Month: November 2012
Obama Turns It Over to Voters
It’s out of my hands now. It’s in yours. All of it depends on what you do.
— President Obama, quoted by NBC News.
And He Settles Things With a Beer, Not a $10,000 Bet
I wont tell you who I voted for but he banks in the United States and pays his taxes #spoiler
— Tweet from @Izac_Wright on election day
Reading is Fun-damental for Voting in Florida
3,000+
Number of words on the ballot in Duval Co., Fla. (Jacksonville), thanks to 12 state constitutional amendments added by the Republican legislature. In Pinellas Co. (St. Petersburg), the Supervisor of Elections remarked, “The voter who sees this ballot the first time may need smelling salts.”
The Best Argument Against Democracy
The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.
— Winston Churchill
The Affirmative Case for Re-electing Pres. Obama: His Historic Accomplishments over the Past Four Years
Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
The highlight reel above of Pres. Obama’s accomplishments put together by Rachel Maddow’s team is a must-see — and it shows why, even if the worst happens in the election today, Barack Obama will go down in history as a great president.
Jonathan Chait has a similar take. The way he describes his overall support for the president tracks closely to my own. “[Unlike] so many of his supporters,” Chait writes, “I never experienced a kind of emotional response to his candidacy. I never felt his election would change everything about American politics or government, that it would lead us out of the darkness. Nothing Obama did or said ever made me well up with tears … I supported Obama because I judged him to have a keen analytical mind, grasping both the possibilities and the limits of activist government, and possessed of excellent communicative talents. I thought he would nudge government policy in an incrementally better direction. I consider his presidency an overwhelming success.”
Chait continues:
Screwing Up Voting as Only Florida Can: Look for a Very Bad Election Day 2012
This picture of the line for early voting on Saturday in Miami* should explain why a Florida judge ruled on Sunday that early voting must be allowed to continue today, despite Gov. Rick Scott’s order that it would end.
What’s happening at the polls in Florida feels a lot like “self voter suppression.”
The Republican super majority in the state legislature loaded the ballot with ONE DOZEN deceptively and circuitously worded amendments. These would, among other things, exempt Florida from healthcare reform; interfere with a woman’s right to choose; provide more tax breaks to big business that will cut funding from schools, fire, and police; and give the legislature the ability to meddle with the state Supreme Court, among other GOP wish list items that would be unconstitutional if not passed by voters.
The amendments take up a full three 8 1/2 x 14 pages, front and back, on the ballot and it is estimated that it would take the average voter at least 45 minutes to read them all, and that’s not counting the time it will take to consider all the other offices and local initiatives. Officials, of course, have been stressing the need to bring a filled-in sample ballot to the polls.
The Simpsons’ Take on the Election
HOMER SIMPSON: Barack Obama? I don’t know. I already got one wife telling me to eat healthy. Plus he promised me death panels, and Grandpa’s still alive. Mitt Romney? I hear he wears magic underpants. I expect the leader of the free world to go commando. Plus his horse totally choked at the Olympics. On the other hand, he did invent ObamaCare.
