Pre-Tsunami Live Blog

A lot of pundits are going to live-blog election day.

But can we wait that long? NO! That’s 24 whole hours in the future.

We need some live-bloggin’ now.

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If you can’t wait for tomorrow, and are itching for an open thread today, this is the place to be.

I’ll be updating this post throughout the day with election-related news and snippets (plus some original content, as always). The comments section is a free-for-all — any topic you want, including and especially breaking news and tips for updates. When you vote tomorrow (and you will vote tomorrow) you’ll be part of the hoped-for electoral tsunami; but you can now be part of the pre-tsunami too.

 


 

12:57pm:

Looks like the Republican wave is cresting at maximum height as it reaches the rocky shores of November 2:

Republicans up by 12 in final generic ballot poll before election day.

If you look at Rasmussen’s day-by-day historical chart on the sidebar in the link, this appears to be the highest predicted margin of victory so far this year.

(Note: All update times are in Pacific Standard Time)

 


 

(Link directly to this entry)

1:18pm:

Bay Area blog Bookworm Room recently featured a very convincing campaign sign spotted hanging over Enrico’s, a landmark Italian restaurant in San Francisco’s North Beach:

(Full photo here.)

Update:

Enrico’s disavows the banner, saying it belongs to a radical lawyer who occupies an office directly above their restaurant.

 


 

1:38pm:

Just a thought:

“Shooting bullets at a cloud of gnats.”

That seems to be the best way to characterize the Democrats’ attempts at following Alinsky’s directive to “Pick the Target, Freeze It, Personalize It and Polarize It.” How can you do that if your opponents have no leader?

First they tried to “freeze, personalize and polarize” Rush Limbaugh, then Sarah Palin, then Glenn Beck, then John Boehner, then Karl Rove, then Glenn Beck again, then Christine O’Donnell, then Rand Paul, then Bill O’Reilly, then Sarah Palin Again, then Glenn Beck again…but it just isn’t working. Because the Tea Party is not a political party and it has no identifiable leader. Must be frustrating for the Alinskyites! In a pinch, they can always fall back on “You’re all racists!”

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But the gnats keep swarming, unfazed.

 


 

2:03pm:

Back in the news once again:

Gary Condit denies killing Chandra Levy

Chandra Levy always holds a special place in my heart, because her murder was the very last major news story before the 9/11 era. Her killing dominated the headlines until 9am, September 11, 2001, when the world suddenly changed, in an instant and forever. And she was (for many years) wiped from our collective memory.

Aside from the poignancy and tragedy her story would hold even under normal historical circumstances, it somehow has became a landmark in American history, the last moment of the “Era of Innocence.”

 


 

(Link directly to this entry)

2:15pm:

Vote Bruce Lee!

One of the most peculiar curiosities of this election season has pretty much eluded media detection until now: Bruce Lee is running for office! Yes, that Bruce Lee. You’d think he’d be a shoo-in, but he’s got some heavy-duty competition in his race: Eleanor Roosevelt, Booker T. Washington, Diego Rivera, and Arthur Miller:

As much as we’d all love to vote for Bruce Lee for anything, he’s dead, as are all of his opponents.

This exciting race is not an actual election slate, but rather an illustrative sample ballot produced by the Alameda County Registrar of Voters (the California district represented by far-left Democrat Barbara Lee), explaining how to use the “ranked choice” option in local elections.

A local resident notified me that ads for Bruce Lee and his opponents were cropping up all over Oakland and Berkeley, so I made a trip to snap the photo you see above, showing a public advertisement in Oakland.

This being Barbara Lee’s district, the candidates are almost all left-wing icons:

Eleanor Roosevelt — Grande Dame of the progressive movement
Booker T. Washington — Civil rights pioneer
Diego Rivera — communist artist
Arthur Miller — award-winning playwright and one-time communist

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Rounding off the list are two strange choices: sultry-voiced beloved jazz vocalist Shirley Horn, who seemed to be entirely apolitical; and kung fu maestro Bruce Lee, whose opinions about American politics are similarly unknown. But that’s why we love him: we don’t know his politics, so there’s nothing to disagree with!

I had thought at first that this offbeat selection of sample candidates was confined to Alameda County, perhaps the result of a bored county employee entering in his or her personal heroes, knowing they would be uncontroversial in this “progressive” district. But a bit of research turned up something unexpected: The exact same slate of sample candidates is also running in Pierce County, Washington (the area south of Seattle, including Tacoma):

Vote Bruce!

What exactly is going on here? Who came up with these voting choices? And why are they being used in counties three states away from each other?

A mystery we may likely never resolve.

That said, I think it’s a travesty that we don’t actually have the chance to vote for Bruce Lee, for real. So, to correct this obvious deficiency in the 2010 election season, I have created my own online poll, featuring all the candidates in the Alameda and Pierce County sample ballots.

Since I don’t want to commit pre-emptive voter fraud by declaring Bruce the winner ahead of time, I will let the people speak!

But before we do so, here is a word of wisdom from Bruce himself, which we can consider his political philosophy:

“Do not deny the classical approach, simply as a reaction, or you will have created another pattern and trapped yourself there”.

In case you need help deciding, here are the campaign sites for each candidate:

Eleanor Roosevelt, Democratic Party
Booker T. Washington, Civil Rights Party
Diego Rivera, Communist Party
Arthur Miller, Theater Party
Shirley Horn, Jazz Party
Bruce Lee, Kung Fu Party

Ready? The polls are open!

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2:34pm:

This thread at Huffington Post is already closing in on 2,000 comments:

President Obama To Do Interview With Ryan Seacrest

The amazing part? The comments are running about 5-to-1 against Obama. On HuffPo.

My my my, how times have changed.

 


 

2:53pm:

Political theory of the day:

Is “forgetting” to hang up your cell phone and thereby allowing Republican opponents to hear your insults and schemes now an intentional strategy of the Left?

Why else would it be happening so often?

Discuss.

 


 

(Link directly to this entry)

3:11pm:

“Obama Notes” to replace Federal Reserve Notes as U.S. Currency

As the value of Federal Reserve Notes (commonly known as “the United States Dollar”) continues to fall, some Americans have abandoned the currency in favor of “Obama Notes”—scraps of paper signed by President Obama. In a recent exhange, a Michigan woman traded one Obama Note for enough monetary value to partially pay for her house.

At this early stage, it is unknown at what level the exchange rate between Obama Notes and Federal Reserve Notes will initially settle on, but current estimates are around 7,000 US dollars for one Obama Note.

(Read link for full explanation.)

 


 

3:31pm:

I’ve never thought the Republicans had much of a chance to gain a majority in the Senate this year, but this headline tells a different story:

Likelihood That Dems Will Retain Control of Senate Sinks to 43% on Intrade

Could it be?

 


 

(Link directly to this entry)

4:05pm:

Ishmael Reed is an award-winning author, poet and essayist. He has won numerous literary prizes and is considered a pre-eminent figure in contemporary African-American literature.

To quote from his wikipedia entry:

Among Ishmael Reed’s other honors are writing fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and National Endowment for the Arts. In 1995, he received the Langston Hughes Medal, awarded by City College of New York; in 1997, the Lila Wallace Reader’s Digest Award, establishing a 3-year collaboration with the Oakland based Second Start Literacy Project in 1998. In 1998, he also received a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Fellowship award. In 1999, he received a Fred Cody Award from the Bay Area Book Reviewers Association, and was inducted into Chicago State University’s National Literary Hall of Fame of Writers of African Descent. Other awards include a Rene Castillo OTTO Award for Political Theatre (2002); a Phillis Wheatley Award from the Harlem Book Fair (2003); and in 2004, a Robert Kirsch Award, a Los Angeles Times Book Prize, besides the D.C. Area Writing Project’s 2nd Annual Exemplary Writer’s Award and the Martin Millennial Writers, Inc. Contribution to Southern Arts Award, in Memphis, Tennessee….

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Etc.

The San Francisco Chronicle features on its Web site several blogs authored by leading Bay Area citizens. These blogs, known as “City Brights,” allows these pillars of the intellectual community to speak directly to the public.

Ishmael Reed is one of those San Francisco Chronicle bloggers. And yesterday, on the Chronicle‘s Web site, he unveiled his commentary on tomorrow’s election.

Considering his stature, his statement needs no editing or analysis; when someone in his position has something to say, it stands on its own, and requires no further commentary.

And so, without further ado, I give you Ishmael Reed’s statement about the 2010 elections, which he titled “The Exorcist”:

(For real. This is not a joke.)

 


 

4:29pm:

In any other political climate, and on any day other than today, this would be (and should be) world-shattering news:

Unimaginable horror in anti-Christian atrocity as 58 churchgoers massacred by Muslim militants.

Instead: Complete impotence and total inaction on the part of the U.S. government.

Meanwhile, if someone threatens to contest a buiding permit in New York, the White House swings into action!

Priorities, priorities.

 


 

5:16pm:

Note: I’ve just spent 20 minutes skimming through every single left-leaning site out there, searching for irrational Democratic optimism to contrast with the latest prediction saying that the Republicans will destroy the Democrats with a pick up of at least 70 seats. And you know what? I couldn’t find a single progressive article to rebut it! Every single leftist site is filled with gloom that the Rethuglicans have a lock on the House and will likely go way beyond that.

If the electoral climate is so bad that it quashes the irrational exuberance of even the most irrationally exuberant leftists, you know it’s going to be a day for the history books.

 


 

5:29pm:

Headline I’d like to see tomorrow night:

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Mayan priests: “Did we say 2012? Sorry about that — we meant 2010.”

 


 

(Link directly to this entry)

5:37pm:

Pro Mosque, Pro Masturbation

Reader Carl Hoffman attended Jon Stewart’s “Rally to Restore Whatever” event on Saturday and came back with a photo of what I consider the one sign which perfectly encapsulates the self-defeating cognitive dissonance of unthinking “progressives”:

Pro Mosque, Pro Masturbation

Extra credit study question: Spot the logical fallacy in this picture.

For a deeper investigation into this exact topic, see this excellent new essay at American Thinker about the intellectual dysfunction in American academia: Where ‘Queer Studies’ and Middle East Studies Meet:

On one hand, the professors take hard-left stances on sexuality and gender issues, claiming to staunchly support the rights of gays and women. Yet they also worship at the altar of radical Middle East studies professors who act as apologists for Sharia law and other policies completely at odds with Western “liberalism.”

 


 

6:26pm:

Top Ten Candidates I’d Most Like to Vote for in 2010:

10. basilmarceaux.com
9. The guy with the Slurpee laughing at Obama in the ditch
8. Alvin Green
7. Bruce Lee
6. Jimmy “The Rent is Too Damn High” McMillan
5. Carl Paladino (Baseball bat to the state house? Hell yeah!)
4. Christine O’Donnell (just for the pure head-explosion-osity of it)
3. Miza Lurk-o-sky as a write-in for Alaska Senate (just to ensure the recount lasts til December at least)
2. Allen West (for real)
1. Aqua Buddha

 


 

6:49pm:

 


 

7:09pm:

In case you missed it, yesterday’s poem “The Department of Free,” (which someone piquantly described as “Dr. Seuss meets Ayn Rand”) was given a glorious dramatic reading treatment by Scott Baker and Liz Stephans of The Blaze and B-Cast:

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8:05pm:

Liberal media spin on the World Series outcome, to bring solace to the Democrats:

Nancy Pelosi’s district defeats George Bush’s state

 


 

9:27pm:

Well, it’s already election day on the East Coast. So it’s time to wrap this up.

Need I say what the next step is for everyone reading this? You know already:

VOTE.

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