Election Night Update

That is all.  Carry on.

Principal's Gross Negligence Let Abuse Continue

SAN JOSE, Calif. -- A former California principal accused of failing to report the suspected sexual abuse of a young student at her school tearfully told jurors that she believed a teacher when he told her the reason he had blindfolded the girl and put something in her mouth was to teach her about Helen Keller.

Lyn Vijayendran, onetime principal of San Jose's O.B. Whaley Elementary School, testified Thursday that the second-grade teacher appeared forthright and "looked me right in the eye" when he explained that what had happened was part of a classroom lesson.

Santa Clara County prosecutors have charged Vijayendran, 36, with failure to report child abuse, a misdemeanor. The law requires principals, teachers and others who come into contact with children to report suspected child abuse.

The charge came after Vijayendran was told last fall of a possible molestation and she determined through her own investigation that no crime had been committed, authorities said. Police later found four more girls at the school that were believed to have been molested.

This is why you don't perform your own investigation.  This is why you report it and let third party professionals decide whether something inappropriate went on.  Kids don't automatically act weird when abused, nor do they always resist inappropriate behavior.  But asking a girl to spread her legs and discovering semen on chairs says this happened more than once.

If her only crime really was being too trusting, her ignorance still allowed several kids to endure something no child should have to face.

Murderer "Female James Bond"

An aspiring model murdered in her Santa Monica apartment in 2008 was allegedly killed by a hired "muscle" contracted by her father's former business partner, according to recently released court documents. 

Prosecutors charge that Juliana Redding was strangled by Kelly Soo Park, 47, who "has a history of threatening and intimidating individuals who have an ongoing dispute with" Dr. Munir Uwaydah, a Southern California doctor and businessman. 

Park was arrested in 2010 for the murder and, now free on $3.5 million bail, is awaiting trial early next year for the killing. Park was allegedly employed by Uwaydah as an enforcer on two other occasions, according to court papers. 

It still doesn't tell why, just how.  It's hard to imagine what this girl did to bring the wrath of such shady folks, even her father's involvement doesn't seem worth the time.  I doubt the trial reveals much, except more compliments on the "female James Bond" who killed a model.

StupidiNews, Election Day Special!

That's all the news you need today. Go out and vote, find your precinct here. See you tonight.

Last Call

And one final election note:  Turns out Harry Reid was right.  Mitt Romney has been avoiding taxes using the Mormon Church as a giant loophole for over a decade.

In this instance, Romney used the tax-exempt status of a charity -- the Mormon Church, according to a 2007 filing -- to defer taxes for more than 15 years. At the same time he is benefiting, the trust will probably leave the church with less than what current law requires, according to tax returns obtained by Bloomberg this month through a Freedom of Information Act request.

In general, charities don’t owe capital gains taxes when they sell assets for a profit. Trusts like Romney’s permit funders to benefit from that tax-free treatment, said Jonathan Blattmachr, a trusts and estates lawyer who set up hundreds of such vehicles in the 1990s.

“The main benefit from a charitable remainder trust is the renting from your favorite charity of its exemption from taxation,” Blattmachr said. Despite the name, giving a gift or getting a charitable deduction “is just a throwaway,” he said. “I used to structure them so the value dedicated to charity was as close to zero as possible without being zero.”

When individuals fund a charitable remainder unitrust, or “CRUT,” they defer capital gains taxes on any profit from the sale of the assets, and receive a small upfront charitable deduction and a stream of yearly cash payments. Like an individual retirement account, the trust allows money to grow tax deferred, while like an annuity it also pays Romney a steady income. After the funder’s death, the trust’s remaining assets go to a designated charity.

Romney’s CRUT, which is only a small part of the $250 million that Romney’s campaign cites as his net worth, has been paying him 8 percent of its assets each year. As the Romneys have received these payments, the money that will potentially be left for charity has declined from at least $750,000 in 2001 to $421,203 at the end of 2011. 

In other words, it's a grandfathered tax dodge that Romney's been using for quite some time and only at the very end before the election did we find out about it.  And 48% of America, minimum, think that makes him an awesome President.

Vote tomorrow with this in mind.

Cops Not Laughing At Prank

PITTSBURGH — 

Pittsburgh police believe a small plastic bag of pot found in the narcotics commander's car was left there as a prank -- but they don't appreciate the joke.

Assistant Chief George Trosky says the drugs were found after police picked up the car early last month from a garage that cleans and details city police cars. Police aren't identifying the garage because it services undercover vehicles, but Trosky says police believe an employee put the drugs in Cmdr. Cheryl Doubt's car as a joke.

You gotta give whoever did it points.  Either the cops for the worst excuse ever, or the cleaning service for best prank ever.

Old Rugged Cross

After Delia Jimenez was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 2008, her husband, David, often prayed before a large stone crucifix outside  St. Patrick’s Church in Newburgh, N.Y.  Devout  Catholics, the couple credited Delia Jimenez’s recovery in 2010  to her husband’s fervent praying. They were so grateful that his wife asked the parish priest, Blady Socualaya,  if her husband could clean the cross to show his gratitude.  He said yes.

On Memorial Day of the year of his wife’s recovery, Jimenez  began to scrub the 600-pound marble crucifix when it became unhinged, toppled on him and crushed his right leg, his lawyer, Kevin Kitson, told ABC News. He was rushed to Westchester Medical Center, where his leg had been so badly mangled it had to be amputated. Jimenez, a Mexican immigrant, spent more than a month in the hospital, ratcheting up hundreds of thousands in medical bills. Kitson told ABC News that Jimenez had no health insurance and that the bills were paid by charitable trusts.

In my mind, the church is as liable as any business or entity where their property causes unintended harm.  There is an outcry against Jimenez for "going after" the church, but it seems reasonable to me that the church is liable for the damage caused on its property by an extension of its property.

What do you guys think?

Stewart's Bra-Top Fashion Under Fire

I'm no fan of Kristen Stewart.  I don't dislike her, but I have only been moderately impressed with her on the big screen.  However, I have to say she has a bold sense of fashion, but one that has resonated with so many young women because it's fashion that can be obtained by shopping at local stores.  No flights to Madrid or Tokyo, as the super-rich had made us believe is necessary for The Look.  Macy's will be carrying this in no time.

Say what you will about Kristen Stewart, but you can't deny that girl isn't loyal... to her favorite fashion house at least. The face of Balenciaga has been known to road test the brand's riskier looks, from wild printed pants at fashion week to a jacquard leather dress at this year's Met Gala. But is her latest Balenciaga getup her most polarizing yet?

For the "On The Road" premiere at the 2012 AFI Fest on Saturday, the 22-year-old opted for a look that wasn't exactly a crowd-pleaser. Pleated pants? Check. Super pointy pumps? Check. An ambiguous bra-top thing? Check... wait -- is that the third star we've seen wearing one of those in the space of a month? Ok, fine, it's officially a trend.

I personally love the top.  In general, maybe not.  Stewart looks great in this, and it suits her body and style.  It may not be a practical look for most people (you gotta be super fit to make this work).  But I think she looks great, and is finally starting to cross over into womanhood (see earlier article on Rumer Willis).

I Heard A Rumer

So I owe my husband dinner.  We made a bet years ago whether Rumer Willis would take after her mother... or her father.  The issue in particular was looks, was she going to come out with Demi's charm or was her father's jaw going to be the first thing you saw about her every time?  Was she going to be a talented actress or a whiny Hollywood brat?

Turns out she's not a bad actress (she's still getting started,  but shows promise in comedy) and she's pretty darned smart.  She doesn't have her mother's delicate features but she is somehow just as attractive despite the more blocky features and bigger frame.

Then People ran a picture of her in a bikini.  Yeah, yeah... she looks great.  But for the first time she finally  looks like the woman she is going to be.  Rumer clung to her girl look for years, and now her face has begun to take on character and depth.  I personally love that she has a dynamite body and isn't wearing the sluttiest bikini money can buy.  She may have *gasp!* taste.  She may be a surprise all around, which would be nice in a swarm of Hollywood fakes with too much money and not enough brains or soul (why helloooo, Paris).

Good for her.  Click here for the article and the bikini picture.

Turtle And Badger Must Fight, It Is The Way Of All Things

Mitch "Old-Age Mutant Nimrod Turtle" McConnell and Harry "Honey Badger Don't Give A F*ck" Reid sat down together in the same room with CBS's Steve Kroft for a 60 Minutes joint interview on the Senate.  The results were...well...see for yourself.

How bad is the partisan divide in the U.S. Senate? Bad enough that the leaders of the two parties wouldn’t answer questions or even so much as look at one another during their first-ever interview together on Sunday night.

“It was very chilly,” “60 Minutes” reporter Steve Kroft said, summarizing the contentious interview in a web-only exclusive. “They did not look at each other once during the course of the interview.”

Worse yet, “They didn’t answer almost any question, so we kept coming back at them,” Kroft said. “They don’t trust each other. I think that’s the problem. There’s a great deal of mistrust between the political parties. They don’t trust each other to follow through on their work.”

He added: ”They kept saying ‘my good friend, Harry’ or ‘my good friend, Mitch,’ but it didn’t seem very genuine.”

To say these two guys hate each other is an understatement, but that's the way politics works these days.  McConnell has blocked legislation time and time again with the filibuster, and I don't see Democrats taking the necessary steps to fix that until they can win the House back.  That might be a while.

We'll see how tomorrow shakes out.  I still see the Dems keeping their 53 Senate seats and maybe picking up a seat or two.

Nate's Final Numbers

Nate Silver's latest analysis is now seeing the final national polls starting to favor the President as the state polls are, and that's to be expected.

A number of these polls had very large sample sizes, meaning that the results are less likely than usual to have resulted from statistical variance.

But the modest gains that Mr. Obama has made in the high-profile national surveys should not be that much of a surprise. We’ve observed the race shifting toward him over the past two to three weeks in polls of swing states, where overwhelming majorities of polls have had Mr. Obama ahead over the past few days.

Where has Mr. Obama shown a bit of weakness in his numbers? His polls in noncompetitive states have been mediocre lately. In polls published by the online firm YouGov on Sunday, for example, there were declines in Mr. Obama’s numbers in California and Texas. Since these states have large populations, they could lower Mr. Obama’s popular vote even though they will play no role in his Electoral College tally.

The forecast model still does perceive some differences between the state polls and national polls, but it is within a reasonable range.

Perhaps more important, the fact that the national polls now suggest a slight lead for Mr. Obama removes one of the better reasons to think that our forecast might have been underrating Mr. Romney’s chances.

Based on the simulations that we ran on early Sunday evening, for example, Mr. Obama would have an 85 percent chance of winning the Electoral College if the popular vote were exactly tied nationally. This is where Mr. Obama’s Electoral College advantages, particularly in Nevada, Ohio and Wisconsin, would be of their maximum benefit. Given a tied national popular vote, we would expect Mr. Obama to underperform his polls slightly in these states — but since he leads by a minimum of about three points in the polling average in each one, he could underperform those numbers and still win them.

Mr. Obama would be almost certain to win the Electoral College if he won the popular vote by a percentage point or so.

And that's where he is at this point, with a lead nationally of a point or two.  Nate is still hanging an 87% chance for the President, and about 12.5% for Romney, we've gone from one in six to about one in eight now for the Republican.

Having said that, it's important to note that Nate gave only a one in six chance 2 years ago of Republicans picking up 70 House seats.  They got 67.  Just because Silver assigns it a low probability doesn't mean the President can't lose.  It means that out of every fifteen simulations, Romney does win two of them.

Keep that in mind.  If you can vote early today (some states still have early voting on Monday) do so, and Tuesday get to the polls otherwise!

StupidiNews!

• The polls remain close with a slight Obama lead heading into the final day of campaigning before tomorrow's election.
• Early voting in Miami/Dade County Florida turned chaotic over the weekend as long lines and legal challenges had people voting well into Sunday night.
• With polls showing extremely close state contests, third party candidates may swing the election in a number of states.
• Greece faces another round of political turmoil as PM Antonis Samaras must secure political support for another round of strict austerity measures.
• Critics of Facebook say the social media giant has "broken" its fan pages on purpose to try to extract money from its promoted posts program.

Last Call

Where's Paul Ryan been?  He's certainly been very quiet it seems over the last month.  There's a reason for that:  Romney's been hinting that he won't really give in to GOP House austerity hysteria...but he picked the author of that budget with trillions in cuts to social programs and health care as his veep.  And should Robot/Zombie '12 prevail on Tuesday, you can bet that the Ryan budget will be the only game in town.

Representative Paul D. Ryan may have largely disappeared from the national spotlight down the campaign homestretch, ceding attention to Mitt Romney. But if the Republican ticket prevails, Mr. Ryan plans to come back roaring, establishing an activist vice presidency that he said would look like Dick Cheney’s under President George W. Bush.

Mr. Ryan would dedicate most evenings to dinners with senators and House members of both parties, aides said, as he steps into the role Mr. Romney promised: architect of a Romney administration’s drive to enact a budget that shrinks the government and overhauls programs like Medicare. 

On a grinding schedule in the election’s final hours, rushing to as many as five states in a day, Mr. Ryan avoids specifics in his speeches about his duties if elected. Behind the scenes, he speaks at least weekly to the office of Mike Leavitt, the former Utah governor who leads the Romney campaign’s transition team. 

The prospect of a deeply engaged vice president was described in interviews with campaign aides, close House colleagues and the few times Mr. Ryan has discussed his potential future job. Asked by a reporter last month if he expected the kind of broad responsibility for the economy that Mr. Cheney held for national security — as an aide suggested — Mr. Ryan said, “I do.” 

So yes, the Ryan budget will be America's budget, and that means trillions in cuts to health care and social programs, trillions in tax cuts for the richest Americans, and trillions added to the national debt.  Imagine Paul Ryan with Dick Cheney's power over domestic issues and you're getting close to the screw job that awaits if these clowns win.

You can do something about that, you know.

Vote.

Self-Service At Its Finest

If you're like me, you're looking forward to this election being over.  If you're pundit and former Bush 43 speechwriter/press hack Ari Fleischer, you want this thing to last forever, hence this tweet earlier today:

Prediction Time:1) The election won't end Tuesday night. 7 states will b decided by 1 pt or less. (VA, OH, CO, IA, PA, WI, NH)
— Ari Fleischer (@AriFleischer) November 4, 2012

Seven states in recount?  Chaos for weeks, if not months...and of course plenty of TV appearances for pundits like Fleischer (despite the irreparable harm it would do to our voting process, not to mention the American psyche.)  Then again, that's the point, isn't it?  Only our pundit class would be able to navigate America through these rocky shoals, and they could shape the nation for years to come as a result.

So yeah, Ari Fleischer wants recount chaos.  It directly benefits him, not to mention 5 of those 7 states have GOP governors.  Me, that sounds like a nightmare scenario followed by the Supremes handing the election to the Republicans again.

Self-service in every sense of the word.

Pastor, Heal Thyself

BROOMFIELD TOWNSHIP, Mich. (AP) — A Michigan pastor accused of beating and strangling his fiancee's daughter to fulfill a sexual fantasy had asked church members to pray for the young woman before police found her body, a friend said Friday.

Ex-convict John D. White knew the victim, Rebekah Gay, 24, and regularly watched her 3-year-old son while she worked, friend Donna Houghton said. White even told investigators that after killing Gay and dumping her body, he returned to her mobile home to dress the boy in a Halloween costume before taking the youngster to his father, authorities said.

White was in jail without bond Friday, a day after he was charged with first-degree murder in Gay's death in a rural area in Isabella County, 85 miles northwest of Lansing.

White said he drank four or five beers before going to Gay's mobile home and repeatedly striking her head with a mallet and strangling her with a zip tie, according to a court filing. He said he stripped her but does not remember if he carried out his fantasy of having sex with Gay's dead body.

It was not his first crime.  Church members and neighbors are all stunned to find out that White confessed.  Though his reasons are flimsy at best,

Yankee Hospitality

When faced with a dilemma, a hotel manager in New York City made the right choice.

At first the hotel was telling guests that they would have to leave by Thursday, because they were sold out with marathon runners. But on Thursday morning, Nicotra's guests were in tears at the thought of checking out, he says.

"On Thursday morning, people were begging me and crying saying 'You can't throw me out. I have no place to go,'" he says.

Nicotra said he then contacted the marathon's organizers, the New York Road Runners, because they had a contract for rooms and told them "we have a problem here" and that "we can't just throw them out." Nicotra said he gave the group other options, including setting up a temporary dormitory in the hotel's 10,000-square-foot ballroom, which can house up to 500 people with cots.

"As Hilton says, hospitality is what we're all about. If we can make everyone happy we will, but if we can't, the choice is easy," Nicotra says. "We need to take care of our neighbors."

And take care of the neighbors, they did.  Valuing compassion over profit is rarely a wise business move.  These were some extreme circumstances, and it allowed hundreds of people comfort at a time they really needed it.

The Tang Of Desperation

How badly is Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted trying to throw the election for Romney?  Badly enough that on Saturday, in violation of a judge's order, he plans to throw out potentially tens of thousands of provisional ballots.

Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted, whose decision to try to restrict early voting was thrown out first by an Ohio judge, then a federal appeals court and denied a hearing by the U.S. Supreme Court, will be back in court again this month after he issued a last-minute directive on provisional ballots that not only contradicts Ohio law but is also in violation of a recent court decision and the opposite of what Husted’s own lawyers said he would do.

As reported by Judd Legum at ThinkProgress, Husted ordered election officials not to fill out a section of the provisional ballot that verifies what form of identification that the voter produced and that, if it is incorrectly filled out, the ballot will automatically not be counted. However, under the law establishing the provisional balloting procedures, according to the lawsuit filed against Husted on Friday, it is election officials that are supposed to record the type of ID provided, not the voter — and that election officials are supposed to attempt to resolve any questions on the spot.

Husted has until Monday to respond to the suit, and the court has said that it plans to resolve the issue before provisional ballots are counted on November 17, 2012.

So yes, if Ohio is close, and close enough to decide the election overall, then this is the story right here that will determine the Presidency.  It amazes me that this guy is repeatedly allowed to violate federal court judges and Ohio state law, and do whatever the hell he feels like doing.

I personally hope President Obama's electoral tour de force rolls Romney so hard that Ohio is just another icing state on the 350 electoral vote cake.  But no matter what, Husted's actions here are odious, repugnant, and oh yeah, illegal.  It's voter suppression to help the GOP, period.  Let's call it what it is, folks.

The good news is at this point the extraordinarily desperate GOP is resorting to patently obvious nonsense like this, and it's being discovered before Tuesday's vote.  People are at least aware of it, especially here in Ohio (I hope).

We'll see.  The obvious remedy to this is VOTE.

Last Call

Conservative pundit David Frum bravely supports Mitt Romney based on the argument that the Republican party will be far less insane and far less likely to wreck the country with Obama gone.

The question over his head is not a question about him at all. It's a question about his party - and that question is the same whether Romney wins or loses. The congressional Republicans have shown themselves a destructive and irrational force in American politics. But we won't reform the congressional GOP by re-electing President Obama. If anything, an Obama re-election will not only aggravate the extremism of the congressional GOP, but also empower them: an Obama re-election raises the odds in favor of big sixth-year sweep for the congressional GOP - and very possibly a seventh-year impeachment. A Romney election will at least discourage the congressional GOP from deliberately pushing the US into recession in 2013. Added bonus: a Romney presidency likely means that the congressional GOP will lose seats in 2014, as they deserve.

Kevin Drum calls Frum out:

But instead, Frum makes the most overt form of the surrendering-to-terrorists argument that I've seen yet. If Obama wins, congressional Republicans will go completely ape and destroy the country. They will deliberately tank the economy and then impeach the president. Therefore, we have to give into them and turf Obama out of office.

It's appalling that people are seriously making this argument. What's worse, it's the relatively sensible people who are making it. This is simply nuts. No country can survive with this attitude. If congressional Republicans are truly a destructive and irrational force in American politics—and God knows, I agree with Frum about that—the answer is to fight them, not to surrender to them. That way lies madness.

The problem is House Republicans are insane.  The answer is to get rid of House Republicans.

Deriders Of The Storm

Via David Roberts over at the Grist, this crushing ad is the difference between Romney and Obama, period.



It was done by Climate Silence, and they want to get this ad on the air in the last days of the campaign.  I'm thinking they will.

Romney's Political Epitaph

Gotta have some calls for Obama to go into the Future Stupidity files for Wednesday morning, right?  Here's Dem strategist Bob Shrum at the Daily Beast:

Go all the way back to Nov. 18, 2008, when Romney wrote that op-ed in The New York Times headlined: “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt.” Few pieces have had as long or relevant a political life. Michigan, Mitt’s original home state, and Ohio, home to 850,000 auto industry-related jobs, have proved stubbornly resistant to a Republican nominee who seems so conspicuously hostile to their livelihoods. If the President carries both states, Romney’s prospects next Tuesday look about as promising as the Edsel’s in the 1950s. For those too young to remember it, the car was a landmark flop. Wikipedia offers a commonly accepted explanation: it was “a supreme example of the corporate culture’s failure to understand American consumers.” 

Romney’s op-ed was a supreme example of a corporate guy’s failure to understand American voters. He can quibble that he favored “a managed bankruptcy”—without the use of federal funds. The Obama campaign—and most experts—respond that in the depth of the financial crisis, there was no private capital available to keep the auto companies in business while they were reorganized. That’s true, but almost beside the point. What’s indelible, immediately apprehensible, persistently top-of-mind is the headline itself. Romney could have claimed he didn’t write it; he didn’t. He could have argued it wasn’t what he meant. Instead, he doubled down, telling an interviewer: “That’s exactly what I said—the headline you read—‘Let Detroit Go Bankrupt.’”

Shrum states Romney lost Ohio and Michigan, and Pennsylvania and the upper Midwest because of that op-ed piece, and with it the presidency.  But Romney's collapse in the second debate was just as bad:

Romney’s colossal mistake on Libya in the second debate also prepared the way for the real October surprise, the bromance between the President and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. Mitt was slapped down for politicizing Libya in that debate—and reproved by moderator Candy Crowley for being outright wrong on whether Obama had called the attack an “act of terror.” The GOP nominee refused to venture back into the controversy the next time the two candidates met. He had disabled himself; despite the fevered advice of the neocons, and the relentless conspiracy-mongering of the embittered John McCain, Romney was quiescent. And the real issue at stake wasn’t just foreign policy, where Obama is far ahead, but ultimately the quality and character of his Presidential leadership. The response to Hurricane Sandy was the sequel— and the President’s most powerful and persistent validator was Romney’s convention keynoter, Chris Christie. He showered praise on Obama as “wonderful”—and added: “If you think right now I give a damn about presidential politics, then you don’t know me.”

Oh, and guess who Politico is reporting today as Romney's first choice for VP?

One of the most tantalizing subplots of the 2012 campaign has been the curious and sometimes controversial performances of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. Now, campaign insiders tell POLITICO that Christie was Mitt Romney’s first choice for the Republican ticket, lending an intriguing new context to the continuing drama around the Garden State governor.

Oh, that would have been even worse for Romney.