The thing that still makes me nervous about the election is that the Republican’s are so good at stealing elections.  Remember how the vote tallies didn’t match the exit polls in 2004?  Remember how there weren’t enough voting machines in minority precincts?  How can John McCain be as close as he is in the polls?  I expect a lot of talk about the “Bradley effect” or the “Wilder effect,” as something to explain why McCain was able to pull out a slim victory.  The mainstream media has spent months already coming up with plausible reason for Obama losing.

Plus, of course, electronic voting machines like the one in the Simpsons.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1aBaX9GPSaQ

Unfortunately not all news outlets will do what our local news radio did, they gave all the background at the same time that they broadcast the story, and although there was no scorn in the newsreader’s voice, it’s hard not to hear the scorn in the content. Of course, PA is still in play, so I was a bit surprised, but gratified.

My eldest sister lives in IN. She believes everything she hears that’s negative about Obama. (I don’t think she reads the newspaper, so I’m guessing internet wingnut sites.) She told me in June (fortunately the one time I’ll see her in a few years) that Obama is a racist. I just left the room.

Well, as I said on my own blog, if guilt by association reigns supreme then Sarah Palin’s relationships with her husband (namely his association with a separatist group), her church and David Brickner of <s>Jews</s> Poseurs for Jesus show what a threat she is to the freedom of the citizens of this country.  Let’s be honest Jesse, if that woman has power, <a href=“http://pandagon.net/index.php/site/comments/obamosis/”>.

carp!  I really need to preview things before I post

BEWARE I LIVE

“The thing that still makes me nervous about the election is that the Republican’s are so good at stealing elections.  Remember how the vote tallies didn’t match the exit polls in 2004?  Remember how there weren’t enough voting machines in minority precincts?”

I find there is a distressing tendency on the left as on the right to see events as being caused by a vast nefarious conspiracy. This paranoid tendency is dangerous. Kerry lost because he was a weak candidate going up against a still relatively popular President during war time. That is all the explanation needed. The election wasn’t stolen. And even if Kerry had gotten the extra votes he needed in Ohio to win the Electoral College, he still would have lost the popular vote. Since most progressives I think advocate for a national popular vote, the win would have been illegitimate.

“How can John McCain be as close as he is in the polls? “

He’s not close. Obama is currently up by an average of about 8 points, which is a huge gap (about the Bush I-Dukakis gap). The election is on the verge of turning into a runaway. In any case, there are lots of Republicans out there. I expect the polls to tighten a bit before Nov. 4, but Obama’s ground game will counteract some of that. I figure about a 6 point popular vote win for Obama, which will be a convincing victoy.

The more I see/hear this woman, the more I think she has a serious learning disability that she covers for by deciding that God tells her what he wants her to do inside her head, and no amount of reality information will change that.

Frankly, she’s just not stupid and/or drunk enough to account for her record in college - something else is going on.  She seems unable to process information in a typical fashion - at least, not consistent with her overall apparent intelligence.  She clearly doesn’t read much or isn’t able to read anything that isn’t line-item, doesn’t process information, writes in sketchy circular notes, keeps her husband too close for him not to be compensating for something, mangles grammar, etc.

Add in her lack of self control/belligerence and the whole mess reeks of exceptional adaptation to Non-verbal Learning Disorder.  (not all people with NLD are this socially capable or coordinated, but I’m mostly focusing here on the apparent learning disabilities like “can’t read well or process written info, but memorizes things quickly”, and her craving for absolute structure and control and order, etc.)

Charles Keating and G. Gordon Liddy have much deeper ties to McCain than this Ayers fool does to Obama.  Obama said Ayers’ actions were deplorable, but McCain calls Liddy a friend and did everything he could to keep Keating from trouble.  Not to mention his Mrs. McCain’s drug-addled swindling.

But I guess they really do want to go there, so take it away Joe Biden!

Plus, when will Palin and her administration back in Alaska deign to answer those subpoenas?  Oh yeah, that’s partisan.  Excused!  Sorry.

What? Jeffro Goldstein? I thought he quit blogging to devote time to tracking down and pummeling whoever said something about his kid.

I find there is a distressing tendency on the left as on the right to see events as being caused by a vast nefarious conspiracy. This paranoid tendency is dangerous. Kerry lost because he was a weak candidate going up against a still relatively popular President during war time.

In general, Scott, I agree with you, and very much appreciate your point. I still remember some pretty foremost liberal bloggers panicking because of confident statements by Karl Rove in Sept. & Oct. 2006, and saying that, no matter what they did, the Republicans would still win, because they were all caught in a plan by Rove. We would do well to remember that, and remember how totally wrong they (and Rove) were.

At the same time, it does appear to me that at least a couple of states, such as Florida and Ohio, may have had significant vote fraud done by the Republican party in 2000 and 2004. It seems to me that the national polling infrastructure is patchwork, rickety, and actually somewhat vulnerable to localised fraud. It also seems to me that attempts by Republicans to legally supress voting could have some real effect.

How does this look to everyone else? Am I being too paranoid?

>> This is, of course, the already discredited Ayers stuff.

It’s not discredited at all. In addition to the Woods Foundation connection, Obama was appointed chairman of the Annenberg Challenge, an initiative to reform Chicago public schools started by Ayers. Obama and Ayers collaborated on the Challenge, and as chairman, Obama directed funds to Ayers’ projects.
http://www.ibdeditorial.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=304729375940845

>>a man who’s now a college professor and member of semi-polite society.

Ah, this is the crux of the problem. A guy like Ayers ought to have been driven out of society altogether, semi-polite or otherwise. It’s unfortunate that the charges against him were dropped b/c evidence was gathered improperly – without that, he would have been sent to jail. He admits he set bombs. In fact, he claimed *he didn’t do enough* in an interview with the NYT that ran on Sept 11, 2001.

Here’s the problem you liberals have: The criminal justice system was unable to send him away for you, but you didn’t exclude Ayers from society *on your own.* No, he became a tenured professor at a large, state-funded university. He should have been toxic, unable to get any job better than gas station attendant, b/c of his past. But really, his past didn’t trouble the liberals who are in a position to hire in academia – after all, what’s so wrong about setting off bombs at the Pentagon? And now you’re stuck with him.

He said he “didn’t do enough” to stop the Vietnam War, not that he didn’t bomb enough.

Here’s the problem you liberals have: The criminal justice system was unable to send him away for you, but you didn’t exclude Ayers from society *on your own.* No, he became a tenured professor at a large, state-funded university. He should have been toxic, unable to get any job better than gas station attendant, b/c of his past.

If the criminal justice system could find no fault with him, then why should “liberals” have found fault with him?

But really, his past didn’t trouble the liberals who are in a position to hire in academia – after all, what’s so wrong about setting off bombs at the Pentagon? And now you’re stuck with him.

Which actually isn’t that big of a problem, since the majority of the nation doesn’t give a rats ass, and never will.

He said he “didn’t do enough” to stop the Vietnam War, not that he didn’t bomb enough.

Ben D.  on 10/05

To be fair, Ben, that quote could be taken a lot of different ways.

At the same time, it does appear to me that at least a couple of states, such as Florida and Ohio, may have had significant vote fraud done by the Republican party in 2000 and 2004. It seems to me that the national polling infrastructure is patchwork, rickety, and actually somewhat vulnerable to localised fraud. It also seems to me that attempts by Republicans to legally supress voting could have some real effect.

Vote suppression is the real tactic we have to worry about. Most of the Republican Party’s ground game is designed to keep “those” people from voting rather than turning out their own base. Invalidating registrations, purging “felons” from the voter rolls, poll challenges, voter ID laws, misleading and incorrect mailers, jamming phone lines of organizations that give people rides to the polls—that kind of thing.

I think vote machine hacking and counting fraud are distractions from the real problems.

Here’s the problem you liberals have: The criminal justice system was unable to send him away for you, but you didn’t exclude Ayers from society *on your own.* No, he became a tenured professor at a large, state-funded university. He should have been toxic, unable to get any job better than gas station attendant, b/c of his past.

A question, Tommy Shanks. Have conservatives ever tried to render Oliver North, Elliot Abrams, Ronald Reagan, or Henry Kissinger toxic in this way?

Scott, I know that your arguments all make sense, but the use of the word conspiracy to discredit the people you disagree with is a little bit overdone.  If the chairman of a company that manufactures voting machines says that he’ll do anything to help the Republican President win in 2004 and there are reports of voting irregularities in different precincts, especially when the vote count fails to be reflected in the exit polls, then what is it if not a conspiracy? 

If two or more people get together to plan something then it’s a conspiracy.  Why is it that people hear the word conspiracy and automatically think that the person whom it’s being used against is a total nut job who probably wears an aluminum foil hat to bed and sits up nights making sure the lizard people don’t hack his files?

Do you think there are no conspiracies?  I don’t think everything going on in this country is the result of some vague massive conspiracy, there’s nothing vague about it.  The country’s wealth is traveling upward, we’re putting billions into salvaging bad loans while the Republicans try to convince us that it’s all the fault of the Carter administration for letting minorities have a chance at credit.  Even if Obama is elected, and I hope you’re right that it’s a lock for him, there won’t be a lot of money for social programs or health care.  The people who are able to manipulate public policy by manipulating the money supply will keep on doing so, and you will keep on explaining to yourself how those of us who wonder if maybe it isn’t just happenstance and coincidence that our economy is crashing down around us, and our children are dying in foreign wars while the country is falling into the hands of people that believe the end of times is here already so why bother trying to save the planet?

Maybe I am nuts though.  Maybe the people in charge do have our best interest in mind.  It’s the first week of October.  Why are 16% of voters undecided?  How much more damage does the current administration have to do to the country before those people make up their minds? 

Maybe Jesus is coming though.  I think I’ll go outside and watch the sky.

G Porgy

Of course there are real conspiracies. There have been many proven conspiracies, throughout history, to commit crimes, mislead people, and other things. Some have been done by governments, others by corporations, some by individuals.

I think, however, that that word ‘conspiracy’ has gotten a connotation, over the past 30 years or so, of meaning a belief that cannot be disproven. When used as “conspiracy theory” that is its meaning. It means a belief that some group has committed a crime, and the holder of this belief will not evaluate it by using reason.

Like people who believe that the Illuminati control the whole of society. Or people who think that a sinister “New World Order” is plotting against them, and undermining their government and way of life. There is no way to convince these people that the Illuminati doesn’t really exist, or that there is no “New World Order” storing black helicopters in area 51. There’s just a world where all kinds of bad shit sometimes happens for no simple, clear reason.

Quick, quick, Goldstein Psychic Hotline, riddle me this: will there be any sort of sports broadcasting on my television this afternoon?  You say football and baseball?  Well, that’s certainly unbelieva…oh, sweet merciful Jesus, it is!  IT IS!  WHY ARE YOU THE DEVIL?

Wow, Jesse.  You’re really channelling Patton Oswalt on this one. =)

>>If the criminal justice system could find no fault with him, then why should “liberals” have found fault with him?

B/c the standard of proof in a criminal case is much higher than in civil society.

>>Have conservatives ever tried to render Oliver North, Elliot Abrams, Ronald Reagan, or Henry Kissinger toxic in this way?

I guess I missed the news stories about the bombs they set on U.S. soil.

I wish that all the people who use the phrase “doesn’t play in Peoria” would actually come spend time in Peoria.  The breeder hicks joke might not get a big laugh, but it would garner nods, not boos.  Folks around here know that rural families tend to have more kids, especially if they’re on working farms.  They also realize that ignorance comes in many forms and isn’t reserved for “hicks.”  Not only that, but Peoria isn’t all that conservative anymore.  It’s a decent-sized Midwestern city with a fairly diverse population for the region.  They’re going to be more upset if stupid attacks replace a discussion of the economy in political speeches, especially since most farmers and businesses rely on loans to plant, update facilities and equipment, pay their workers, etc. 

Does Goldstein realize that Peoria is in Illinois?  You know, the folks who sent Obama to the Senate…

I guess I missed the news stories about the bombs they set on U.S. soil.

So, as long as they didn’t commit a crime on US soil, they are fine with you?

OK then, how about the way that Oliver North sold TOW Anti-Tank missiles, and Hawk anti-aircraft missiles, to Iranians, and also gave money to the “Contra” Nicaraguan terrorist group? He did all of it while in the US.

Also, have you ever tried to get G. Gordon Liddy to be publicly shunned for his part in the Watergate burglary, that he served more than four years in prison for? Liddy also, after the Waco incident in the early 1990s, suggested that in the case of a similar incident, people should shoot federal agents in the head, as they would be wearing bulletproof vests.

Despite these statements and Liddy’s crime, McCain, in November 2007, went on Liddy’s radio show and said:
“I’m proud of you, I’m proud of your family,”
“It’s always a pleasure for me to come on your program, Gordon, and congratulations on your continued success and adherence to the principles and philosophies that keep our nation great.”

Liddy did all these things on US soil, as did McCain. Have you ever attempted to keep McCain from embracing G. Gordon Liddy in this way?

“I guess I missed the news stories about the bombs they set on U.S. soil.”

I guess you also missed the news about the weapons they arranged to deliver to the hands of people who would happily detonate/discharge said weapons directly into American soldiers, here or overseas.

I guess you also missed how they lied and cheated to try to prevent the american people from knowing what deals were being made in our collective name. 

I guess you also missed how replacing personal responsibility for actions taken with “I was being loyal to my leader” or ” I was following orders” was no good at Nuremburg, but suddenly became OK in the late 1980’s for people charged with behaving in the best interests of the people of the United States of America.

In addition, in 1998, Liddy held a fundraiser at his home for McCain. Liddy has also donated at least $5,000 to McCain’s various campaigns.

Have you ever publicly attempted get G. Gordon Liddy completely run out of conservative circles? Have you ever stated that McCain should publicly repudiate Liddy?

Reba: I’m going out on a limb and saying Peoria didn’t send Obama to the Senate.  I grew up in the area, and it’s the reddest of red low-info areas.

OR maybe it was the country nearby, and Peoria is better than that.  I’m not sure.  I’ve been away for a while.

MikeEss

Sure, I agree. But I’m most interested in Tommy Shank’s opinion of the McCain/G. Gordon Liddy situation, since in every significant way it paralells and even exceeds the Obama/Bill Ayres situation.

Tommy

Have you ever expended energy trying to get G. Gordon Liddy separated from the conservative movement? Have you ever stated that McCain should publicly repudiate Liddy, and return his campaign contributions?

That mouth is always open, isn’t it?  The better to horse down that tasty RNC spooooooge…

Here’s the problem you liberals have:

Here’s the problem you conservative twits have: YOU DON’T DO YOUR HOMEWORK.

How about checking out the OTHER board members of the Woods Fund? You know, the ones who’s the President of a Presbyterian seminary? And the one who’s a donor to Orrin Hatch? They should be supporters of terrorists, too, right?

The LIE you keep putting out there is that Obama and Ayers were the only members of that committee. You keep forgetting that there are OTHER people involved.

Then again, quote mining and excising context is what conservative twits (as opposed to honest conservatives) do all the time. Creationists honed it in attacking science in high school textbooks….

So, to summarize Tommy’s opinion, people who have actually been convicted of a crime should be welcomed into society with open arms, but people who prosecutors couldn’t get enough evidence on to get to trial should be shunned by society.

That’s certainly an interesting interpretation of “innocent until proven guilty.”

I guess tommy shanks discovered some more pressing matters

The LIE you keep putting out there is that Obama and Ayers were the only members of that committee. You keep forgetting that there are OTHER people involved.

Also an excellent point gwangung

I can’t find it, but supposedly the current or past owner of the Chicago Tribune, Chicago’s somewhat right-leaning daily, was on the same committee. So perhaps the Chicago Tribune should be suspected of terrorist sympathies as well

I’m sorry G Porgy. Sometimes my pedantic side takes over too much. I know you probably already know what I was getting at

Illinois rural or small-city counties without state colleges are heavily Republican except for the southernmost few counties from the small city of Cairo south. Those few counties had a high black census due to overwhelming migration to free Illinois, while the counties north of Cairo actively excluded* blacks from settling or even passing through. A few river towns have a history of black residents, but otherwise, Illinois has long been lily-white from Cairo to Chicago. Some towns still are effectively hostile. College towns started having black homeowners (professors and technical support staff of the college) sometime in the period between 1970 and 1990.

I drove through S. Illinois during the 2004 election season, and there was nary a Kerry or Obama sign to be seen past the St. Louis eastern suburbs and nearby college town (Edwardsville; undoubtedly Carbondale and Springfield also had many Dem signs).

*everything from lynching and burning houses to “N, don’t let the sun go down on you in this town” signs to real estate agents refusing to show houses, depending on the era. Chicago itself had a great number of “sundown” suburbs that used violence to keep blacks out, Cicero IL being the most famous of the suburbs. See Lorraine Hansberry, Raisin in the Sun, play based on the Cicero IL standoff, among other things.

NancyP, while your general take on the state is somewhat valid, your geography is wrong.  Cairo is the southernmost point in the state; there are no “counties from the small city of Cairo south” in Illinois.  I’m not sure what city you are taking as your cutoff, but it can’t be Cario.

They’ve gone right on with this one at my college- the campus republicans have a poster up saying

“You Wouldn’t Vote For McCain if You Knew He Associated With Timothy McVeigh, Would You?”

And it shows comparison photos of McVeigh and the OKC federal building, along with Ayers then and Ayers now.

Though, c’mon, lets count, kids!!! How many people did McVeigh kill? 168.
How many people did Ayers kill? 0

(okay, their SDS faction mostly succeeded in blowing themselves and various structures up)

Well, there’s always McCain’s felon father-in-law, the foundation of Cindy’s fortune, with the, um, alleged connections to the local mob. Of course the best-known crime there was a car-bombing that killed an investigative reporter, so the wingnuts might be in favor of that…

I drove through S. Illinois during the 2004 election season, and there was nary a Kerry or Obama sign to be seen past the St. Louis eastern suburbs and nearby college town (Edwardsville; undoubtedly Carbondale and Springfield also had many Dem signs).

I haven’t been downstate in years (I barely manage to get back to Chicagoland every couple of years) but I think you’d be seeing way more Obama signs downstate right now than you seem to think.  Obama got 70 percent of the vote in 2004 and it wasn’t all from Chicago—he managed to win over a lot of the cracker farmers* downstate because he educated himself about farming issues and really impressed them with his knowledge.  He’s one of the highest-rated Senators by his constituents.

Of course, I’m guessing that at least some of those votes in 2004 were because Republicans at the polls thought to themselves, “Why should we vote for some carpetbagging n* when we’ve got a perfectly good n* of our own right here?” before they pulled the lever for Obama.  IIRC, about 1/3rd of Republicans crossed over to vote for him, which is pretty impressive these days.

*Yes, that’s right, trolls, I said “cracker farmers” again.  Nyah nyah nyah.

I’m going out on a limb and saying Peoria didn’t send Obama to the Senate.  I grew up in the area, and it’s the reddest of red low-info areas.

They did, in fact, by 68%.  Granted, he was running against Keyes, who was batshit crazy AND from out of state.

I am seeing Obama-Biden signs in Central IL, out in the farming areas, not just in college towns.  I don’t get much past Taylorville, but my girlfriend says she sees them between here and St. Louis, as well.  Obama regularly visited downstate after becoming Senator, and was a champion of the farmers, so he has some cred.  Now, I still think a lot of those places will vote for McCain, which is why I’m grateful for Chicago and all the college towns for providing the votes that take IL out of play.

They did, in fact, by 68%.

Indeed.  Obama even carried freakin’ Woodford County next door (part of metro Peoria), though only 51 - 47.  There were only 10(?) counties that went for Keyes, most of them in the southeast near the Indiana border (except for Iroquois and Massac).

And even though many IL folks would obviously prefer McCain, I think there might still be some tendency to vote for the local kid.

The real scandal here is that Ayers isn’t scrubbing out a prison toilet with his toothbrush.

The criminal justice system was unable to send him away for you, but you didn’t exclude Ayers from society *on your own. [...] He should have been toxic, unable to get any job better than gas station attendant, b/c of his past. But really, his past didn’t trouble the liberals who are in a position to hire in academia – after all, what’s so wrong about setting off bombs at the Pentagon?

Dude, you are living in a nation proudly founded by terrorists.

“[W]henever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it [...] But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government.”

Every single man who signed that, or fought for it, was a terrorist. The only difference between them and Bill Ayers is that they won and he lost.