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October 23, 2012

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low-tech cyclist

And yet, the wingers crow and we worry. Interesting. It's the big difference in the risks and rewards attached to winning and losing.

Even the 29.7% chance that Nate Silver currently gives Romney is just way too big a chance that the GOP will have the opportunity to stop Obamacare in its tracks, cut a major chunk out of Medicaid, and voucherize Medicare.

Unlike the Bushies in their desire to privatize Social Security, this time they aren't going to give a good goddamn if the Dems give them any bipartisan cover or not.

While the wingers know that even if they lose, they'll still be able to tie Congress in knots for the next four years.

So if we win, we more or less get to preserve our past gains over the next few years, but if we lose, we could lose disastrously. But if they win, they get to sack and pillage the New Deal, and if they lose, they'll not lose very much.

In strictly game-theoretic terms, their side of the board is the one to be on. In terms of what's good and right, there's only one side of the board that a decent human being should be on, AFAIAC. And that's why we worry and they don't.

low-tech cyclist

Should have included: if they win, we can wave goodbye to not only a woman's right to choose, but quite possibly legal access to hormonal contraceptives as well. If we win, Roe will likely remain in force, but they can continue to constrict access to abortions in many states.

All in all, this election is like a bet that we've got a 2/3 chance of winning, but if we win, the duck comes down and gives us $100, while if we lose, we lose the house, the car, and the retirement fund.

jeanne marie

All in all, this election is like a bet that we've got a 2/3 chance of winning, but if we win, the duck comes down and gives us $100, while if we lose, we lose the house, the car, and the retirement fund.

Just about sums it up.

oddjob

I can't link to it yet because it's the front page headline in today's Boston Globe, but the story is an analysis pointing out that this time around it's quite possible that the popular vote winner will lose the electoral college.

Grung_e_Gene

The Rape-publican Party. Without raping people Republicans would never have sex...

low-tech cyclist

"I think even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen."

-Richard Mourdock, GOP candidate for U.S. Senator from Indiana (and the only Senate candidate that Romney's produced a commercial on behalf of)

If he didn't have a pretty good shot at winding up in the U.S. Senate, I'd just wonder what pathology someone must have to believe in the sort of God who is willing to have a woman raped in order to get one more baby started, when thousands of babies already get started every day.

Things being what they are, I can only hope that such remarks help the voters of Indiana conclude that this alleged human being needs to be kept away from any position of public responsibility and authority.

And it makes me feel better about having contributed to Joe Donnelly's campaign. I'm not sure what sort of guy Donnelly is, but even if he's well into Blue Dog territory, he's got to be miles better than Mourdock.

low-tech cyclist

On a completely different subject, I really don't understand TPM's PollTracker. It shows Obama leading by only 2% in Pennsylvania, despite the fact that the smallest lead any pollster currently gives to Obama in PA is 3%.

Since you can't average a bunch of leads of 3% or greater and come up with a 2% lead, they're not averaging.

Perhaps they're curve-fitting or something like that, but that includes an implicit momentum assumption, which would be bogus. The reason why you keep polling is that you don't know whether a candidate's support will keep moving in the same direction as it has been.

kathy a.

don't mess with texas has apparently been extended to threatening criminal sanctions against UN poll watchers.

nancy

Blunt. From the Providence-Journal. An op-ed by a former Romney colleague who describes himself as well right of center.

He's an ideological chameleon who will say anything to get your support and then do whatever he wants to favor the rich and privileged; he's a caricature of the stereotyped Republican Party.

He lies frequently and convincingly, and has elastic principles, if any at all. He's fundamentally dishonest, while presenting an image of goodness and light.

kathy a.

nancy, that link made my day. (which probably says a lot about how not-great this day has been.)

via maddow, here's a whopper: obama has an advantage when women are in the fertile time of the month. this was based on "an internet survey of 275 women who were not taking hormonal contraception and had regular menstrual cycles. About 55% were in committed relationships, including marriage." there are not enough ways for me to call BS on this so-called study, speaking as a menopausal woman who is not on hormones, and who thinks a sample of 275 is pretty freaking pathetic a basis for such grand conclusions. (yeah, that puts me squarely in the "dried up hag" category, which only manages to piss me off even more. go figure.)

nancy

kathy -- CNN removed the hormonal cycle-link story. Presto. I'm impressed. Next up and why not -- horoscopes, PMS, women and voting patterns. Crossed with a correlation of indigestion and traffic drive-time.

CNN is a bad joke.

kathy a.

wow. CNN did take it down.

but not to worry! for tonight's entertainment -- The Donald offers a gerbillion bazillion dollar$$$ to charity if the president coughs up school records and applications, his passport app, etc.

yawn. we're still waiting on mitty's tax returns, thanks, which are actually things that the non-birthers among us are interested to see.

low-tech cyclist

I remember the arguments 40 years ago over the ERA, and remember hearing a lot of bullshit at the time about how women couldn't handle positions of responsibility because their hormones at certain times of the month might lead them to do whacked-out things.

I never thought we'd be seeing even a hint of that stuff nowadays. Good Lord almighty.

Of course, with the GOP fighting access to contraception, which most of us had also figured was an issue long dead and buried, I guess we shouldn't be too surprised at whatever crazy nonsense they come up with. The GOP (currently rallying around Mourdock, astoundingly enough) is a living demonstration that you can be pretty damned whacked-out without any hormonal explanation. And we really do need to keep their hands off the levers of power.

oddjob

They've been fighting to keep the teaching of evolution out of public schools for over a century and they're still at that, too.

oddjob

(The "they" I was referring to was social conservatives.)

oddjob

Thanks for linking to that op-ed, nancy!

Sometimes blunt is the best way to put something.

nancy

Wouldn't surprise me, given all the rhetoric from the right, to see their next social engineering projects become divorce restriction and finding ways to penalize women for out-of-wedlock childbirth. A Scarlet Letter Movement. I can imagine these guys throwing it all out there to see where it might lead. Romney/Ryan et al. bringing back "criminal conversation". Chattel laws . Six states still have the things on the books. Big in NC apparently. A google will introduce you to law firms which specialize in this particularly smarmy bit of misogyny.

I think TNC's "Pregnancy as Labor" ought to be required reading. Mitt Romney's repellent behavior as bishop toward the mother of four from his ward, whose pregnancy needed to be terminated in order to save her life, tells me all I need to know about the man. That was Mitt, the authoritarian bully at work -- not his Church.

paula

Pass it along: November 6 is Take A Woman To Vote Day. Who are you taking? http://bit.ly/RYu5Kd

nancy

I guess I spoke too soon. The project to penalize poor women with children is already underway in Pennsylvania. Have an additional baby? Sorry, no food stamp adjustment for you.

Food. For children. But, by all means, let's ax PP first. Then we can let children go hungry. Not starving, but hungry.

I will never understand this mindset. Being poor is exhausting. Did none of these people read any Dickens? Well, no they didn't...what a silly question. One gets the sense they'd all welcome the return of the orphanage "please sir, i want some more" gruel, and debtor's prison.

*****

Paula -- All done.

Sir Charles

Hey guys. Another crazy day. Back from great Windsor Locks, CT for a cameo appearance in DC. Have to be up at 4:30 AM to head up to Philly again for an early meeting.

Hopefully will get to post in the afternoon on the incredibly high stakes in this election.

low-tech cyclist

Incredibly high stakes indeed: that's one of the things that drives me nuts about our wonderful media. You'd never get the sense from them of the scale of the consequences of this election. But in my lifetime, they've never been this high.

I've been trying to find the time to compose a letter to my in-laws about this. I've not tried to push them into voting one way or another before now, but it's not the time to hold back - especially since they live in Florida.

And my wife's family is a perfect illustration of the harm a Romney win would do, because the abolition of Obamacare, big Medicaid cuts, and the voucherization of Medicare would each do major harm to them. They would get hit by the proverbial 'perfect storm.'

low-tech cyclist

Did none of these people read any Dickens? Well, no they didn't...what a silly question.

No, of course not! They tune in to the Gospel According to Fox, which says that being poor means you collect welfare and unemployment and food stamps, while you sit around and do nothing all day.

kathy a.

here's what they are reading: selections from the obama hater's book club.

Over the past four years, no less than 89 obsessively anti-Obama books have been published . . .. I’m not talking about cool statements of policy difference, but overheated and often unhinged screeds painting a picture of the president as a dangerous radical hell-bent on undermining the Republic by any means necessary. It is hate and hyper-partisan paranoia masquerading as high-minded patriotism.

Here’s the worst part—this steady drumbeat of incitement is having an impact on this presidential election because it has poisoned the well of civic discourse for many voters and those in their radius of damage. It has helped divide the nation beyond reason, distorting the president’s real record beyond all recognition.

low-tech cyclist

And those who don't read the books, get the direct mail.

kathy a.

TNC one more time, this time on "Mourdock, Conception, and Theodicy."

kathy a.

the real mitt -- a guy so loyal that he still stands behind mr. "god intended rape pregnancies."

nancy

I am finding the reading of our current GOP candidate stances and pronunciamentos regarding the very idea and understanding of rape to be way beyond chilling. All of the violence and terror and fear of the act has been erased and abstracted in their thinking. It seems they've decided that rapes are mostly date-rape oopsies. Testosterone guy getting carried away at mixed signals. She-harlot deserving what comes her way. Baby blessings to be honored. By her.

Let's suppose Ann Romney had been forcibly and terrifyingly raped as a slightly pre-menopausal woman and had been impregnated. Are we really to believe that she would have been expected to bear and would have borne another child because of 'God's plans.' I scoff at that.

nancy

Sir C -- Forgot. Thanks for the Richard Thompson. I so luv him. I lost all of my Thompson CDs in a sleepy Saturday morning acquiescence to a "Can I sell this pile of stuff for a $1 each to the music store?" in order to do a trade, 15 some years ago. Never say "Yes, I guess so", as a sleepy parent. :)

Bon weekend all.

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