A perfect example of what Budhy wrote about in Pundits Are Trying to Steal  the Election: Push Back!! yesterday.

RNC Chair Mike Duncan tries immediately to quash the idea of an Obama mandate from Tuesdays election, while Howard Dean revs up the “bipartisanship” meme.

The charade continues. Both are trying to “own” the election. At your expense.

November 6, 2008 – 4 min 52 sec

Party chiefs reflect on day after

Howard Dean and Mike Duncan spar over the Obama presidency

November 6, 2008 – 3 minutes

For the first time in eight years, the White House will have new tenants. And for the first time ever, the occupants will be African Americans. A crowd of people gathered at the White House on election night to witness history as it was being made.

From AlterNet: Election Day: Presidential Results

The first towns to tally their votes — Dixville Notch and Hart’s Location in New Hampshire — both came out in favor of Obama. It doesn’t take long to count the votes in either town. Obama defeated McCain by 15 to 6 in Dixville Notch, an apparent upset, since the last time the town went blue was Hubert Humphrey in 1968. Hart’s Location gave Obama a 17 to 10 victory.

So far early voting is looking good for Democrats. Below are some of the pre-E-day numbers that have come in.

The UK Telegraph reported, “In a Washington Post-ABC poll, 59 per cent of those who had already voted across the country backed Obama, and 40 per cent supported John McCain.”

Political scientist Michael McDonald of George Mason has a comprehensive website displaying the most current information on the status of early voting. More than 25 million early votes have been cast so far, according to McDonald’s site, and the numbers clearly favor Obama, writes brownsox of DailyKos:

Florida: Early-voting Democrats are outnumbering Republicans at those sites by more than 20 percentage points, and a WSVN-Suffolk University poll has Barack Obama leading over John McCain 60% to 40% among early voters.

Georgia: Two million people, a record, cast early ballots in Georgia. That’s 60% of the total 2004 vote. Blacks comprise 35% of Georgia early voters, and women 56%, suggesting that as of right now, Barack Obama and Jim Martin are winning big.

Nevada: With more than 600,000 Nevadans already having voted according to the AP, “The early voting in advance of Election Day has been so heavy that Secretary of State Ross Miller increased his total turnout prediction from about 1 million to 1.1 million voters.” That lowers the early-absentee balloting percentage — but it’s still at 56 percent of the revised total of expected voters. In Clark County, Democratic early voting outstrips Republican by 52% to 31%, while in traditionally Republican Washoe County (where just a couple of weeks ago, Democratic registration topped Republicans for the first time since 1978), 47% of early voters are Democrats to 35% Republicans.

Iowa: Dems are leading in early voting in Iowa with 47.3% of Dems compared to 28.8 percent of Republicans and a huge 23.9 percent of unaffiliated voters.

Kentucky: It’s 58.5% Dem, 28.4% Republican and 13.1% unaffiliated. And things are looking blue in New Mexico’s early voting as well, with 52.7% Democratic and 32.8% Republican.

AlterNet will be providing continuous updates as it becomes available.  My experience with AlterNet is that there’ll be straight numbers with no spin or bullshit as the day progresses.

Check with AlterNet here throughout the day.

Tahoebasha3 has been doing her best lately to remind us all that things are not always as the appear to be, that it’s not a good idea to count chickens before they hatch, that republicans cannot be trusted, and that given the slightest opportunity they will steal anything they can steal, including, especially, the election tomorrow.

If they can avoid it any way possible they will not go quietly into that good night. They’ve enjoyed power for too long and aren’t about to bite the shitty end of the stick if they can help it.

Greg Palast posted this article at Truthout a little while ago. It’s worth a close read, if only to be mentally prepared for all possibilities, and avoid unexpected shattering disappointment tomorrow.

How McCain Could Win

Monday 03 November 2008

by: Greg Palast, t r u t h o u t | Perspective

^{Original source article here}

Two Obama canvassers prepare their pitch before knocking on registered Republicans’ doors in Arvada, Colorado. (Photo: Kevin Moloney / The New York Times)

It’s November 5 and the nation is in shock. Media blame it on the “Bradley effect”: Americans supposedly turned into Klansmen inside the voting booth, and Barack Obama turned up with 6 million votes less than calculated from the exit polls. Florida came in for McCain and so did Indiana. Colorado, despite the Democrats’ Rocky Mountain high after the Denver convention, stayed surprisingly Red. New Mexico, a state where Anglos are a minority, went McCain by 300 votes, as did Virginia.



   That’s the nightmare. Here’s the cold reality.

   Swing state Colorado. Before this election, two Republican secretaries of state purged 19.4 percent of the entire voter roll. One in five voters. Pfft!

   Swing state New Mexico. One in nine voters in this year’s Democratic caucus found their names missing from the state-provided voter registries. And not just any voters. County by county, the number of voters disappeared was in direct proportion to the nonwhite population. Gore won the state by 366 votes; Kerry lost it by only 5,900. Despite reassurances that all has been fixed for Tuesday, Democrats lost from the list in February told me they’re still “disappeared” from the lists this week.

   Swing state Indiana. In this year’s primary, ten nuns were turned away from the polls because of the state’s new voter ID law. They had drivers’ licenses, but being in their 80s and 90s, they’d let their licenses expire. Cute. But what isn’t cute is this: 566,000 registered voters in that state don’t have the ID required to vote. Most are racial minorities, the very elderly and first-time voters; that is, Obama voters. Twenty-three other states have new, vote-snatching ID requirements.

   Swing state Florida. Despite a lawsuit battle waged by the Brennan Center for Justice, the state’s Republican apparatchiks are attempting to block the votes of 85,000 new registrants, forcing them to pass through a new “verification” process. Funny thing: verification applies only to those who signed up in voter drives (mostly black), but not to voters registering at motor vehicle offices (mostly white).

American News Project reporters interviewing people on the street at a Halloween-day rally for John McCain in Columbus, Ohio, asked McCain supporters a simple question:

…and appear to have revealed some pretty basic primal fears still guiding the “thinking” of a large part of American society.

It’s not very often that I simply lift and reproduce someone elses article, but trying to say everything that needs to be said about this one would probably end up being sheer plagiarism anyway, and rather than go that route I think it’s better to just repost it in full with accreditation and backlink. If you thought you were pissed off for last few years, that was nothing compared to how you’ll feel come January.

From Naomi Klein writing yesterday in the Guardian comes a warning of the final outrage about to be perpetrated as the Bush Gang backs out the door, guns drawn and laughing, stealing every last dollar they can from you, after eight years of pillaging America.

You, your families, your children, your friends, and everyone you know are about to be robbed blind.

The Bush gang’s parting gift: a final, frantic looting of public wealth

The US bail-out amounts to a strings-free, public-funded windfall for big business. Welcome to no-risk capitalism

Naomi Klein

The Guardian

Friday, October 31 2008

In the final days of the election many Republicans seem to have given up the fight for power. But don’t be fooled: that doesn’t mean they are relaxing. If you want to see real Republican elbow grease, check out the energy going into chucking great chunks of the $700bn bail-out out the door. At a recent Senate banking committee hearing, the Republican Bob Corker was fixated on this task, and with a clear deadline in mind: inauguration. “How much of it do you think may be actually spent by January 20 or so?” Corker asked Neel Kashkari, the 35-year-old former banker in charge of the bail-out.

When European colonialists realised that they had no choice but to hand over power to the indigenous citizens, they would often turn their attention to stripping the local treasury of its gold and grabbing valuable livestock. If they were really nasty, like the Portuguese in Mozambique in the mid-1970s, they poured concrete down the elevator shafts.

Nothing so barbaric for the Bush gang. Rather than open plunder, it prefers bureaucratic instruments, such as “distressed asset” auctions and the “equity purchase program”. But make no mistake: the goal is the same as it was for the defeated Portuguese – a final, frantic looting of the public wealth before they hand over the keys to the safe.

TRALFAMADORE, NM (IWR Satire) –  Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that according to the multiple universe theory of physicist Dr. Hugh Everett that he can now “guarantee” a win on Nov. 4 in a squeaker victory that won’t be clear until late that night in parallel universe somewhere out there.

“I guarantee you that two weeks from now, you will see this has been a very close race, and I believe that I’m going to win it in some alternative world,” McCain told interim “Meet” moderator Tom Brokaw. “We’re going to do well in this campaign, my friend. We’re going to win it, and it’s going to be tight, and we’re going to be up late.  Well, we will be in some other parallel universe anyway.  All Sarah and I need to do is sort out the physics so we can construct a machine to travel to that parallel universe and celebrate our close victory!”

Candidates Ralph Nader and Ron Paul predicted that they would win in alternative universes too.

The Real News talks to Dr. Steffie Woolhandler, Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard, and to Dr. Don McCanne, president of Physicians for a National Health Program, about both John McCain’s and Barack Obama’s campaign promises and rhetoric about health care and finds them both drastically wanting.

October 30, 2008 – 7 min 42 sec

Health care in the USA Pt.1

McCain proposals will make things worse; Obama’s won’t be enough

The health care system in the US is ranked 37th overall in the world even though it spends almost double per capita of what other industrialized countries spend. 47 million are not insured and almost 2 million filers and their dependents per year claim medical bankruptcy. The Real News Network spoke to Dr. Steffie Woolhandler of Harvard Medical School and Dr. Don McCanne of Physicians for a National Health Program who say John McCain’s health care proposals would make things worse than they are now and Barack Obama’s proposals won’t work and won’t be enough to fix the problems. The US government must do more on behalf of the American patient.

Wednesday night Barack Obama and Bill Clinton spoke at a rally in Kissimmee, Florida, while a new AP poll shows Obama leading or tied in eight crucial states.

October 30, 2008 – about 7 minutes

Bill sells Barack

In Central Florida, Bill Clinton pulls no punches to seal the deal for Obama

In a late night rally in Kissimmee, Central Florida – a strategic area in the Sunshine State, in the so-called I-4 corridor, filled with still undecided voters – former President Bill Clinton, extremely popular in Florida, forcefully exposed the merits of Barack Obama as the best candidate for the Presidency. Obama returned the compliment, showering praise on the 42nd President and making the huge crowd dream of the golden years of the 1990s. Obama’s stump speech though does not take any chances, less than a week before the election. Obama equates McCain with Bush and does not get into details on how he will implement most of his promises.

According to Boston.com’s Political Intelligence Senator Edward Kennedy, who has been being treated at his home in Massachusetts for the past six months for a dangerous malignant brain cancer, returned to his second home in Washington D.C. Tuesday and will continue his treatment there.

“His doctors are very pleased with his progress, and he will receive his treatments here,” Kennedy spokeswoman Melissa Wagoner said yesterday. The senator plans to remain in his northwest Washington home and return to Massachusetts for Thanksgiving, she added.

Aides declined to speculate on when Kennedy might return to his duties in the Senate, which is in recess for the rest of the year. But his return to Washington for the next several weeks could coincide with Democrats’ plans to call a special session of Congress after the Nov. 4 election. Kennedy is also a strong supporter of Barack Obama, and left Massachusetts to deliver a keynote speech on his behalf at the Democratic National Convention in Denver two months ago.

Since his diagnosis, Kennedy has returned to the Senate just once, in July, to cast a tiebreaking vote on long-delayed Medicare legislation. He was briefly hospitalized last month after suffering a mild seizure, which doctors attributed to a change in his medication.

Kennedy has apparently been secretly working from his hospital bed in Massachusetts the past few months to develop and “introduce a universal health care bill as soon as the new Congress convenes next year and to push quickly for its passage”, says the Washington Times, and he has been getting support for his plan from across the political spectrum: