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.

Furlong's Furlough

Edward Furlong is officially unemployed after his domestic violence arrest at LAX Tuesday morning -- because TMZ has learned, producers have dropped Furlong's ass from his new film.

Furlong was scheduled to catch a flight to Detroit before the arrest -- where filming for his new movie "Misled" was supposed to begin last Thursday -- but the guy got busted instead ... after allegedly getting physical with his girlfriend during an argument.

Furlong obviously missed his flight as a result, and according to a producer for his new movie, he also missed important rehearsals and wardrobe prep as well.

Details are scarce.  Some say it was a single slap, some say it was a beatdown.  The poor woman deserves privacy, and I hope it's respected.  Furlong is a troubled man who just can't seem to get ahead because of preventable stupidity like this.  It's the same for many people out there, who know better and just can't quite do better.

All around it's just sad.  Maybe he can get help before the next round.

Screwed Over By A Hooker, Hof Sues

Real pimps don't slap their hoes when they fall outta line, they SUE them ... at least according to the owner of the world famous Moonlite Bunny Ranch brothel in Nevada who just filed a lawsuit against one of his hookers. 

According to the suit, filed in Nevada, Jimi signed an exclusive whore deal with the Ranch back in 2010 ... in which she agreed to pay Dennis 50% of the cash she made from hooking, plus $25 per day. 

Hof also claims Jimi agreed to pay 50% of any gifts she received from any of her johns. 

But in his suit, Hof says Jimi was screwing around behind his back -- because he got a call from an upset customer named "Richard" who says he'd been showering Jimi with lavish gifts and cash for years ... and finally felt like she was "pumping him for more money."

"Richard" allegedly says he took Jimi all over the world -- including Tahiti, Jamaica and Bora Bora. He also says he bought Jimi Chanel purses, diamond bracelets and pearl earrings. Total value of the gifts -- MORE THAN $300,000.

It's legal, and it looks too me like he has caught her in a very expensive scam.  I'm frankly more amazed that someone would spend that money on a prostitute, not because I am implying they are lesser people but because that's a freaking ton of money to drop on anyone.  But especially someone you know is involved in a trade that negotiates and scams.

It'll be interesting to see how this plays out in court.

Yet Another One For The Future Fire

This time it's DC Examiner senior pundit Michael Barone predicting the Romney landslide.

Fundamentals usually prevail in American elections. That's bad news for Barack Obama. True, Americans want to think well of their presidents and many think it would be bad if Americans were perceived as rejecting the first black president.

But it's also true that most voters oppose Obama's major policies and consider unsatisfactory the very sluggish economic recovery -- Friday's jobs report showed an unemployment uptick.

Also, both national and target state polls show that independents, voters who don't identify themselves as Democrats or Republicans, break for Romney.

That might not matter if Democrats outnumbered Republicans by 39 to 32 percent, as they did in the 2008 exit poll. But just about every indicator suggests that Republicans are more enthusiastic about voting -- and about their candidate -- than they were in 2008, and Democrats are less so.

Polls don't matter.  What Michael Barone thinks of polls does. 

Bottom line: Romney 315, Obama 223. That sounds high for Romney. But he could drop Pennsylvania and Wisconsin and still win the election. Fundamentals.

Barone has Ohio, Virginia, Colorado, New Hampshire, and Iowa as Romney locks, with likely wins in PA and WI.