Archive for September, 2010
Canary in an Ohio Coal Mine: More Republicans asking for absentee ballots than Democrats in three largest counties
H/t The Cleveland Plain Dealer
Here’s a remarkable harbinger in The Cleveland Plain Dealer: Republicans have requested more absentee ballots, by percentage, than Democrats.
You really need to think about this one, because it’s very important, but the big picture’s not immediately seen in the numbers.
The three largest counties in Ohio are Cuyahoga (Cleveland area), Franklin (Columbus area), and Hamilton (Cincinnati area). Ohio is actually a fascinating state to study in general because its major cities tend to cancel one another out in terms of influence. Instead of being a New York state, with New York City dominating everything, or an Illinois with most things being all about Chicago, in Ohio you have Cleveland at the top on Lake Erie, Columbus in the middle, and then Cincinnati at the Kentucky border (there’s also Toledo and Akron, with their own individual tugs). Each city has its own unique flavor, with Cleveland, Toledo and Columbus being more liberal and Cincinnati and Akron feeling more conservative (relatively).
According to the PD piece, in Cuyahoga County so far there have been 60,960 requests for absentee ballots from Democrats and 28,888 requests from Republicans. Looking at this number, Democrats would spin this as a win for them, since it looks like more Democrats are voting than Republicans…so Democrats win, right?
You actually need to look at how many Democrats and Republicans there are in Cuyahoga county (a liberal county) to see why this is so interesting. When you factor party ID and the numbers on the books for both parties, 18 % of Democrats have asked to vote absentee and 33% of Republicans have requested ballots this year.
So, right there that shows us that Republicans appear more energized to vote this election.
But, that’s not the end of the story.
In 2008, 42% of Democrats asked for absentee ballots compared to 39% of registered Republicans. Let’s think about those numbers for a moment.
The 2008 election was anomalous for Democrats for a great many reasons, chiefly the level of excitement generated for the contest and the massive push the lamestream media made for Obama. We’d never seen anything like that in this country before. It was a cultural phenomenon that’s not soon to be repeated (on the Democrat side, anyway). So, according to the PD, the Democrats’ number in 2008 was higher than it should have been because of all that excitement…while the Republican turnout was depressed because of McCain’s lackluster campaign and the Eeyore-esque defeatism Republicans felt in the face of the propaganda tsunami for Obama.
Voter turnout in a midterm election is also usually 20% lower than in a presidential year, so when we look at the Republican absentee ballot request figure, it’s only 6% less than 2008′s stats (when the dropoff should have showed it to be 20% less) while Democrats are now 24% lower in ballot requests in 2010 (when they should have been just 20% lower due to the normal dropoff).
So, there really is an enthusiasm gap that’s rearing its head in Ohio, just looking at this one indicator. If Democrats are 4% lower than they should be and Republicans are 6% higher than they should be, that means there’s a 10% gap in voter enthusiasm between the two. This could be a doomsday scenario for Democrats, because it does not appear they can overcome that chasm with their usual voter fraud, intimidation, and vote suppression tricks.
We have not studied absentee voting and its correlation to actual voting day results, so we can’t extrapolate this into anything predictive, but the numbers are fascinating to analyze. Democrats should be cleaning Republican clocks in Cuyahoga County. If they aren’t winning there, it’s like someone losing a class president election in a little red schoolhouse where 70% of the kids in the desks are related to him and live under the same roof. Cleveland is Democrat turf, with a Democrat machine and union muscle that guarantees Democrat loyalty.
If Democrat lose Cleveland, it might be hard to get the city back for a very long time to come.
The ramifications of that, like this absentee voting data, are remarkable.
Euclid Corridor Project in Cleveland: Photos and first hand accounts needed
There’s a side project we’re working on that involves The Euclid Corridor Project in downtown Cleveland, Ohio.
This was a $400 million+ pipedream that Cleveland’s City Council insisted would “save the city”, the way the new baseball stadiums, football stadium, Rock n’ Roll Hall of Fame, and other large construction projects were supposed to save the city.
We want to take a look at the project, now that it’s finally completed, and see if the money spent on it and all the disruption it caused local businesses was worth it in the end.
To us, this looks just like the bluster that’s put into the Olympics…where cities spend massive amounts of money on construction and justify that by claiming once the dust settles the city will be reinvigorated and thriving.
In the last twenty years, Cleveland has sunk billions of taxpayer dollars into all manner of schemes that, when summed together, approximate what cities like Beijing, Sydney, London, Barcelona, and others ponied up for the Olympics.
We want to know if expenditures like this are really worth it.
Does anyone live in, or know anyone, in the Cleveland area who can shoot some photos of Euclid Avenue for us the next time they are downtown?
Or, those of you who like to research, can you fill this thread with articles about or links to photos of the Euclid Corridor Project and the “Health Line” RTA bus lanes that were built?
This is all pertinent because the White House’s trillion dollars in “stimulus spending” is very similar to the folly of “Monorail Building” cities engage whereby they delude themselves to believe massive public works projects will kickstart engines of economic growth.
We’re working on a larger project that explores all of this, and debunks the idea once and for all, and would appreciate this Cleveland-focused research to help us out.
Hollywood's Calling: John Kerry being considered for starring role in NBC's update of The Munsters
NBC's next big star?
With the success of True Blood on HBO and Modern Family a big hit for ABC, not to mention Halloween just around the corner, NBC’s asked for a pilot for an update of ‘The Munsters” featuring well-known personalities outside the normal casting pool for sitcoms.
Jeff Zucker ran NBC into the ground with his shameless Obama-propaganda drive for the network, and his insistence on making the worst shows possible featuring the most talentless and inept people he could find (remember Heroes?), and in a fascinating business move Comcast, NBC’s new owners, has decided to continue this tradition even after firing Zucker in a desperate bid to raise the network from last place in broadcast ratings.
“Their whole future is bet on John Kerry. He’s the only idea they’ve got,” noted Ophelia Goodies, publicist at large for the LeNa JaBroswki Write-In Campaign in Alaska as well as the new spokes drag queen for NBC Universal. “We currently have Elvira working here as our Director of Digital Content, which is fun, and a good start, but we really want NBC to be known as the “Boring Monsters Network”, which would make it BMN come to think of it, so of course we’re desperate to get John Kerry to sign on board. With all these people jumping ship on the Obama Administration, we figure Kerry might want out of the Senate too, and maybe Thereza can play Lily and they could star together on the show and get up to all sorts of adventures together”.
Rounding out the cast, Goodies believes NBC/BMN will grab up departing White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel for another key role.
“Well, he thinks he’s going to be Mayor of Chicago, but that’s nuts, he’s not going to win, so I remembered he used to be a ballerina with Julliard so I think he would be perfect as Eddie Munster,” Goodies reported. ”This way, we can make the show kind of like a musical, like that GLEE that’s so popular this year, and he can wear his little short pants and scream expletives at people and be super creepy on the air. The cost savings on this hire are amazing, because just like with Kerry, we won’t have to employ many makeup artists since they already look so monstrous to begin with. Word is Nancy Pelosi’s going to be out of a job and looking for work soon too, so Spot’s another roll we can fill with little special effects and makeup required”.
While Goodies didn’t have a date for “The New Munsters” airing, she believes it will be “sometime after November” when so many potential cast members for the show will “suddenly find themselves available for all sorts of interesting new opportunities outside the realm of politics”.
Who else would you cast on this show, or other sitcoms, once they’ve been fired November 2nd and who would they play?
Meg Whitman's Response to Left's Attacks — How is she doing?
After Gloria Allred (who, don’t kid yourself, was put up to this by Jerry Brown and Democrats) held her bizarre press conference yesterday and paraded a sobbing, Mexican, criminal in front of the cameras to talk about how she committed a felony by lying on employment documents, creating a fake ID, and breaking all sorts of laws to obtain a high-paying job in the home of Meg Whitman in California, we realized what makes us like and dislike certain politicians: their ability to punch back against attacks and how aggressively they counter manufactured scandal.
Gloria Allred is revolting. That needs to be said several times a day. She’s trying to affect November’s election by driving a wedge between Hispanic voters and Meg Whitman by using this Mexican criminal to paint Whitman as a Leona Helmsely-esque tyrant. Whitman fired this woman, “Nicky”, when Nicky told her she was actually an illegal alien and admitted she’d been lying to Whitman for nine years about her work eligibility. Nicky then somehow got connected with Allred, who saw the opportunity to help near-octogenarian Jerry Brown in his flailing bid for the governorship by creating a manufactured scandal for Whitman to deal with in the last month of the campaign. When Arnold Schwarzenegger was running for Governor, Allred tried to do this to him as well, finding a woman who came forward and said she was abused by him.
Allred’s antics around election day are as predictable as pumpkins popping up around Halloween.
Smashing these political pumpkins takes guts and skill, and only the really admirable conservative candidates are ever any good at it. For some reason, on the Republican side of the aisle, no one seems to teach these people how to take down Democrats when they pull these stunts. Governor Palin, Lt. Colonel Allen West, Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, Candidate Nikki Haley, Governor Chris Christie, and Governor Jan Brewer are all EXCELLENT at smacking back whenever the Left concocts ridiculous charges against them.
Not coincidentally, we like all of these people very much, because they give us something to cheer about every time they raise up a grizzly paw and strike back against Democrats — leaving the Left bewildered and stunned, because for decades now Republicans have forever refused to fight back.
“We need to take the high road,” consultants in wood-paneled private clubs insist.
“If we address these charges and counter them, we are giving them credence, so it’s my advice to just ignore them,” advisors note.
“Is there any more mayo for my sandwich? It’s so spicy and I need the mayo to cool it down so I can enjoy it and my tummy won’t feel funny later,” the quintessential Republican campaign operative whines.
There’s no reason to wonder why Republicans lose so many elections — when they keep taking advice not to smack people like Gloria Allred back HARD when they pull stunts like yesterday.
So far, Meg Whitman’s done a good job of hitting back…and it looks like Allred had telegraphed what she was up to because the Whitman campaign had all of “Nicky’s” documents ready for perusal moments after Allred’s press conference. Nicky should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law for falsifying those documents. She should be taken into custody by INS and deported, and everyone coast to coast falsifying these employment documents should have the same thing happen to them.
Gloria Allred’s reputation should be pummeled for staging this stunt…though, really, the female Johnny Cochran hasn’t much reputation left, no matter how much money she makes doing what she does.
It will take a day or two to see whether or not Allred’s stunt has any bearing on the campaign, but what we’re really waiting for is Meg Whitman’s retaliatory hit on Jerry Brown. Here in Chicago we’ve long heard that there’s a lot of nasty stuff in Brown’s recent past that will come out in this California race. Brown’s still hated by many Clinton people we know, as the wounds from the 1992 campaign have not yet healed, and the Clintons themselves have long, long memories that are picked up by those who love and support them.
The big question is whether Whitman’s going to go for Brown’s throat and take him down with whatever she’s got on him, or whether she’ll follow a classic, McCain-like campaign and “not go there”, just as McCain made the personal decision not to expose Obama’s past and his connections with Jeremiah Wright, William Ayers, Frank Marshall, and other radicals even after the Obama campaign repeatedly called McCain a racist and kept spreading all sorts of lies about him.
Saying “I want to run a clean campaign” is code for “I do not have what it takes to win and I am afraid to stand up to bullies because I want to be loved by a media that will never love me and wants to destroy me while I am too stupid to realize this”.
Whitman didn’t get to where she is by being stupid. And she certainly didn’t spend $120 million of her own money to let Gloria Allred and a Mexican criminal derail her campaign.
We don’t know a lot about Whitman, but like the woman…and are rooting for her to step up to the plate and really show us what she’s got now that Democrats have thrown down the gauntlet like this.
What do you think will happen next?
What do you expect from Whitman?
What counterattacks do you think are out there against Jerry Brown?
Halloween 2010: Political Costumes for the Coming Election Season
Please use this thread as a brainstorming exercise to think of topical political costumes for Halloween, since the November 2nd Election is the Tuesday after.
The best costumes really “pop” as you go out on Halloween night, or attend a Halloween parade in the bigger cities. We’ve seen some really creative ones in the past — and the best ones are always homemade.
We’ve ran a few threads talking about good patriotic costumes, and some Alaskan-themed imagery as well, but today we want to get ideas for costumes that could have an effect on the November 2nd election.
What are some ways you can lampoon the Left and the Democrats currently in office with your Halloween costume?
What are some costumes that could inspire people to help vote the Democrats out of office?
What are costumes that could highlight how ridiculous the current administration is and how its not kept any of its myriad promises?
Let’s be creative and think of ways to capture the current political spirit in interesting ways for Halloween.
Thursday Open Thread: September 30th, 2010
What’s on your minds this Thursday?
What are people talking about in your part of the country?
What do you think of Glenn Beck’s video above?
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Give us at least ONE THING that people you know are talking about that’s impacting their decisions for November that you don’t see being brought up enough in the media.
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Yesterday, we were very happy to see a longtime reader in India delurk and start commenting, and we’re so delighted to have this feedback coming in from so far away. We’ve always enjoyed hearing from readers in Australia, Switzerland, the Netherlands, France, Canada, and other places where some of you live.
We’d appreciate it if more of you would delurk because we don’t think you understand how beneficial hearing from you is. We might not comment on it directly, but your insights and perceptions from wherever you live help us immensely. Every day, we see this site as a learning opportunity for us. Reader comments shape our understanding and give us new avenues of thought. You help us improve in ways you don’t seem to understand and we’re very grateful for it.
So chime in at least once a day on something. If you read something we write and can think of anything we missed, or know an article out there that gives more information on it, put your two cents in so that we get the full picture on this.
It’s an important contribution that you can make…and a way that you can help us learn, improve, and evolve…while becoming part of the unique reader community that’s developed here…and very much wants to hear from you.
In looking at the TalkBack, comments, feedback, or whatever you want to call it areas on many sites across the Internet, we’re really taken by how unique and special the comment threads here at HB have become. This is miraculous to us, because we never had a direct goal to cultivate this — so we see it as a blessing and a gift we are so grateful for. It’s a troll-free zone without personal attacks, nastiness, mean-spirit, vulgarity or the other oddities that plague places like AintItCoolNews, CNN, EW.com, AceofSpades, and other sites we read regularly…but typically avoid the comments section because we can only stand so much of that negativity in a day.
So, for all of you that comment regularly and are so kind to each other and so good at staying on track, keeping things adult and civil, and not ever degenerating into nasty personal attacks, we say thank you again.
And for all the lurkers out there, we want to invite you to comment because we really want to hear from you, know where you’re from and how things are where you live, and hope you see the environment here as friendly, open, and respectful because that’s what we know it to be…and will keep it as no matter how much work that takes.
The Cocktail Party vs. The Tea Party graphics
H/t Mizz Jodee
H/t Mizz Jodee
Thanks to Mizz Jodee for these illustrations.
This is the way to get Americans to understand just how much of a problem the Cocktail Party GOP establishment is.
It’s “The Cocktail Party” vs. “The Tea Party” and the stakes are mighty high indeed.
