Ok, so you want to know who wins the election, but you don’t want to be glued to the media all day. Here’s your guide to the important events that will determine the outcome. The only problem I see is that they give only closing time for the polls. In some states, it could take hours or even days after the polls close to determine a winner.
Not only should you be sure to vote, but you should encourage your friends and family to vote.
“The presidential race continues. Did you forget about that for a few days? Maybe the only good thing about the hurricane is that we forgot about the presidential race.” – David Letterman
“Mitt Romney resumed campaigning today. He was visiting those hardest hit by the storm, and that would be swing-state Latinos.” – David Letterman
“Folks, it’s one week before the election, and Christie is praising a Democrat. What’s next, a Democrat praising Christie? It’s unnatural; it’s like kissing your sister. Which, by the way, would be federal law if Obama is elected.” – Stephen Colbert
“Michael Brown, the former director of FEMA who was forced to resign after Hurricane Katrina, has criticized the president. He said Obama may have acted too quickly this time — instead of taking the wait-and-do-nothing approach that worked so well during Katrina.” – Jimmy Kimmel
“That is an interesting point coming from a former FEMA director and current Applebee’s employee of the week.” – Jimmy Kimmel
“I’d like to single out some heroes, like the nurses at NYU hospital. After the hospital generators failed, these nurses carried 20 newborns down nine flights of stairs while manually operating respirators. I can’t even walk down nine flights of stairs without a spotter.” – Stephen Colbert
“Well, we have an audience back. Even before Hurricane Sandy I always thought that it took a great deal of courage for people to sit through this show.” – David Letterman
“The MTA reported that Sandy flooded seven subway tunnels under the East River, which means it could be weeks before they’re able to restore the scent of urine. That’s why I’m calling on New York drunks to head into the subway and release their strategic bladder reserves.” – Stephen Colbert
“Economists say rebuilding after Hurricane Sandy will give the ailing construction industry a huge boost. In fact, the storm has already created more jobs than President Obama.” – Jay Leno
“In a Romney administration, instead of depending on big government, you’d be rescued by private sector volunteers, like Paul Ryan, who will personally come to your devastated town and wash your already clean pots.” – Stephen Colbert
“Donald Trump, did you see him today? He was giving candy only to kids who could show their birth certificate and their school records.” – Jay Leno
“I had a trick-or-treater tonight who stood outside on my porch for an hour, didn’t ring the bell, didn’t knock on the door. I said, ‘Who are you supposed to be?’ He said, ‘I’m an undecided voter.'” – Jay Leno
“President Obama canceled the White House Halloween party. He canceled after hearing Joe Biden was coming as ‘Slutty Joe Biden’.” – Conan O’Brien
“Due to the tough economy, two of the world’s biggest publishing houses have decided to merge and become one. In fact, they’re only going to publish one book this year – ’50 Shades of Harry Potter’.” – Conan O’Brien
What I find ironic about all this is that even though Mitt Romney claims to be a good businessman, even businesses are waking up to the fact that they have to do something about climate change.
Take the recent cover article from Bloomberg Businessweek, which quotes an insurance company warning that there has been “a nearly quintupled number of weather-related loss events in North America for the past three decades.” Their solution is financial incentives to reduce greenhouse gasses, including the cap-and-trade legislation that passed the House in 2009, but which “died in the Senate in 2010, a victim of Tea Party-inspired Republican obstructionism”.
Or take an editorial in Forbes magazine last month (before Hurricane Sandy), which stated:
The drumbeat of a warming climate, worsening weather, and the resulting human toll continues, and keeps getting louder. At this point, it should be deafening enough to wake up anyone still denying the reality of a new normal for our climate, our weather, and the insurance companies whose stability underlies our economy.
Or the statement from insurance company Allianz:
With 40 percent of industrial insurance claims that Allianz now pays out being due to natural catastrophes, climate change represents a threat to our business… Insurance companies need to adapt their products and services to take climate change risks into account. Already, insurance payments relating to climatic events are increasing rapidly, with a 15-fold increase in weather-related claims over the past 30 years.
The bottom line is that we have to stop asking questions like “Did climate change cause Hurricane Sandy”. That’s like asking if the use of performance enhancing drugs caused Lance Armstrong to win the Tour de France. Or to use a baseball analogy:
We can’t say that steroids caused any one home run by Barry Bonds, but steroids sure helped him hit more and hit them farther. Now we have weather on steroids.
Sandy wasn’t “caused” by climate change, it IS climate change.
And yet, Romney opposes any cap-and-trade legislation, opposes Obama’s new fuel efficiency standards, opposes any regulation of carbon dioxide emissions. And as you can see in the above video, he considers climate change a joke.
One of my favorite sites, Electoral-vote.com, has two posts that provide some perspective on the election.
In the first one, it seems like some conservatives (including the editor of Red State and none other than Karl Rove) have apparently seen the writing on the wall and are not waiting to make excuses for Romney’s loss in the election. Even Mitt Romney himself is making excuses and blaming others.
But the more interesting post is the second one, which reminds us that this election does not signal the end of the world. The US has a sorry history of election antics, going all the way back to 1800 when Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr were tied in the electoral college, throwing the election to the House of Representatives. After 35 votes over the course of a week, Jefferson won by one vote. But some people were so unhappy about this that Jefferson had to have armed soldiers escort him to the inauguration.
Twenty four years later, Andrew Jackson was robbed when he won the most electoral votes, but not a majority, so the election was again thrown to the House, which replaced him with John Quincy Adams. And in 1876 Samuel Tilden easily won the presidential election, but irregularities in Louisiana, South Carolina and (of course) Florida put the validity of the election in question. Congress intervened and in a straight party-line vote replaced him with Rutherford Hayes, earning him the nickname Rutherfraud Hayes.
With partisan emotions running so high in Tuesday’s election, it is easy for people to despair if their candidate loses. But in reality our government is set up so that no one person has very much power (let alone is “the decider”). In a democracy, if we don’t like something about our government, then the blame has to start with us. Our responsibility doesn’t end with voting. Change has to come from us, the people.
“Everybody’s mind is on Hurricane Sandy. The worst is over. Now people are discussing the cause. Sources say that it was partly caused by global warming. Meanwhile, Fox News said it was caused by two men kissing in Central Park.” – Conan O’Brien
“Economic losses could reach $20 billion. And most of that is in paper towels.” – David Letterman
“I watched a lot of storm coverage over the last couple of days. I spent 36 hours watching weather reporters standing in water while telling us not to stand in water.” – Jimmy Kimmel
“This is the day after Hurricane Sandy, and once again we have no studio audience. We don’t care, we’re still going do a show. I had to come in. I’ve used up all my sick days.” – David Letterman
“I feel like Clint Eastwood – an old guy talking to empty chairs.” – David Letterman
“I don’t know if you guys caught the show last night, but because of Hurricane Sandy, we had to do the show to a bunch of empty seats — or as Clint Eastwood calls that, ‘a full house’.” – Jimmy Fallon
“Governor Christie does a great job with the storm press conferences. It’s hard to be boring in the middle of a disaster but somehow Mayor Bloomberg manages to do it.” – Jimmy Kimmel
“New Jersey took a pounding. Governor Chris Christie was actually knocked over.” – David Letterman
“We’re still dealing with Hurricane Sandy here in New York. A lot of people on the East Coast don’t have access to Facebook or Twitter. Everybody was like, “How am I supposed to complain about not having Facebook or Twitter if I don’t have Facebook or Twitter?'” – Jimmy Fallon
“The stock market was closed for two days, yesterday and today. You know what that means? Although our lives were in danger, at least for two days our money was safe.” – Jay Leno
After repeatedly being bugged about this by readers, I finally got around to fixing it so that posts to Political Irony are (again) submitted to Facebook. So you can now go to the Political Irony Facebook page and “like” it.
Posting to Facebook used to work, but Facebook keeps changing things and I got tired of them breaking. Hopefully they won’t break it again soon so it will work for a while.
Automatic posting to Twitter has worked and been stable for a long time, and has the advantage that when I make a major update to a post you get a “Updated post” tweet. Go here to follow Political Irony on Twitter.
Or, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
We could be creating jobs finding alternatives to greenhouse-gas-producing fossil fuels, and eliminate our dependence on foreign oil. Or we can spend our time and money cleaning up after the mess we are creating.
Pee Wee Herman gives his endorsement for president. No spoilers here — you’ll just have to read it to find out whom he endorses.
But I will reveal his reasoning. The person he endorses is like “delicious frozen custard” and “has the 1.4 percent egg yolk solids needed to run this country.”
Of course, “if you’re one of those people who believe celebrities should shut up and sing” then you should instead watch Pee Wee Herman singing “Bird is the Word“.
“The hurricane has interrupted the presidential campaign. Both presidential candidates are taking measures to prepare for Hurricane Sandy. President Obama is staying in Washington to coordinate relief efforts. And Mitt Romney is moving his smaller homes into his larger home.” – Conan O’Brien
“Folks back east are feeling the devastating effects of Hurricane Sandy — 100-mile-an-hour winds, lot of folks without power. Because of the hurricane, both candidates have had to cancel speeches and campaign events. So at least some good has come out of it.” – Jay Leno
“Lindsay Lohan sent out a tweet urging people not to panic over Hurricane Sandy. She said the correct time to panic is if anyone sees her in a rental car. Then you should evacuate the area.” – Conan O’Brien
“We’re in the middle of Hurricane Sandy. So thank you very much for joining us here in the Ed Sullivan Shelter.” – David Letterman
“President Obama said that Americans should take warnings about Hurricane Sandy seriously. So step one: Give it a name other than Sandy. I mean, come on.” – Jimmy Fallon
“Power outages could wreak havoc on Election Day. But don’t worry, Republicans have back-up crooked voting machines.” – David Letterman
“They keep saying the candidates are out making stump speeches. You know why it’s called a stump speech? Because after a candidate is done with his speech, you’re completely stumped as to what he said.” – Jay Leno
“President Obama now has a 52-point lead with Hispanics. However, Mitt Romney has a 90-point lead with the people who hire Hispanics.” – Conan O’Brien
“A man in Indiana got a tattoo of Mitt Romney’s campaign logo on his face. They describe the man as a staunch Republican who has never heard of bumper stickers.” – Conan O’Brien
“The Giants swept the Tigers four straight to win the World Series. The last time a Tiger took a beating this bad, he had a nine-iron through the back window of his Escalade.” – Jay Leno
“I don’t want to say that was a tough World Series, but today Detroit asked for another bailout.” – Jay Leno
“This storm could mean the biggest power outage since the Yankees in the playoffs.” – David Letterman
“It was so windy yesterday that a Jets receiver was actually blown into the end zone.” – David Letterman
I love a good rant, but (despite the poor spelling) this one makes an interesting point. Republicans, including Mitt Romney, are saying that you shouldn’t vote for Barack Obama because if Obama wins, then the Republicans will hold the country hostage.
How is that any different than surrendering to terrorism?
Years ago Mitch McConnell, R Sen. Minority leader, famously said, at the precipice of a near depression caused by mainly his party, said that his most important goal was to make sure Obama wouldn’t be reelected. Since then, the GOP has been true to its word placing the good of their party well above the good of the country time and time again, even in desperate times, not just filibustering an unprecedented number of bills in general, but even ones that were based on GOPs past bills and ones that were cosponsored by republicans (who joined the filibuster). Whether it was healthcare that was based on the GOPs plan of the 90s or funding the rebuilding of our crumbling infrastructure or voting for veterans benefits to help them get jobs. The list is virtually innumerable.
The GOP often claims that these votes just reflect their honest fiscal responsibility but the details clearly belie this. The amount of spending required by the bills filibustered supposedly on fiscal grounds is dwarfed by the GOPs unfunded spending and tax cuts under Bush. This includes the Bush tax cuts (during a war and not within a recession), the Iraq war, and Medicare Part D. This corresponds to most of our deficit spending. This shows that the GOPs positions are not honest; they’re not principled stands on different approaches (not to mention they the GOP is quantifiably the fiscal disaster and profligate unfunded spending party)
Quite simply, the GOP has/is engaged in political terrorism. They don’t care who gets hurt as long as they have power. Nothing else matters. Recently, some, like David Brooks, have endorsed Romney on the basis that Mitt, as a Republican, will not suffer the same terrorism. That’s right, a call to all Americans to give into terror.
Then there’s the unprecedented level of lying by Mitt’s campaign. It used to be that campaigns would often stretch the truth and occasionally tell a few whoppers that would be excoriated in the press and lead to retractions. It used to be that a candidate would stake out some “new” positions for the campaign and then be fairly consistent about them lest they be called a “flip flopper”; but not Mitt.
Mitt simply conjures new lies, blatantly and willfully creating complete alternative universes of lies. No lie is too small or large; there are no limits. He’s for the auto bailout that he wrote a NYT op ed against but Obama, who fought tooth and nail, is shipping jobs overseas. He’s been on every side of the abortion position many of which have occurred within days of each other; pro choice, “pro life”, with health and rape exceptions, and without them. He would privatize FEMA, as gov’t is always bad, but now he wouldn’t. He made the original Obamacare which he’s against but he might keep some of it but then he wouldn’t maybe. He believed in climate change but now that 97% of climatologists have that view after 30 years of study he doesn’t (I’m sure that’s changed now literally with the weather). Likewise on gun rights, etc.
In short, if his pollsters tell Mitt that it would be expedient to tell to his next audience, he’ll say it. When a reporter reports that he will deny saying it while still showing ads for it. It’s seems to be based on the idea that saturation lying will make people numb to it and that seems to be working.
Finally, I’d like to give a “shout out” to all the asses both naive, like David Brooks, and cynical assholes alike who have proposed that this complete lying strategy implies that Mitt is a moderate. Only a fool at this point could possibly believe a thing that comes out of Mitts mouth therefore we have no idea what he’d really do except for one thing: We know he’ll do, as the flip side of aMcConnell and the GOP, anything to maintain power regardless of the consequences to the country. Given Citizens United and the massive donations etc of the super rich, in particular to him, we can be sure that he will run the country for their benefit (he needs them for the next run). This means we can except a weakening of banking/investments (the wall st money is horrifying) and air pollution regulations, massive tax cuts to the rich, and privatization of anything without any regards to efficacy. In short, we know that he will sell the country to the highest bidder, just like the GOP… btw, that’s not you.
Also, if Mitt Romney wins, the message for the future is that you can simply buy any election with enough money and enough lies.
This has little to do with politics (other than how Hurricane Sandy might affect the election), but if you are curious what I do in my not-spare time, here’s an article that talks about an animated map I created showing flight cancelations due to Sandy. You can also find it here, along with lots of raw data. The best version of the animated map is here, running faster and including more days. Plus you can see it in high definition. Enjoy!
I hope everyone remembers to set their clocks back, and remembers to vote!
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