Today's edition of quick hits:
* Afghanistan: "Roadside bombs and a suicide bomber killed 20 people in a spate of attacks across Afghanistan on Thursday, officials said. The deaths came even as armed clashes between insurgents and Afghan security forces have decreased as the fighting season winds down with the advent of cooler weather in the mountainous nation."
* Around the world, news of President Obama's re-election seemed to be very well received.
* As of this afternoon, NBC News declared that voters in the state of Washington have approved a marriage equality measure. Washington joins Maine and Maryland as the only states to do so through ballot referenda.
* Iranian warplanes "fired at an unmanned American military surveillance drone in international airspace over the Persian Gulf last week, Pentagon officials disclosed Thursday, saying that while the aircraft was not hit, Washington made a strong protest to Tehran."
* A Romney campaign official conceded today that President Obama really did win Florida.
* Remember when Suffolk's pollster, David Paleologos, told Fox News he'd stopped polling Florida and Virginia because Obama was sure to lose both? Obama won both.
* When it comes to the national popular vote, Hurricane Sandy appears to have cost the president around 800,000 votes.
* Jared Lee Loughner received seven life terms after pleading guilty today to his deadly Arizona shooting rampage.
* There are still seven unresolved U.S. House races.
* Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) failed in his role as chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, but he's getting promoted anyway to Senate Minority Whip.
* Progress: "The next Congress will include the largest number of women ever among its membership -- 20 in the Senate, an increase of two, and at least 77 in the House, up by four, with two others vying in races that had not been called late Wednesday."
* While Karl Rove's Crossroads operation had the worst return on investment in 2012, Planned Parenthood's super PAC had the best.
* Ouch: "From the moment Mitt Romney stepped off stage Tuesday night, having just delivered a brief concession speech he wrote only that evening, the massive infrastructure surrounding his campaign quickly began to disassemble itself. Aides taking cabs home late that night got rude awakenings when they found the credit cards linked to the campaign no longer worked."
Anything to add? Consider this an open thread.
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That final point shows all the class we've come to know and loathe from the Romney camp. In the end, even those who supported them got to feel the love.
I take it you would have trusted Romney's camp not to go out on a drinking binge. I think it was a good decision. Honor among thieves only goes so far.
I hope that Romney's campaign will at least pick up the tab for airfare home for their workers.
It looks like they had to pay their own ride home. Wow. How cheap.
Quick, somebody tell me what Romney gets to do with the money he DIDN'T spend yet. Does he get to keep it and profit off of his failed campaign like he profited off of the auto industry bailout?
I guess we'll have to wait until he releases his tax returns.
So much for the free ride?No more living off the dole? Will they have to find jobs now in this economy?
Meanwhile somewhere in Kentucky a call is made to Mitt's wife about a horse for sell.
Dateline: December: "Unemployment rose last month as Mitt Romney's campaign staff and aides were abruptly let go just prior to Mr. Romney's concession speech on the morning of November 7. Also let go were paid shills, employees that were sometimes referred to on the internet as "trolls." President Obama's campaign staff were believed to be comprised largely of volunteers and thus did not significantly contribute to the unemployment figures."
Come on - don't be too hard on Romney. He honestly thought their chauffeurs would give them a ride home.
Cornyn fails upward? How Republican of him.
Yep! in conservative we fail upward.
Watchout for the next BIG roles Karl rove and Paul Ryan will play.
Interesting point on the FOX audience
Over 10 million people watched the Fox News coverage of the 2012 election, but when President Obama spoke, more than 80% of them tuned out.
After the election was called for President Obama, only 4.4 million Fox viewers stuck around to watch Romney’s concession speech.
By the time President Obama delivered his acceptance speech, only 2.2 million Fox News viewers watched.
The fact that 100% of MSNBC’s audience and 80% of CNN audience watched President Obama, while 80% of the Fox News audience switched away speaks volumes not only about who these Fox News viewers are, but also their unwillingness to listen to the President’s message.
They aren’t interested in hearing anything that this president has to say. They weren’t interested in what Mitt Romney had to say. For them, this election was all about beating Barack Obama.
There’s the difference between MSNBC and Fox.
Good read....
http://www.politicususa.com/fox-news-obama-victory-speech.html
Well, to be fair, Fox's audience skews a lot older than the other networks, and after Romney's dick move of delaying conceding, it was probably harder for them to stay up that late.
I think that it is logical that if the candidate that you have chosen is not going to win, and you have to work the next day, you might consider not staying awake to watch the ever predictable speeches and choose getting a decent nights sleep.
Please... don't stereotype or assume you know the reason why I turned the TV off.
Gives up trying to get folks to understand that the TV stations are clueless on how many viewers they have they guess based on the 54,000 families that have the magic boxes Nielson provide them with. That said, it is rather telling on how slanted Neison is on which families they give magic boxes to.
First, they had to get up for work early. There's no historical merit about the event (like in 2008), speech won't be any better than 2008, The term won't be much different than 2008. Most people don't watch the whole super-bowl when it's a blow-out either.
Daily Beast says,
There's a good short post on voting reform at The Plank that points out that most voting reforms aren't complicated or high-tech. For example, switching from touch screen systems to paper ballots is one simple and fairly low-cost fix to improve throughput -- while touchscreens allow just one voter at a time (and might not have a paper trail), a paper ballot set-up allows dozens to be filling out a ballot simultaneously. On-line voter registration, which was implemented in California for this election, is another way to get more people registered with less effort and cost. Read the whole piece here: http://www.tnr.com/blog/plank/109919/obama-doesnt-need-tech-wizardry-fix-voting
The problem isn't Obama trying to figure out how to do it, the problem is the teapubs won't give up keeping voting rules to the states just so they can keep up their effort to suppress the vote.
Oh, Iran. Looks like things are heating up again. The last thing I want is another war, military action, or whatever, supported by the US. But I sure am glad I don't have to worry about it all being done under Romney's watch. What a nightmare that would have been. I want a grown-up in office, and that is what I got.
Remember when Suffolk's pollster, David Paleologos...
Wait, the pollster's name means old (as in long-dead) opinion? Maybe he should consider a more appropriate career.
The question is not how many votes Hurricane Sandy costed, but as Chris Matthew strongly implied, how many votes did the hurricane gain President Obama. Forty-one percent said it played an important role in their vote...seems like a lot of votes to me.
And how did the lost votes go from 300,000 to 800,000?
How many votes did robme get with his photo op/help Sandy victims in Ohio?
50? 60?
LOL
uh huh
Guys like RoDon are truly chickensh*t.
He links an article from six days ago saying that the hurricane could cost Obama 300K votes challenging Steve's link to an article from 5 hours ago saying it possibly cost Obama 800K votes, yet Rob intimates that it is Steve who is inaccurate.
Disingenuous chickensh*t. Yes, I'm name calling because you offer nothing here to move forward the discourse. You offer misinformation and disingenuousness.
Go the f*ck away!
RobDon
Face it Your guy lost and badly. You can spin all the nutty theories you want but there isn't going to be a recount or a Supreme court intervention and even Karl Rove's "Secret Math" can't make a silk purse out of this one. Barack Obama was elected president of these United States. Again.
Now turn off Fox and step out of the bubble and try going out and getting some fresh air and maybe a coffee.
Hey folks. It should be easy to ignore the trolls. We won. They lost. But they lost more than an election. Their whole world crashed. Wingnut World died last Tuesday. Seriously. It died. This election was the last chance for them to destroy the 20th century. It was their last chance to secure the New Gilded Age. It was their last chance to keep the country from doing at least something about climate change.
Their world died. They are desperately crying for relevance by having you engage them. Ignore them. They're dead.
Rollo, I can "name call," too. You are an idiot. The article Steve used actually links to the exact same article I linked to. Click on Steve's link and one more link you are at the same article. And you think I'm chickensh*t for linking to the same article? Wow, idiot.
I linked to it directly to show these are estimates. The articles even say the estimation is difficult.
If 42 percent of those voting for Obama said that Obama's response to the Hurricane was "important" to their decision to vote for Obama, it would seem to me he "gained" votes from the political effects of the storm instead of lost them.
Here's the source and information because I don't just make statements, I provide sources. Where is your source (with data) that the Hurricane DIDN'T help Obama? Oh, don't have one, because you are wrong and I am right (at least on this point).
Source:
Oh, and my world hasn't collapsed. I hope President Obama is succesfully, at least in getting the economy going, the deficit down, and our debt paid off.
This is a logical fallacy. You are assuming that because people, when asked in multiple choice format, responded that they felt his handling of the storm was very important to their vote that this necessitates that in the absence of Hurricane Sandy they would've voted differently. You do not have evidence to make this assertion. You cannot claim that he gained votes from the storm. The evidence used to make the assertion that he lost votes comes from those who were unable to cast their ballots in time. It's not a number reflecting opinions- it's a number reflecting physical turnout. To even conflate the two is just silly.
So, when people say the economy was an important factor in their vote, it didn't influence who they voted for? I wasn't saying all of the 42% who said the response to Sandy was a factor in their vote voted for Obama for that sole reason, but it is logical it tipped the scales for some.
Don't you remember tons of political pundits talking about how the storm would affect the race and they were not just talking about turnout in the affected areas.
When people name something as a factor in their vote, it means they voted the way they did in part or in whole because of that factor. That is not an "logical fallacy."
(Side note: I could not find the raw exit poll data from CBS so I was unable to determine how the question was asked. Did you find it?)
Pretty harsh to cancel credit cards the same hour as the concession speech.
I worked for a union-run campaign in 2004, and while it was necessary to audit all of the charges coming in, it was also our job to make sure people got home again after being deployed.
and yet people voted for this guy. Romney is heartless and he really proved it didn't he with this last little trick of his...
Romney is first, last, and always about the money. After all, he said he likes firing people, and his staffers were no longer of any use to him.
We all knew willard was cheeze and cheap. Didn't stop rove from over spending the Pac money.
Unless we missed it we have heard nothing since before the electon from or abut Debbie Wasserman Schultz. Typicaly, the National Chair for a wnning pesidential candidate is all over the news. Is she OK?
I never got to use mountebank and charlatan in my descriptions of Mitt. Oh well, I am sure I will need some instructive adjectives in the next election cycle.
And I'm DELIGHTED to see that all seven are looking good for the Dems!
Got Enraged and Engaged:
Mooched the Vote 2012!
;-)
Ok here's two things I found interesting
The one you can file away under comic nostalgia is Romney's "Transition website" that finally disappeared from the Internets yesterday
http://politicalwire.com/archives/2012/11/07/romneys_transition_site.html
and the other gets put under "Why am I not surprised". Floating.sheep has a map up that breaks down the location by volume of tweets in response to Obama's reelection that were classified as Racist and it seems that Mississippi and Alabama topped the list.
http://www.floatingsheep.org/2012/11/mapping-racist-tweets-in-response-to.html
I love the tweets from people moving to Canada because Obama was elected. How dumb is that? They want to run away from the socialist agenda and socialist President to a country that already has the policies Obama and the dems support. Socialized medicine anyone? DOH!!!
Republican Logic:
1. Obama wouldn't have won without Hurricane Sandy.
2. It was God's will that the hurricane hit just before the election.
3. God clearly wanted Obama to win.
Allen West is still whining about his apparent loss, demanding a recount, threatening a lawsuit, accusing fraud, and insulting election officials.
His Dem opponent and leader in the polls, Patrick Murphy, needs all our help to bury this offensive McCarthy disciple and Tea Party leader in the inevitable cage match to come.
His Dem opponent and leader in the polls
I mean the actual counted election day votes
With President Obama's re-election, I am more proud and more confident than ever in America's future. Obama is a good, honest, and decent man- a man who says what he means and means what he says. He's heads and shoulders above other politicians. He's no faker out -for there for fame and fortune. On the contrary, Obama is the real deal - a man whose ideals and hopes and dreams are grounded in the lives and struggles of ordinary Americans. And he won't forget about us- whether we are young or old. Obama believes in a UNITED States of America.... and we are very very lucky to still have him as President. Watch this video ...and watch the soul of the man:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBK2rfZt32g
I'm more than pleased with the outcome of the Election. You can't please all the people all the time. But you can please some of the people some of the time. There are some very pleased people out there.
Hey TM....no surprise that I'm not happy with the outcome of the Election....I think our country is in big trouble....I don't think that the debt crisis will get fixed and I see our great country going down the road of printing more and more money to pay for social programs....as long as there is a politician out there offering the moon and the stars with a printing press ..... nobody is going to vote for the guy that says .....I will give you a good job. Meanwhile, our currency is trashed and our debt will continue to rise....and taxing the rich will do nothing as far a revenue goes....a tiny drop in the bucket.
I don't want my children to pay for my generations mistakes....but it looks like that is what is going to happen.....
Stones....You can't always get what you want.....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OagFIQMs1tw&feature=related
Leave it to tap to miss that his guy was the one making all those promises about jobs. Also notice tap believes that robme was going to fix the crisis yet not one robme plan did anything except ad to the crisis. Really tap you can't complain when your guy was the one who was going around saying never mind how I am doing it just trust me.
Exactly whom. And FGS, tap, how can you forget WHO ran up the debt???
whom...your right...Romney was promising jobs....Obama is promising the moon and the stars and has a printing press to pay for it all....
Bush and all the other Repubs and Democrats ran up debt....but so has Obama...
Romney did not.
Instead of a guarantee of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, our culture would be reshaped by a growing collectivist power, vested in the state, that would command ever more resources and control. The claim of "leveling the playing field" is, in reality, a plan to control the outcome. As famously promised, the financial crisis has not been wasted. The recession lingers for many families. Unemployment remains stuck at a destructive level. The deficit soars — we borrow nearly $3 billion a day, $20 billion a week, $1 trillion a year.
These are serious problems to most mortals, but for him, they are rich opportunities to expand the reach of Washington. The soaring debt is not soaring enough, so more treasure must be thrown into the bonfire of his vanities. It is a fire consuming the future under the guise of fairness.This is not mere class warfare. That's just a tactic. The goal, as it always has been for his kind throughout history, is to accumulate power that the elite can wield without accountability or checks and balances.
Give the man his due. We have not seen his like in our times. His charisma and political skills are unmatched. If only they were admirably used. Obama promised to unite the country and, his lie exposed, he has won re-election by any means necessary. He has succeeded.
Beware, America. The wraps have come off.
Obama is unbound They don't want to unite America. They want to conquer it.
Barack Obama did build that.
BWAAAAAA! Metoo - you REALLY need to get out of the bubble!!!
We need to provide support to Patrick Murpy to defend his election against Alan West who will send funds in his effort to defeat the electural result