Laura Ingraham, the Human Nasal Passage, apparently thinks it's damn funny to screw up Democratic voters.
UPDATE: Laura Ingraham has asked her listeners to call the Dem Voter protection hotline — and they are now being flooded with calls from crank callers. Please call Laura and tell her what you think about this: 800.876.4123. You can e-mail her here. Apparently, voter intimidation and fraud are a joke to Laura Ingraham. Let's let her know that it is no joke.
UPDATE #2: More on Laura Ingraham: "caller indicated she is running a tape of Bill Clinton over and over saying "call 1-888 Dem Vote to report problems" — and then making fun of him, thus producing a spike in crank calls to the number" Protecting voter integrity is no joke. And I am not laughing. If anyone has audio of this, I'd love it.
It's all a joke; it's all a game. These people haven't the slightest respect for their country or the election process.
UPDATE:
Listen here.
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Ohio: “Franklin County's phone system was returned to service about 90 minutes after it collapsed today under a crush of calls from voters and poll workers. The volume of calls ‘overwhelmed the system,’ Franklin County Elections Director Matthew Damschroder said. …Damschroder said the system could not handle the quantity of calls from voters needing help to figure out where to vote and from poll workers needing help figuring out how to set up new electronic machines.”
More Ohio: “In Cleveland, voters rolled their eyes as election workers fumbled with new touchscreen machines that they couldn't get to start properly. ‘We got five machines — one of them's got to work,’ said Willette Scullank, a trouble shooter from the Cuyahoga County, Ohio, elections board.”
Indiana: “In Indiana's Marion County, about 175 of 914 precincts turned to paper because poll workers didn't know how to run the machines, said Marion County Clerk Doris Ann Sadler. She said it could take most of the day to fix all of the machine-related issues. Election officials in Delaware County, Ind., planned to seek a court order to extend voting after an apparent computer error prevented voters from casting ballots in 75 precincts there. Delaware County Clerk Karen Wenger said the cards that activate the machines were programmed incorrectly. ‘We are working with precincts one-by-one over the telephone to get the problem fixed,’ Wenger said.”
Florida: “A precinct in Orange Park, Fla., turned to paper ballots because of machine problems.”
Illinois: “In Illinois, some voters found the new equipment cumbersome. ‘People seem to be very confused about how to use the new system,’ said Bryan Blank, a 33-year-old librarian from Oak Park, Ill.”
We can send a man to walk on the moon, but we can’t sort out a fucking election.
Meanwhile, check this shit out at The Dark Wraith Forums.
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Ohio: "Reporting from Summit County, where we use optical scan machines: my husband and I were in line at 6:30 a.m. when the polls opened so we were the 14th & 15th people in our precinct (8-C) to vote. Unfortunately, the optical scanner wouldn't accept any ballots. I hung around until 7:30 a.m. to see if they got it working and when I left it was still down. Of course, it took all 4 of the octogenarians staffing the precinct table to try to 'fix' the problem so the line was backed up out the door & into the parking lot, where voters were treated to a light morning drizzle. Sure hope my vote gets counted. And I hope not too many people had to bail out of the line in order to make it to their jobs on time."
Missouri: "Secretary of State Robin Carnahan raised concerns about potential voter confusion in Tuesday's elections, citing her own experience casting an absentee ballot as an indication that some poll workers may wrongly be asking voters for a photo identification. Carnahan told The Associated Press on Monday that a worker at the St. Louis Election Board asked her three times to show a photo identification when she voted absentee last Friday — despite a Missouri Supreme Court ruling striking down the photo requirement"
Ohio again: "Similar problems in Hamilton County to those reported in Summit County. Even though my partner changed his registration to our new address and even though he voted in the same precinct last election with no problem, because his driver's license had our old address, the pollworkers forced him to vote a provisional ballot. This precinct is smack dab in the middle of the congressional district where . . . Jean Schmidt should lose to Victoria Wulsin, but turnout will matter. The lines were long, with people standing in the rain, and the pollworkers seemed ill equipped to handle the process. Could be a long day in Ohio again."
Florida: "Just in case you're keeping tabs, I wanted to tell you that my wife tried to vote in our precinct in Tampa and was not on the list. After several tries to find out why, she was told that the voter database was 'cleaned' and there must have been a mistake. I'm trying to find out who 'cleaned' it."
Tennessee: "Went to my precinct to vote and all 3 machines were not working. This precinct has a lot of lower-income families and public housing. They finally got one of the machines going, but the lines were out the door - I waited close to an hour and had to get to work. I wasn't the only one — most of those leaving were young(er) working people more likely to vote Democratic. I'll be coming back later to vote, but how many of those that left will be able to do that? You would think the machines would have at least been tested and working before the actual election day."
Illinois: "I live in Arlington Heights, IL, outside of Chicago. I'm in Mark Kirk's House District. This morning none of the electronic voting machines were working. Therefore the wait to vote was around 30 minutes, since they were using paper ballots. As an aside, on the table next to the election judges was a box of donuts from the Republican Party of Wheeling Township, thanking the election judges for their service. Democracy (and bribery) in action!"
Compiled from Talking Points Memo, where TPM Reader DK says: "We're not going to be able to post every anecdote like this that we receive today. It would be beside the point. We'll be looking for trends and patterns. But regardless of whether you subscribe to deep, dark conspiracy theories of GOP election trickery, voting should be easy, accurate, and fair. It's not. The system is broken."
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Cook Political Report: Democratic gain of 20-35 seats in the House, 4-6 seats in the Senate and 6-8 seats in the governor's races.
Evans-Novak Political Report: Democratic gain of 19 seats in the House, two Senate seats and five governorships. "It is a sign of Republicans' sorry state that, at this point, this is actually a very favorable outlook for them."
Rothenberg Political Report: Democratic gain of 30-36 seats in the House and 4-7 seats in the Senate.
(Via Political Wire)
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Yesterday, we were wondering how long it would take before we started hearing that if the Democrats don't achieve a massive victory, it's really a win for Republicans. Well, the voting hasn't even begun in earnest, and enter Adam Nagourney with "For Democrats, Even a Gain May Feel Like a Failure."
In most midterm elections, an out-of-power party picking up, say, 14 seats in the House and five seats in the Senate could call it a pretty good night.
But for Democrats in 2006, that showing would mean coming up one seat shy of taking control of both the Senate and the House. And it would probably be branded a loss—in the case of the House, a big one.
...Some Democrats worry that those forecasts, accurate or not, may be setting the stage for a demoralizing election night, and one with lasting ramifications, sapping the party's spirit and energy heading into the 2008 presidential election cycle.
"Two years ago, winning 14 seats in the House would have been a pipe dream," said Matt Bennett, a founder of Third Way, a moderate Democratic organization. Now, Mr. Bennett said, failure to win the House, even by one seat, would send Democrats diving under their beds (not to mention what it might do to all the pundits).
"It would be crushing," he said. "It would be extremely difficult."
[Charlie] Cook put it more succinctly. "I think you’d see a Jim Jones situation—it would be a mass suicide," he said.
Good lord. Such melodrama. Such lip-smacking, mouth-watering melodrama. My, grandmedia, what big teeth you have!
All the better to devour the Democrats, my dear.It's almost impossible to imagine how unassailably crushing the Democrats' electoral victory would have to be to preclude the conclusion that, even if they win, they still really lost.
(Crossposted at
AlterNet PEEK.)
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Suggested by Sarah in Chicago...
When did you first vote? Are there any elections that stand out as particularly meaningful to you?
My first vote was for Clinton/Gore in 1992. I had just turned 18, and I was so excited to be voting for the first time, I could barely contain myself.
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All right, bitchez. By popular request, there is now a chat room in the sidebar, just like the one Pam has. It’s on the left side, just below Contributors. So chat away—and keep it vaguely polite, or I’ll knock heads.
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“Tomorrow is Election Day. I will be saying yes to voting as I always do. My gender hasn't even had the vote for 100 years yet, it's too early to be laissez faire.” — Jennifer at Saying Yes
Amen, sister.
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This is just completely disgusting.
Army Recruiters Accused of Misleading Students to Get Them To Enlist
And how are they doing this, you ask? By promising huge paychecks? By lying about the amount of time they have to serve? By painting a rosy picture of service in Iraq?
Nope. By claiming the war is over.
Nov. 3, 2006 — An ABC News undercover investigation showed Army recruiters telling students that the war in Iraq was over, in an effort to get them to enlist.
ABC News and New York affiliate WABC equipped students with hidden video cameras before they visited 10 Army recruitment offices in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut.
"Nobody is going over to Iraq anymore?" one student asks a recruiter.
"No, we're bringing people back," he replies.
"We're not at war. War ended a long time ago," another recruiter says.
And the thing is, there are people out there that are misinformed enough to fall for this.
(Tip 'o the Energy Dome to Sadly, No! Hey, if you don't like the cross-post, you can always quit.)
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Star Kink
Via Recon.Yeah, I'm so fucking sick of the GOP, they don't even get mocked in the Caption This Photo today. How about that?
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If you don't know where to go to vote yet tomorrow, find out here.
I get to go to my old middle school. Yipee!
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Another GOP flyer, courtesy of TPM Café:
This GOP mailing is pretty impressive: It's the first we've yet seen that manages to link a Dem to Nazis, child rapists and gay Boy Scouts all in one shot. It was sent out by GOP Rep. John Doolittle, who's facing an unexpectedly stiff challenge from Dem foe Charlie Brown.
The rest of the flyer is below the fold…
This flyer conceived, designed, produced, and mailed to you by the Douchebags of Liberty.
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This is a flyer being distributed by the New York State Republican Party:
Via
Sully, who says: “The Democrats, in other words, want to let a darker-skinned man rape your white wife. You know what? I just found out nothing about Democratic values. But I learned a hell of a lot more about Republican ones.” Indeed. Which just further demonstrates by oft-repeated refrain that Republican values deserve to be destroyed, and why they ought to shove their “protect our values” codswallop right up their stupid poop chutes.
And, btw, while I pity anyone so deeply dim-witted as to react in any way to this flyer aside from laughing bitterly and tossing it in the rubbish heap, I pity the rest of us even more, whose future is predicated on convincing the imbeciles whose lizard brains respond to this shit to vote against the people most likely to have earned their alliance by virtue of regularly exploiting their ignorance.
(Thanks to Oddjob for the pointer.)
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Bus driver fired for flipping off the president.
Not scolded. Not disciplined. Not suspended. Fired.
Wev. This country’s going down the shitter. When flipping off a man who has treated the Constitution like yesterday’s paper at the bottom of a birdcage, taken us to a disastrous and deadly war under false pretenses, and ruled atop a party sagging from the strain of wanton corruption, is considered a firable offense, instead of the bare fucking minimum that criminal crackpot deserves, we’re just in all kinds of trouble, people.
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