vote-tabulating machines -- could alter vote counts. CW: Um, they will be using flash drives to transfer vote-count data. No room for data manipulation there. Holy shit! ...

... AND Mark Warren of Esquire: Ohio Gov. & former Fox "News" guy John Kasich (R) says Romney will win Ohio by 50,000 votes. CW: I wonder if Kasich is the guy holding the flash drive.

NEW. Joseph of Plunderbund: Tea Party-backed "election observers" of True the Vote, who planned to concentrate their "observations" on heavily-African American voting districts in Ohio, "will not be allowed in Franklin County, Ohio, polling locations because the local elections board discovered that True the Vote had forged some signatures on their qualifying forms. ...

     ... Update: The Columbus Dispatch has the story now.

Libertarian Conor Friedersdorf of the Atlantic: "Hours-long election lines stretching many city blocks are a national embarrassment. And those responsible should be condemned across ideological lines. In Florida and Ohio, state officials arranged things such that citizens had to stand in line for hours to cast their ballot. Asked to extend early voting so that casting a ballot might be a bit less burdensome, they refused. It's an outrage."

NEW. Tim Padgett of Time: Gov. Rick "Scott and the Florida GOP can hand us all the disingenuous reasons they want for reducing early-voting days, including their favorite canard: cracking down on voter fraud. But their real impetus was to reduce Democratic turnout, because Democrats tend to do more early voting than Republicans -- and because they gave Obama a 9-point lead among early in-person voters in 2008.... [Although Scott, et al., have succeeded in bringing early voting down from the 2008 level by almost 10 percent,] Democratic voters, who outnumbered Republicans 46% to 36% in early in-person voting this year, seem to have widened their 2008 lead."

NEW. SEIU: "After receiving information indicating that the Pennsylvania Republican Party and the Pittsburgh Tea Party may be systematically sending poll watchers to predominantly African American precincts in Pittsburgh, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), Common Cause, The Advancement Project, The Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law and the ACLU, together with a number of local community groups, sent a letter to Assistant U.S. Attorney General Thomas Perez, who is responsible for enforcing the Voting Rights Act, asking that the Justice Department 'make every effort to ensure that voters at these targeted locations are able to cast their ballots freely and fairly' and also to ask the Pennsylvania Republican Party about the source of its lists and the basis of its targeting."

Dan Froomkin has an overview of ongoing voter suppression efforts.

What a Difference a State Makes. David Halbfinger, et al., of the New York Times: "Elected officials in New York and New Jersey scrambled Monday to enable displaced citizens to vote in the election on Tuesday, relocating scores of coastal polling places that had become unusable because of power failures, flooding or evacuations. New Jersey and New York both said they would allow voters uprooted by Hurricane Sandy to cast provisional ballots anywhere in their states."

Laboratories of Democracy, Etc.

Abby Rapoport of American Prospect highlights a few if the low lights running for re-election in state legislatures.

Frank Bruni: same-sex marriage opponents trot out the same tired, discredited arguments -- the gays are recruiting your kids, and other fear-mongering oldies. ...

... Josh Voorhees of Slate has some polling on how the gay marriage ballot initiatives may fare.

Reeferendum:

The Home Front

Matt Glassman has some wise & foolish advice for how to spend today -- and tonight. Via Greg Sargent. Do feel free to contribute you own advice, voting experience, whatever.

News Lede

AP: "Gunmen shot and killed the brother of Syria's parliament speaker as he drove to work in the capital Damascus on Tuesday, the state-run news agency reported on Tuesday. Mohammed Osama Laham, brother of Parliament Speaker Jihad Laham, was killed in the Damascus neighborhood of Midan...." CW: excuse me, their names are Osama & Jihad??? I am thinking these are not the Pro-America Laham Brothers.

Monday
Nov052012

The Real America Is Not Pro-America

If President Barack Obama wins, he will be the popular choice of Hispanics, African-Americans, single women and highly educated urban whites. That’s what the polling has consistently shown in the final days of the campaign. It looks more likely than not that he will lose independents, and it’s possible he will get a lower percentage of white voters than George W. Bush got of Hispanic voters in 2000. A broad mandate this is not. -- Jim Vandehei & Mike Allen of Politico

Think about that. Josh Marshall of TPM did. He helpfully translates the Politico writers' meaning into plain English: "Obama’s winning but not with the best votes. I mean really, if you can’t win with a broad cross-section of white people, can you really be said to represent the country? Really."

So get this, people. If you're Hispanic, African-American, a single woman anywhere or a highly-educated urban white, you are not a full-fledged citizen. Maybe, you know, your vote shouldn't  count as much as a white person's vote. Perhaps 3/5ths of a vote is all you deserve. Surely, the belief that Vandehei and Allen toss out helps explain why Republican leaders feel comfortable and justified in suppressing the votes of blacks, Hispanics, students and urban voters.

The Politico writers are simply expressing, in a slightly different way, what Sarah Palin meant in 2008 when she told (white) North Carolinians they lived in "the real America" and the "pro-America areas of this great nation."

There is a particular irony to this line of thinking which anyone who has lived in the American South or in parts of the West knows. White Southerners are Southerners first and Americans second. Many of them are still fighting the Civil War. They resent the North, and they express this resentment in their loathing of the federal government. A hundred and fifty years after the Civil War, the federal government is still a powerful agent of suppression. It wasn't just the war, it wasn't just Reconstruction; it was Brown v. Board of Education, the Civil Rights Acts, the Voting Rights Acts, Title IX. It's "liberal judges," it's the EEOC, it's the Clean Air Act, it's OSHA, it's Lilly Ledbetter, it's ObamaCare. The South still believes in states' rights; Southerners and Westerners are Tenthers because they are not pro-America. They want their independence. That standard Republican line, "We don't want Washington telling us ... (fill in the blank)" resonates with these people.

Racism, xenophobia, Tentherism, gun obsession, anti-abortion activism -- and sexism in general, rumblings about secession -- are all symptoms, not causes, of "Real" America's hatred of the United States of America. These pathologies express a sense of powerlessness and a core belief that the federal government, in particular, is sapping white American men of their God-given right to do whatever they want. The Tea Party reveres Early America because in those times, certain men of certain European stock had a monopoly on power. (It never occurs to the Tea Partiers, of course, that the majority of them do not come from that same stock. They assume, wrongly, that they have the right stuff. Why women belong to the Tea Party baffles me; it might be ignorance of history [see Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann], it might be Stockholm Syndrome.)

The only part of the federal government these "Real" Americans support is the military. Why that is should be obvious: the purpose of the military, in their eyes, is to gain dominion over all of the second-class citizens of the world; that is, Anybody But Us.

Some will see another irony in "Real" Americans' hatred of the federal government: that is that red states, generally, get more back from the federal government than they put into it, something New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie alluded to last week. This really is not so ironic when you look at it from the point of view of a Real American: (1) I deserve it, and (2) I resent it. There's a general belief that people are grateful for favors. A lot of us are. But that gratitude often turns into resentment. We "owe" our benefactor. That gives him a certain power over us. Add to that the likelihood that the benefactor was more powerful in the first place: he was able to do a favor because he had some power we didn't have. In fact, often he continues to exert that power. Yeah, I was glad the boss hired me, but now he's making me jump through hoops. Yeah, I was glad the bank gave me a loan that I barely qualified for; now I'm paying usurious interest. Yeah, the government gave me food stamps when I was out of a job; now that I'm back at work they're taxing the hell out of me.

The Republican party is awfully good at tapping into that resentment, and they're good at it because the party leaders share it. Those whom they don't resent, they despise. They are all about power, power they believe they deserve. When the Romneys say its "their turn," they believe it. They resent the 47 percent, and they don't think "those people" -- those irresponsible moochers -- should have equal rights. "Those people" haven't done their fair share. (Never mind that this isn't necessarily true.) When Jim Vandehei and Mike Allen imply some are more equal than others, they believe that so deeply that it doesn't occur to them not to express it as fact. The Democratic coalition -- they say -- simply does not represent Real America. So it is illegitimate.

This is birtherism writ large. During his first term, the right tried to prove President Obama was not an American. (Oddly, they never tried to prove his mother was not an American. Whether or not Obama was born in Kenya, he would still qualify for the presidency as long as he had an American parent.) This was a necessary sideshow because a lot of Real Americans voted for Obama. In this election, as the Politico writers suggest, many of those former Obama-backing Real Americans will vote for Mitt Romney. This allows Republicans to delegitimize a second Obama term in different ways. One of course will be a claim that the election was rigged. If the election is as close as polls suggest, expect voter fraud suits to pop up almost as fast as conspiracy theories. But the other way to delegitimize the election is already here, perfectly captured by Vandehei & Allen: Obama voters are illegitimate.

So, to those of us who vote for Obama, here's the word: We are all Kenyans now.