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Presidential election may be up for grabs

Drag said:
While on Wikipeida I typed in Voter Suppression.... It is a very interesting read.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_suppression
And this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caging_list

Sorry, I was talking about "voter fraud" not "voter suppression/caging."
 
Mason Dixon Poll

[The final round of Mason-Dixon polls has Obama enjoying small leads in the red states that would deliver him the presidency, but he's below 50 percent in each and there are enough white undecided voters to leave some too close to call.

Colorado: Obama 49, McCain 44, Undecided 4
Florida: Obama 47, McCain 45, Undecided 7
Nevada: Obama 47, McCain 43, Undecided 8
Pennsylvania: 47, McCain 43, Undecided 9
Virginia: Obama 47, McCain 44, Undecided 9
Ohio: McCain 47, Obama 45, Undecided 6
Missouri: McCain 47, Obama 46, Undecided 5
North Carolina: McCain 49, Obama 46, Undecided 5

As Brad Coker, who runs the Mason-Dixon poll, notes, the vast majority of the undecided voters in these states are whites.
/quote]
 
The post election investigations should be interesting regardless of who wins (and the cries of coverup, etc. regardless of who loses)

http://chicagoboyz.net/archives/6387.html

Swarm-Corruption

Posted by Shannon Love on November 2nd, 2008 (All posts by Shannon Love)


In computing, “swarm” designates a process carried out by a large number of decentralized small computing units each working on a tiny piece of a much larger problem. For example, the Folding@Home project uses the idle computational power of thousands of desktop computers to run computationally intensive simulations of protein folding.

More recently, the concept of swarm has expanded to describe any decentralized action enabled by peer-to-peer communications such as the Internet. For example, in swarm-journalism large numbers of people  independently decide to investigate the same event and independently publish their findings.

Recent revelations that the Obama campaign did not take elementary precautions to prevent illegal campaign donations over the internet raise the real possibility of a “corruption swarm” in which a large number of people independently carry out the same corrupt act.

The beauty of swarm-corruption lies in its deniability. The Obama campaign did not have to launch a centrally coordinated effort to break the law, they needed to merely remove the standard safeguards that normally prevent such illegal acts. Obama could then just sit back and let corrupt donors figure out for themselves that they could break the law.

Swarm-corruption could be much more powerful than traditional corruption. A thousand donors, from all over the world, each donating $2,000, would raise $2,000,000. That’s a significant chunk of change even for an American presidential campaign. Further, unlike traditional corrupt donations that come in big and obvious chunks from specific individuals, the money from swarm-corruption comes from a vast number of sources, each of which requires independent investigation, and even if they do get caught, the small sums that each individual donated make the crime a minor one. It is easy to see that swarm-corruption could go to a much higher level — i.e., comprise a more significant percentage of a politician’s war chest — than traditional corruption.

This greater scale of corruption raises an interesting question: At what point do corrupt campaign donations invalidate an election? No campaign can guarantee that 100% of its donations are legal. A certain amount of error and fraud creeps into any system that collects from millions of sources. So, we have to tolerate low-single-digit percentages of a politician’s funding coming from illegal donations. On the opposite extreme it seems obvious that if 100% of a politician’s campaign donations came from corrupt sources then that level of corruption would invalidate the politician’s mandate to hold office. Somewhere between the two extremes lies a level of corruption that would invalidate a politician’s claim to office.

Where does that point lie? If 10% of Obama’s donations came from illegal sources would most Americas believe that invalidates his claim to office? Probably not. 20%? Unlikely. 30%? Maybe. 50%? Probably.

Even if the level of corruption falls below the threshold that triggers the outright rejection of the legitimacy of the election, high levels of swarm-corruption could seriously undermine a politician’s mandate.

Obama may find that he won the election battle but lost the political war. In any case, we must update our laws and procedures to prevent swarm-corruption from becoming a significant problem in the future.
 
Whats clear is that McCain-Feingold isnt worth the paper its printed on. We would be better off in the US where candidates are prohibited from accepting any donation and the government cuts the campaign a check for say $300m.
 
Is Mason Dixon not a Republic leaning outfit?  I wonder what a PPP (Democratic) poll would look like, probably showing Obama having double digit leads across the board.  My understanding is that Mason Dixon uses tunrout projections very similar to 2004, which is a false assumption in my opinion.  The truth is somewhere between PPP and Mason Dixon.
 
This next bit of news is slightly off topic:

Breaking News from ABCNEWS

Barack Obama's Grandmother Passes Away [4:35 p.m. ET]

Maybe this will silence those who said his flight to Hawai'i to visit her was some sort of political stunt.

Best wishes to Sen. Obama and his family.

http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalradar/2008/11/obamas-grandmot.html

 
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/us_elections/article5077496.ece

There is a sense of excitement among a unit of soldiers sent to Iraq from Alaska as Election Day dawns, with the added intrigue that one among their ranks could become the son of the next vice president of the United States.

Despite such an historic day at home, it will still be business as usual for the 1st Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 25th Infantry Division, which includes Private First Class Track Palin, the 19-year-old son of Republican Sarah Palin, John McCain’s running-mate.

She is also Governor of Alaska and an honorary member of the 4,100-strong force, which has been rotating into bases and outposts across the vast province of Diyala, northeast of Baghdad, for the past month.

Colonel Burt Thompson, commander of the brigade, is focused on the mission ahead, to provide stability to Diyala, once a hotbed of al-Qaeda activity. He noted, however, that the US elections are an exciting time.

“I think our soldiers are excited about it, our nation is excited about it,” Colonel Thompson told The Times at his office on War Horse, a sprawling US base just outside Baquba, the provincial capital of Diyala.

Everyone in his unit, also known as the Arctic Wolves, had the chance to cast an absentee ballot, but they were advised against revealing their choice to the media. “I think our nation is ready for some change, a little bit of something different, whether that be [John] McCain or [Barack] Obama or whatever,” he said.

The commander, an enthusiastic soldier with big ambitions for Diyala, acknowledged the unique aspect of having Private First Class Palin in his force, but stressed that the young man just wants to be left to do his job.

“He is an air-guard, which means he pulls security for a Stryker vehicle,” Colonel Thompson said, describing the dark green combat vehicle that most his troops roll around in. It looks a bit like a tank with wheels instead of tracks.

“He’s a good soldier,” he added.

With so much to achieve over the coming year, the recently-arrived brigade is more focused on assisting the local security forces and the Diyala government than on who is going to be their next commander in chief, though the presidential elections are still a talking point for some during downtime.

Sergeant Richard Boone, 30, was born and raised in southern Alaska on a diet of moose and grizzly bear, both of which he still hunts.

“Black bear is greasy, grizzly bear is much nicer but you cannot beat moose,” said the father-of-three, on his second tour to Iraq.

He noted a change in this mission from his last deployment in 2005 to Mosul, further north, and Baghdad, when attacks were more frequent and US forces had the lead. This time the Iraqi army and police are in front.

As for the elections, Sergeant Boone applauded Governor Palin for boosting Alaska’s profile. “It is amazing. Finally Alaska is on the map for something. Before, we were just known as a state that is very cold,” he said, speaking outside a mansion on the west-side of the city, which has been converted into a base.

First Lieutenant Aaron Treesh, like a majority of the brigade, is not a native Alaskan. The 24-year-old, from Kentucky, is on his first tour to Iraq, and is looking forward to the elections.

“It is going to have a big impact,” he said, noting the differing views of the two candidates with regards to Iraq.

Not everyone in the brigade is bothered about the elections back home. Private Isaac Hunter, a 21-year-old originally from Texas, is more interested in working out inside a makeshift gym at a school on the east of Baquba that has also been turned into a base.

“I do not follow politics at all. I am just here to do my job” he said.

“On election day I will probably be thinking about what muscle group I will be working on.”
 
From the  Pittsburgh Tribune Review

Barack Obama, exposed: View of constitution


By Cal Thomas
Sunday, November 2, 2008


The October surprise of this presidential election might just turn out to be a seven-year-old interview with Barack Obama in which he strongly suggests that the U.S. Constitution is an impediment to his desire to redistribute the nation's wealth.

So, how does Sen. Obama credibly take the oath of office to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States" when he thinks it impedes his socialist agenda?

Is socialism too strong a word? Consider one of its definitions from dictionary.com and tell me it is something other than Obama's economic philosophy:

A theory or system of social reform which contemplates a complete reconstruction of society, with a more just and equitable distribution of property and labor.

A complete restructuring of society is what Obama advocated in a 2001 interview on a Chicago public radio station.

According to Politico.com, in that interview, Obama, "reflecting on the Warren Court's successes and failures in helping to usher-in civil rights," said, "I think where it succeeded was to vest formal rights in previously dispossessed peoples."

He has it backward. The Creator already endowed black people with these rights, which is precisely the argument powerfully made by Martin Luther King Jr. Any rights that are "vested" in people by other people may be removed by the same or future people.

Endowed rights are "unalienable" and what America did was to finally recognize those rights.

Obama continues with a comment that the "Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of the redistribution of wealth and sort of basic issues of political and economic justice in this society, and to that extent as radical as people try to characterize the Warren Court, it wasn't that radical."

Does he mean that for real "justice" to have been achieved, the Warren Court should have taken from the rich and given to the black poor?

Obama never said what would happen once the redistributed money ran out. Perhaps this was not to be a one-time event but a lifetime of "reparations" for slavery, as some other left-wing black leaders have proposed.

On Bill O'Reilly's Fox show last Monday night, former Democrat vice-presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro defended high taxes in New York and Obama's pledge to raise them nationally, saying, "At least they're not taking it all."

It may have been an attempt at humor but this betrays the Democratic Party's attitude: They feel they have the right to say how much of your hard-earned money you can keep.

Actually, we should be telling government how much of our money we will allow it to spend. Anyone hoping to make more money and improve his life will have to work even harder to overcome Obama's redistribution plans.

Obama thought the Warren Court should have "broken free" from the constraints placed on the Constitution and the courts by the Founding Fathers and Framers.

This is remarkable hubris.

Obama said the Constitution mostly "says what the states can't do to you ... what the federal government can't do to you, but it doesn't say what the federal government or state government must do on your behalf."

That's because the Constitution is about liberty and protecting citizens from oppressive and invasive government.

This is scary stuff. That it is only now surfacing is another reminder of the poor job the mainstream media have done in vetting Obama.

Barack Obama thinks the Constitution and the country it helped create should be remade in his image. He wants to be a Founding Father of a different America, one that would bear little resemblance to the country we have known.

This is radical in the extreme and Obama, along with his many acolytes who are itching to get their hands on unchecked political power, are a danger to this nation's survival.

John McCain stands in the way of a complete liberal coup that would transform America in ways the Founders and Framers and most Americans would oppose.

McCain might be dull at times.

McCain might have run an imperfect campaign.

McCain should have spent more time exposing Obama as a radical socialist instead of worrying what the media would say if he did.

But John McCain is a patriot who has proved his love, service and dedication to this country in ways that Obama cannot begin to achieve or appreciate.

Electing Barack Obama president of the United States would be a roll of loaded dice. We will live (and possibly die) to regret it.

Republicans have made many mistakes and deserve the punishment they are now getting. But the one charge that cannot be laid at their doorstep is that they wanted to rewrite the Constitution and weaken the country.

Barack Obama will do that and more. Wake up, America, and stop flirting with this guy because you are flirting with disaster.

Cal Thomas, a USA Today and nationally syndicated columnist
 
Definitely will be interesting tomorrow. The exit polls were wrong in 2000 and 2004 so expect them to be wrong again. The only one that matterws is the one cast in the privacy of the polling booth. The first state to close will be Indiana at 1800,then its Ky and Va. If McCain wins by a large margin then Obama is in trouble and the constant stream of media polls were wrong. If he squeeks out a win then the tracking polls were mostly right and it will be close.If Obama wins Indiana then McCain is in big trouble.

The data coming out of Pennsylvania indicates problems for Obama in Philly among Reagan democrats. If he cant win Philly then he loses Pennsylvania. The same demographic is in Boston although Mass. is pretty blue with the democrats not fully unified behind Obama there could be blue state upsets.
 
Baden  Guy said:
tomahawk6,  Standby to swear true allegiance to President Barak Obama.  :salute:

One of the brilliant bits of he US system is that T-6 is required to and, I have no doubt, is always willing to swear his allegiance to the flag and to the republic, and, I am certain, he will also willingly swear to defend the Constitution, but he need never swear allegiance to any man or woman.

We swear allegiance to our sovereign which is OK because, ever since 1648 and especially since 1699, we have turned the monarch into a sort of civil servant – someone paid to represent what we hold to be good and true about ourselves.  See:  Bagehot’s English Consitution



 
Quite correct sir...but it was the Bush administration that took the country's military to war and it will be the Obama administration that the military will now serve.
 
Obama hasnt been elected yet.Edward is quite correct that we swear to "support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic, that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same;".
During my 34 years of service I served both Republican and Democrat Presidents so that isnt an issue.Unfortunately the military doesnt fare well under Democrat presidents and the follow on Republican President has to rebuild the military and so shall it be this time.

My problem with Obama is that if he were applying for a job in the military or DoD his associations would prevent him from being given a security clearance. He has made comments about why he doesnt like the Constitution - too restrictive.My biggest fear then is a constitutional crisis that could for awhile tear the country apart.But no need to get too far ahead of the game.
 
Baden  Guy said:
Quite correct sir...but it was the Bush administration that took the country's military to war and it will be the Obama administration that the military will now serve.
To be accurate, the US government took the country to war.  I'm sure that the US military still serves the citizenry of the United States. 
 
Baden  Guy said:
Quite correct sir...but it was the Bush administration that took the country's military to war and it will be the Obama administration that the military will now serve.

I thought that you haven't thrown in the towel yet?  ;D

I take it you voted early for Senator McCain?  ;D
 
A little tool for tracking the election via GoogleMaps, from the "Sources and Methods" blog:
http://sourcesandmethods.blogspot.com/2008/11/track-election-results-on-google-maps.html

Still early for results now, but you might want to bookmark it for later tonight.

Enjoy!
 
Just another little election guide for today:

What to Watch For
An hour-by-hour guide to election night.


Nate Silver
Newsweek Web Exclusive
Nov 3, 2008 | Updated: 12:29  p.m. ET Nov 3, 2008
In 2000 and 2004, the outcome of the presidential race was unknown into the wee hours of the morning (and indeed for several weeks thereafter in 2000). This time, it is possible that we will be able to guess the winner of the presidential race relatively early in the evening. Regardless, there will be plenty to watch Tuesday night, particularly for those who can appreciate a good slugfest in the Senate. And lest we count John McCain out, we need only remember the polling disasters that befell states like New Hampshire in this year's primaries. Here, then, is what I will be watching each hour on election night.

6 PM EST. Polls close in portions of Indiana and Kentucky.
Traditionally, these are the first states to get called by the networks, spotting the Republicans a quick 19 points in the Electoral College. This year, however, is liable to be a little bit different. Indiana is far more competitive than usual, and is probably the state with the greatest disparity in ground games: the Obama campaign has 42 field offices open there, whereas McCain neglected the state entirely until recently.

The responsible thing to do would be for the networks to hold off until at least 7 PM to project Indiana, when polls have closed in Gary and the northwestern part of the state just across the border from Chicago—where Obama hopes to rack up huge margins among black and working-class voters. If for some reason the state is called before 7 PM for John McCain, that probably means we're in for a long night. If, on the other hand, the state is called for Obama in the first hour after the polls close, that could indicate that the force of Obama's field operation has been underestimated, and that McCain is in for a catastrophically poor evening. (Speaking of which, Indiana's equivalent on the Senate side of things might in fact be Kentucky, where Mitch McConnell remains the favorite but where he could be vulnerable in the event of an anti-incumbent wave.)

7 PM EST. Polls close in Virginia and Georgia, as well as most of Florida and most of New Hampshire.
Virginia, for my money, is the most important state in this election. If John McCain loses it, his path to victory is exceptionally narrow—he would need to pull out an upset in Pennsylvania, while holding on to Florida and Ohio, and avoiding a sweep out West. Barack Obama has considerably more ways to win without Virginia, but a failure to close out the state would suggest at best a more circuitous route to victory. As Obama remains about five points ahead in most polls of Virginia, what we're really looking for is a quick call on anything before 8 PM that would indicate that the map has indeed changed from 2004, and not in McCain's favor.

Georgia and New Hampshire are a bit less essential electorally, but they may tell us the most about whether the polls are off in this election. If there's one state where Obama is likely to overperform his polls, it's in Georgia, where 35 percent of early voters are African-American, and where almost 30 percent of them did not vote in 2004. These are the sorts of voters that may erroneously be screened out by "likely voter" models that rely on past voting history. Obama could not only carry the state, but he might help boost Jim Martin to victory in the U.S. Senate race there—giving the Democrats a plausible path to a 60-seat caucus.

On the other hand, if there is any state where the polls might overestimate Obama's numbers, it's in New Hampshire, where nearly the entirely electorate is white and where Obama was famously upset by Hillary Clinton during the primaries. If McCain holds Obama to within about five points in New Hampshire—closer than any current polls—we may need to be worried about some sort of Bradley Effect.

7:30 PM EST. Polls close in Ohio and North Carolina.
The dynamic to look for in these states involves early voting: more than twice as many people have voted early in North Carolina as did in 2004, and nearly three times as many in Cuyahoga County (Cleveland), Ohio. Recent polling indicates that Obama may have a lead of 20-30 points among early voters in Ohio and a 10-20 point lead in North Carolina. If Republican turnout is at all depressed on Election Day—because of anything from bad weather to low morale—that may be too large a deficit for McCain to make up.

8 PM EST. Polls close in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Missouri.

Use caution when interpreting the results from these three states; Missouri in particular is notorious for nearly having been called prematurely both in the 2006 senate race and in this year's Democratic primary. In each state, Barack Obama will rack up huge vote totals in the cities (Philadelphia, Detroit and St. Louis respectively) while trying to hold his own in the rest of the state. If the city numbers come in first, Obama's margins will be exaggerated. If the rural numbers come in first, Obama's prospects will be much better than they appear.

But Pennsylvania in particular is the one to watch. If Barack Obama holds onto Pennsylvania—the only state where John McCain seems to have been closing the gap over the last week of the campaign—then winning virtually any red state (Virginia, Florida, Ohio, Colorado, Missouri) would probably clinch the election for him.

9 PM EST. Polls close in Colorado, New Mexico, Wisconsin and Minnesota.

Wisconsin and Minnesota should be called fairly quickly for Obama; if they aren't, that's a sign that something has gone truly wrong for the Democratic ticket. New Mexico looks like a safe Obama-state too, but since its vote-counting is notoriously slow, it may take longer to call. The key number to watch in Minnesota should be the difference between Obama's margin of victory and Al Franken's tally in his Senate race against Norm Coleman. If Franken is staying within 5-7 points of Obama as the vote begins to roll in—say, for example, Franken leads by 2 while Obama leads by 7—then Obama's coattails should carry Franken into the Senate. If not, the race may be Norm Coleman's to lose.

Colorado, meanwhile, is the last of what I'd characterize as this year's "Big Three" states (the others are Pennsylvania and Virginia). If Pennsylvania and Virginia have split their votes (and Obama hasn't picked up Ohio or Florida), then Obama probably wins if he wins Colorado, and loses if he doesn't.

10 PM EST. Polls close in Nevada, Iowa, Montana and New York.

This is the earliest point at which the race might be officially called for Barack Obama—there just aren't enough electoral votes out there, even if he's swept every swing state, to get him to 270 until New York's 31 come in. But assuming that we don't know the outcome of the election by this time, Nevada, where Obama has expanded his lead and where much of the state has already voted, could be Obama's ace in the hole—possibly offsetting a loss in Pennsylvania if paired with other pickups like Colorado and Virginia. The key area to watch in Nevada is Washoe County (Reno), which John Kerry lost by 4 points in 2004 but where the Obama campaign has registered thousands of new voters. If Obama wins Washoe, that means the state—and probably the country—is his.

11 PM EST. Polls close in California, Oregon and Washington.

None of these states are in play in the presidential contest this year. The status of the race, however, could have a potential impact on California's Proposition 8, which seeks to strike down same-sex marriage. If Obama appears as though he's headed toward a landslide victory, crestfallen conservatives might not bother heading for the polls to vote for Prop 8.

Finally, even if the presidential race has been called by that point, Democrats looking for a little schadenfreude may want to stay up late until the midnight poll close in Alaska, where Ted Stevens is almost certain to be bounced from his Senate seat by Democratic challenger Mark Begich. Should the Democrats pull out an upset in Georgia or Kentucky, it may be Stevens' seat that gets them over the top to a 60-man majority.

Nate Silver is the creator of FiveThirtyEight.com, a popular political blog.

URL: http://www.newsweek.com/id/167186
 
Unless California goes for McCain Obama will be the next President. :o
 
tomahawk6 said:
Definitely will be interesting tomorrow. The exit polls were wrong in 2000 and 2004 so expect them to be wrong again. The only one that matterws is the one cast in the privacy of the polling booth. The first state to close will be Indiana at 1800,then its Ky and Va. If McCain wins by a large margin then Obama is in trouble and the constant stream of media polls were wrong. If he squeeks out a win then the tracking polls were mostly right and it will be close.If Obama wins Indiana then McCain is in big trouble.

The data coming out of Pennsylvania indicates problems for Obama in Philly among Reagan democrats. If he cant win Philly then he loses Pennsylvania. The same demographic is in Boston although Mass. is pretty blue with the democrats not fully unified behind Obama there could be blue state upsets.

Since much of your predictions above about Pennsylvania were wrong and seemed more like wishful thinking, see who's out of touch now?

Obama won. Time to move on.
 
My sincerest congratulations to the new Commander-in-Chief :

The Constitution of the United States gives the title to the President of the United States, who "shall be Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commander-in-Chief#United_States
 
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