US Election 2012 Discussion

Voters are madder than mad in Ohio, too. But here it is a f***ing cold mess!

From trying to stop early voting to the billboards to the Sec of State wasting millions of dollars appealing the court order to keep the polls open to the US Supreme Court -- no one if happy here -- and that includes conservatives.

In the end, it all just made people more determined to vote. For example, eople stood for up to 10 hours in almost freezing weather to vote in Cleveland -- many of them are still living without electricity from the storm.

If you want to make people care about something, try to take it away.

Perfect thread for Neil


@negativeneil
this is cool: type 'vote' into google and fill out your address.

For those put faith in statistics, here is an interesting site by Prof. Sam Wang from Princeton Univ, whose fields are biophysics and neuroscience. In these fields he uses probability and statistics to analyze complex experimental data. He has applied these complex models to look at elections, for fun.

election.princeton.edu/

I heard about him on NPR tonight.


ETA: for a quick spoiler: he predicts Obama 332 EV, Romney 206 EV.

ETA2: He also says probability of Obama re-election: Random Drift 98.2%, Bayesian Prediction 99.8%

If not interested in 2 letters from Michael Moore, please scroll.

Letter to a Non-Voter ...from Michael Moore

Sunday, November 4th, 2012

To my friend who is not voting on Tuesday:



I get it – and I don't blame you. You're fed up and you could care less whether Tweedledee or Tweedledumber wins on Tuesday – because on Wednesday, your life will be the same, unchanged, regardless who is president. Your mortgage will still be underwater. You will still owe $50,000 on your student loan. Your son will still be in Afghanistan. Your daughter will still be working two jobs to make ends meet. And gas will still be at $4.



Four years ago you gave in and voted – and you voted for Obama. You wanted to believe he would go after the Wall Street crooks who crashed the economy – but instead the banks that were "too big to fail" four years ago are now even bigger and more dangerous. You thought there'd be universal health care – but the new law only went so far (with most of it not taking effect until 2014). You were tired of war and homeland security measures that violated our civil liberties – but we're still in Afghanistan, we're sending in drones to Pakistan and basic constitutional rights to privacy and a fair trial have been ignored. And you thought you'd have a middle-class, good-paying job like your dad had – but you didn't know that Goldman Sachs was Obama's #1 private campaign donor in 2008, and well, he was beholden to corporate America in more ways we cared to think about. 



So, I get it why you've had it with all these politicians and elections. In the end, it doesn't really seem to be our country any more. It's run by those who can buy the most politicians to do their bidding. Our schools are made a low priority and women are still having to fight for just the basic human rights we thought they already had.



So, it's hard for me to ask you for this very personal favor. It's OK if you say "no," but I'm hoping you don't.



I cannot believe it is possible that, after a group of rich plutocrats wrecked the economy, threw people out of work and stole our future, we may actually hand the keys to our country over to...a rich Republican plutocrat who made millions by throwing people out of work! This is insane, and despite all the legitimate criticisms of Obama, he is nothing like the tsunami of hate and corporate thievery that will take place if Mitt Romney is president. As bad as it feels now, it will only get worse. I need your help to stop this.



I can't promise you that your life will get better, easier under Barack Obama. I do think he cares and I know for sure that if the other guy is sitting in the Oval Office, I can guarantee you that not only will your life not get better, it will get much, much worse. Don't take my word for it. Just ask your parents what life was like before a 30-year pillage by the Republicans of the middle class. Your parents bought a house and eventually owned it outright. They weren't in debt. College was free. They bought a new car every 3 or 4 years. They took vacations and were home for dinner by 5 or 6 PM. They had a savings account in the bank. They didn't live in fear of not knowing if they'd even have a job next year. 



That's all gone. I don't know if we can get it back, but I do know that Mr. Romney would love the chance to complete the final elimination of the middle class and the American Dream. 



He must be stopped. Take 20 minutes on Tuesday and go vote. If you don't want to do it for your country, then do it for me! It's the only favor I'll ever ask of you.



Thanks for taking the time to read this. I know that you care, and care deeply, about your future and your kids' future. You have every right to be cynical about all this. And you hold the power to stop the bastards who plan on squeezing every last dime out of you that they can. Take a stand. And make a statement to those who are hoping against hope that you'll stay home on Tuesday. Your presence at the polls is what they fear most.



Go scare the s**t out of them! For me.

Yours,
Michael Moore
MMFlint@MichaelMoore.com
@mmflint
MichaelMoore.com

Tomorrow ...a letter from Michael Moore
--------------------

Monday, November 5th, 2012

Friends,

Tomorrow, the bankers and corporate chiefs are planning an historic victory party. With the election of Mitt Romney, their takeover of American democracy would be complete.

They thought they had accomplished that four years ago when they backed Barack Obama (he received more money from Wall Street than McCain; Goldman Sachs was his #1 private contributor). And even though he never put a single one of them of any consequence in jail and never signed any bill that would truly stop their out-of-control greed; and even though he placed two of Wall Street's favorite operatives – Timothy Geithner and Lawrence Summers – in charge of the Treasury and economic policy; and even though he let them use bailout money – our money – to give themselves lavish bonuses after they wrecked our economy; and even though he didn't go for a single-payer health care system and made sure that under "Obamacare" no insurance company would be fined more than $100 a day for denying a person with a pre-existing condition (thus removing many of the teeth the new law had); and even though he let them keep their Bush tax cut for another four years – yes, even after doing all of that for the wealthiest 1%, it still wasn't enough for them, so they decided to turn on him in a vicious way. They decided that they could literally buy an election and toss him to the curb. Why? Because he enacted a little "reform." Because he wants them to pay just a tiny bit more in taxes. Because, deep down, they know what we know deep down – that Barack Obama, if given a second term, is going to put the brakes on them. They know that Barack Obama will appoint Supreme Court justices who will overturn Citizens United. And they know that next time they crash our economy, some of them will, hopefully, be going to jail.

And they believe they can stop him tomorrow by having bamboozled enough of those "47%", those moochers, to vote for one of their own – Mitt Romney. A man who, like them, believes big business should have no restraints. A man who pays next to nothing in taxes. A man who has destroyed the livings of thousands of working Americans. A man who hides his money in Switzerland and the Cayman Islands and won't show us what's on his tax returns for the past decade.

This is who they want elected president tomorrow – and if this happens, their goal of complete corporate control of the three branches of government will be complete.

Trust me, if they succeed, we may never get it back.

There were two things in the news these past couple weeks that unfortunately got little attention. But these two stories say it all about the America we will have unless these people are stopped.

One was a story in The Nation that exposed how Romney, while publicly opposing the auto company bailout, secretly got in on the action with his Wall Street donors – and made over $15 million, a 4,000% return on his investment (which he hid in a blind trust in his wife's name) by buying up the Delphi auto parts company, the former Delco/AC Spark Plug division of GM where my dad worked. He then – get this – grabbed billions in bailout cash to "transform" it from bankrupt to a "viable business." Except what he really did was slash retiree pensions, shut down 24 U.S. factories, and ship all 25,200 union jobs to China. You'd think he'd keep quiet about Delphi – but no, he's got his supporters running ads in Ohio blaming Barack Obama for terminating the Delphi pensions – I kid you not. (When I opposed the Iraq War, Romneyites and the like called me a "traitor"; when Romney does this traitorous act destroying jobs and sending them to China, his reward, in addition to the millions he pocketed, may be the presidency tomorrow.)

The other story was a bill passed by the Pennsylvania legislature that would allow businesses to take the state income taxes they withhold from their employees' paychecks and KEEP THE MONEY FOR THEMSELVES! That's right. Your taxes that you pay to the state won't go to the state anymore – they'll just go right into the pockets of your bosses. I was stunned to find out that other states are already doing this as an "incentive" to lure or keep businesses in their states. Let's be clear what this is about: the final merging that's taking place between the corporate and political power structures, coming together as one, and making the workers (serfs) pay tribute to their employer (the overlord). Welcome to the New Feudalism.

So tomorrow it's High Noon in the USA, a literal showdown on the Main Streets of America between the rich and everyone else. The 1% truly believe they can defeat the 99%. As the conservative commentator Stephen Moore (who sits on the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal) said, "Capitalism is a lot more important than democracy. I'm not even a big believer in democracy." Citibank, in an internal memo, said that the only thing that stands in the way of the plutocrats is, well, elections: "[T]he rising wealth gap between the rich and poor will probably at some point lead to a political backlash...Whilst the rich are getting a greater share of the wealth, and the poor a lesser share, political enfrachisement remains as was – one person, one vote…[W]e are keeping a close eye on developments."

We have the chance tomorrow to defeat them. They're counting on us not even showing up. The line in the sand has been drawn. Please do whatever you can today and tomorrow to get everyone you know to the polls – especially any relatives or friends in swing states. Even if you don't live in a swing state, you need to make a loud statement that you won't let this happen. And you need to take the House away from the Republicans so some work in Washington can get done.

To volunteer to walk precincts and get out the vote near where you live, go here. Or make calls to swing state voters. And don't forget that I need each of you to convince just one non-voter to vote tomorrow so that we can deliver the million-vote margin that could make all the difference.

Thanks for taking the time to read this. Now go act as if your democracy depended on it – because it does.

Yours,
Michael Moore
MMFlint@MichaelMoore.com
@mmflint
MichaelMoore.com

PS. I'll be on The Last Word With Lawrence O'Donnell tonight on MSNBC at 10:00 PM ET/7:00 PM PT. (Replay at 1:00 AM ET/10:00 PM PT.) Please tune in!

P.P.S. Here's a little election humor to put you in the mood for an Obama victory.