Another One For The Future Fire

Sure, picking on PJ Media's Bryan Preston is hitting low-hanging fruit with an orbital ion cannon, but the guy prefaces his election pick 5 days out with the tagline "reality check".

Nothing of course could be further from the truth.

More than any poll, it’s wise to watch the campaigns. Watch their body language and their travel and spending patterns. Looking at both campaigns from that point of view, it’s very clear that five days from the election the Obama campaign is in retreat. This morning, Obama spokeswoman Stephanie Cutter accidentally admitted that they’re no longer competing in North Carolina, which Obama won four years ago.

That admission parallels David Axelrod’s mustache bet: He only wagered a shave if Obama lost all of three states that just a couple of weeks ago were supposedly in the bag for Obama. That’s hardly a courageous bet. At the same time, Romney is going up with ads in Minnesota, Michigan, and Pennsylvania in addition to the swing states that he is already advertising in and campaigning in either directly or via surrogates. Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, two states Obama must have in order to win, are definitely in play.

Poll data (objective) is useless.  "Campaign body language" which is subjective, is all that matters.  Really?  Now I know why Nate Silver's dispassionate spreadsheets are such an existential threat to the eternal horse race/both sides do it crowd. 

Preston sums it up:

Five days out, the race for president is far from over, but once you get past the oversampling of Democrats in swing state polls, the fundamentals and the campaigns’ body language point toward a Romney victory on Tuesday. Tomorrow’s jobs numbers may be the president’s last chance to change the trajectory of the race.

Those jobs numbers were pretty good, Bryan.  And no, the "fundamentals" point towards a 4 in 5 chance or so of an Obama win.  Your wishful thinking doesn't change reality, wingnuts.

Guilty As Charged Up, Your Honor

Mitt Romney sure seems to think Tesla Motors is a loser of a green investment.

During [the first] presidential debate, GOP candidate Mitt Romney called Tesla Motors a "loser" company, lumping it in with bankrupt solar power company Solyndra, financially troubled green auto-maker Fisker Automotive and green car battery producer Ener1.

Co-established by billionaire PayPal and SpaceX co-founder Elon Musk, the thriving Tesla manufactures and sells electric vehicles, the most well-known being its luxury sports models. Writes Slate of the company, "In nine years, the startup has gone from a twinkle in Elon Musk's eye to taking over 13,000 orders for the Model S, a luxury sedan that has drawn raves from just about everyone lucky enough to test-drive it. I am one of them. Mitt Romney, clearly, is not."

Mitt might want to reconsider and revise his earlier statement.

For the first time ever, Automobile Magazine has named an all-electric vehicle as its “Car of the Year” for 2013.

Citing its sleek design and high performance, Automobile Magazine said Tesla’s Model S luxury sedan beat out gasoline-powered cars like the Subaru BRZ and the Porsche Boxster.

“It’s the performance that won us over,” Editor-in-Chief Jean Jennings said in the magazine’s January 2013 issue. “The crazy speed builds silently and then pulls back the edges of your face. It had all of us endangering our licenses.”

The Model S can accelerate from zero to 60 miles per hour in 4.3 seconds, making it as fast as the gas-guzzling 470-horsepower Dodge Charger. In a drag race with the 560-horsepower BMW M5, the Model S won. The editors were equally wowed by the sporty suspension and handling of the Model S.

Seems like Tesla's doing just fine, Mr. Romney.   You'd think a businessman would know these things.  Alas, that businessman is Mitt Romney.

And It Begins...The 2014 Tantrum

The post election spin is already gearing up as evidenced by this Politico piece full of emoprogs complaining that President Obama will surely destroy Social Security any time now.

Progressive activists say they’re reasonably confident that the president won’t compromise on ending the upper-income tax cuts. It’s the entitlements that worry them. They want him to stick more closely to the deficit-reduction plan he released in September 2011 that didn’t go as aggressively after savings from beneficiaries.

But Obama signaled last week that he could revive the offer he made to Boehner, which was a mix of new revenues, reduced federal spending and entitlement benefit cuts such as raising the Medicare eligibility age and lowering the cost-of-living increases for Social Security recipients.

“It will probably be messy. It won’t be pleasant,” Obama told The Des Moines Register editorial board. “But I am absolutely confident that we can get what is the equivalent of the grand bargain that essentially I’ve been offering to the Republicans for a very long time, which is $2.50 worth of cuts for every dollar in [taxes], and work to reduce the costs of our health care programs.”

Administration officials say the range of options that Obama has considered in the past are well known, so it shouldn’t be a surprise if they are resurrected.

But progressive leaders don’t want Obama to go back there. Privately, they use words like “debacle” and “betrayal” to describe the backlash that would ensue. They are far more measured in their public statements ahead of the election.

And people wonder why Democrats lost the House 2 years ago.  The people who thought Obama was a debacle and a betrayal stayed home in 2010 and got us this awesome House with Speaker John Boehner we have now, not to mention put GOP governors and legislatures in place in state after state just in time for redistricting, making it even more impossible to dislodge the little carbuncle this year.

All this article show me is the fact that nobody on our side of the field learned a damn thing from liberals not voting in 2010...the real debacle and betrayal.

We're setting it up for 2014.  There's a goal worth striving for.  Maybe we can give the Republicans another 60 seats and control of the Senate then.  That will surely help with more progressive legislation, right?

All About Winning

Throwing Todd Akin under the bus for his awful "legitimate rape" comments was fashionable when Republicans still thought they had a shot at the Senate two months ago without him.  That ship has sailed.

Now or Never PAC, the conservative, Missouri-based super PAC supporting Todd Akin, has upped it's ad buy in the final week of the Missouri Senate race from $800,000 to $1 million, the group's spokesman, Tyler Harber, told TPM Thursday.

The ad, which TPM first reported on Wednesday, argues that Todd Akin is needed in the Senate -- even if he's not a perfect candidate -- in order to help Republicans take control of the Senate.

Gosh, I'm betting there are women in Missouri who would like to know who the donors are to Now or Never PAC, but of course you can buy anonymity when you have that much money.  Free speech, if you can afford it.

Also helps when publicly you're a Republican who has disavowed Akin in the past, too.  Funny how that works.

Jobapalooza

The final jobs report before the election finds October gained 171,000 new jobs, with the jobless rate ticking up to 7.9%.

U-6 was down both adjusted and non-adjusted.  In other words, this was a good jobs report, and one must closer to the 200K+ new jobs level we need to be at.

Republicans are furious, of course.

An Offensive Display

Mitt Romney is pretending to remain on offense going into the final weekend of the campaign as he makes a desperate effort to make headway in Pennsylvania.

In a late campaign push to change the battleground map, Mitt Romney will travel to Pennsylvania on Sunday in the hopes of capturing the traditionally Democratic-leaning state. A Romney campaign official confirmed to CNN the GOP nominee will stop in the Philadelphia area Sunday afternoon. The Pennsylvania event falls into the Romney campaign's newly adopted strategy of expanding the battleground map in the final week of the race.

Top strategists to the GOP nominee targeted Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Minnesota this week for potential gains, pointing to polls in the states that show Romney gaining on the President.

Sure they are, guys.   McCain made similar flailing moves in the last week of the campaign only to lose enough ground in Florida to give the state to Obama in 2008.  This is the act of a guy playing the last cards in his hand when there's nothing left in the deck and he's down big.  Nate Silver's giving 95% odds of Obama winning those three states.  But Romney says "they're in play."

Sure they are.

StupidiNews!

• Day 5 after Sandy finds 3.5 million in parts of New York and New Jersey still without power and facing gas and food shortages as a result.
• California's Proposition 34 seeks to put a permanent moratorium on the death penalty into the state's constitution, and voters will take it up on Tuesday.
• The US is refuting the latest claims of the right on Benghazi, with the CIA saying a team was dispatched after the attack within 25 minutes.
• NYC Mayor Mike Bloomberg has endorsed President Obama for re-election, making his case based on experience and efforts to combat the effects of climate change.
• Japanese electronics giant Sharp is facing an uncertain future after a $3 billion quarterly loss amid a monitor market increasingly dominated by Chinese companies.

Last Call

Dear God, just no.

In the final days of the campaign in Ohio, the stops have been pulled out in the scramble to eke out a win. And that means one super PAC calling on African Americans to vote against President Obama because Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves.

Cable viewers in several markets across the state are being treated to ads by an obscure self-described “alternative conservative” super PAC called the Empower Citizens Network. One of the group’s ads accuses Obama and Democrats of imploding the economy by forcing mortgage companies to lend to “unqualified borrowers” while the Soviet national anthem plays. Another promises welfare recipients that “Republicans can save your money source” by reducing regulations on business.

And then there’s the ad which one viewer told TPM is airing in the Columbus area on cable. Our source caught it a couple of times on MSNBC. That ad is the Empower Citizens Network spot that tells African Americans it’s a “lie” that Democrats support them and cites the Emancipation Proclamation as evidence. 

Ahh yes, the "Listen up you stupid black people, Abraham Lincoln was a Republican!" argument.  Which might be successful except for all the Republicans since Abraham Lincoln being assholes, particularly Nixon, Reagan, and Bush and son.  So we're going to go with "No, stop being a condescending jagoff."

Nice try, however.  Next time, try not to pass laws that make it harder for African-Americans to vote at all in an obvious attempt to disenfranchise us, shall we?

We Interrupt Your Chris Christie Lovefest...

...for the fact that just a week before Hurricane Sandy completely slagged his state and he came crawling on his hands and knees to praise the man, this is what Chris Christie thought of the President.



Just some perspective on what the "bipartisan" Christie really thinks.  The guy went down to Virginia to stump for Romney and called the President "useless" and "arrogant".

But he sure came hat in hand when New Jersey needs millions, maybe billions in federal government dollars to clean up from this mess.  You sure need the federal government now, don't you, Chris?

Trust me.  People will remember.

ODS Is All They Got Left

The Romney plan to win Ohio?  Obama Derangement Syndrome, sold door-to-door.  Meet Jim Lewis, who's happy to show you his Glock with his concealed carry permit.

Lewis and his fellow activist Ann Becker are a new breed of canvassers going door to door along a sloping street full of modest and mostly well-kept homes in this declining steel town in Butler County. This is the first presidential election since the founding of the Tea Party movement which aims to reduce the size of U.S. government.

The two activists are not beholden to any campaign - some would say they are a rogue force - nor do they mention Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney by name.

While they differ with former Massachusetts governor Romney on many policies and suspect his conservative credentials, they are working independently to help him win over undecided voters in swing states such as Ohio.

Fiercely opposed to the reelection of Democratic President Barack Obama, conservatives are trying to employ technology they used successfully earlier this year in a recall vote in Wisconsin to help Romney overcome Obama's narrow Ohio lead in the polls.

Conservative group American Majority Action trains volunteers such as Lewis and Becker to target "low-propensity" voters, or people who are not very interested in politics. They use Gravity, a mobile get-out-the-vote app that aims to filter out regular Republican voters and those who have already voted.

"I'm not doing this for Romney or the Republicans," said Chris Littleton, who is training some 50 volunteers to use the app. "I'm doing this because I'm against Obama."

And in the end, that's all they have.   I'm against Obama.  It doesn't matter what Romney's policies actually are:  I'm against Obama, he says.

You should demand more from your ability to vote.

Gmail Beats Hotmail For #1

Google's Gmail is top dog in e-mail, according to ComScore, which tracks Web site traffic.

In data for October released by ComScore, Gmail saw 287.9 million unique worldwide visitors during the period, edging out Microsoft's Hotmail, which finished with 286.2 million unique visitors. The findings were first reported by GigaOm.

Yahoo still leads in the US and by a large amount.  Frankly, I'm surprised.  I'm also surprised Google is just now passing for number one.  I thought that happened sometime ago and had been verified.  I have nothing against Hotmail or Yahoo, but I have used every major (and most minor) services out there and nothing ever compared to Gmail.  It hooked me immediately, it was the rest of Google's services that took time to win me over.

What say you, readers?  Am I missing some awesome Hotmail or Yahoo feature?  Or is it more a not-Google thing?

Rock Solid Halloween Costume

Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson was mostly ready for his Halloween costume, but seriously... this is great.

Thank you, TMZ!

Unleash Joe Biden: Equality Edition

Joe Biden's campaign stops are always amusing...and very informative as well.

Vice President Joe Biden said transgender discrimination is "the civil rights issue of our time" during a visit to a Florida field office on Tuesday, according to pool reports.

Biden was meeting with volunteers at an Obama for America office in Sarasota, Fla., when he singled out one woman "who he thought had beautiful eyes," reads the pool report. The woman said something to Biden that was inaudible to the pool reporter, but Biden responded to her by saying it was the "civil rights issue of our time."

The woman, Linda Carragher Bourne of Sarasota, later said her daughter was Miss Trans New England and that she had asked Biden if he would help them.

"A lot of my friends are being killed, and they don't have the civil rights yet. These guys are gonna make it happen," Bourne told the reporter.

Good for Joe...because he's right.  The T in LGBTQ often gets overlooked.  Joe Biden and his boss?  These are the guys leading the fight on this.  Mitt Romney sure as hell would never say anything like this.

The vice president has been an ally to the LGBT community. He told gay rights advocates in August that they are "freeing the soul of the American people." Most notably, however, he got out in front of President Barack Obama in May when he unexpectedly announced that he is "absolutely comfortable" with same-sex marriage. Obama, at the time, was still "evolving" on the issue. 

Pretty sure Joe's ahead of the game on this one too...but it's a good thing.

Food For Thoughtless

Mitt Romney is the most fakiest fake faking fake person ever.  Remember that "canceled campaign event" that became a "storm relief event" in Dayton on Tuesday?

The plan was for supporters to bring hurricane relief supplies to the event, and then deliver the bags of canned goods, packages of diapers, and cases of water bottles to the candidate, who would be perched behind a table along with a slew of volunteers and his Ohio right-hand man, Senator Rob Portman. To complete the project and photo-op, Romney would lead his crew in carrying the goods out of the gymnasium and into the Penske rental truck parked outside.

But the last-minute nature of the call for donations left some in the campaign concerned that they would end up with an empty truck. So the night before the event, campaign aides went to a local Wal Mart and spent $5,000 on granola bars, canned food, and diapers to put on display while they waited for donations to come in, according to one staffer. (The campaign confirmed that it "did donate supplies to the relief effort," but would not specify how much it spent.)

Shut.  The front.  Door.

Just another photo op for Mitt, who wouldn't know how to handle a disaster if one landed on his face.  Case in point:  his campaign.

This guy's about as Presidential as a used car salesman.

StupidiNews!

• The US death toll from Sandy is up to 56, with 124 dead across North America from the storm as millions remain without power for a fourth day.
• Four people were wounded in a late night shooting on the campus of the University of Southern California, with the suspect now in custody.
• California Democrats want a probe into possible campaign finance law violations by former GOP Lt. Gov. Luis Maldonado, now running for Congress.
• Sandy's impact on the Northeast may cost the country a half a percentage point in GDP growth in the 4th quarter.
• Google's Nexus 7 tablet has done well in sales, but not as well as the search giant was hoping against new tablets from Amazon and Apple.