Data Point – A tidbit from the Presidential race – if it means anything at all

FWIW: The Corner: But wait, just in case this wasn’t bad enough, here’s a look at Obama’s vote margin in some key states as of this afternoon (these figures will change a bit as those straggling precincts report in): Virginia: 107,339          Ohio: 100,763           Florida: 47,493          Colorado: 111,094 Nevada: 66,379          Total: 433,068 So for less than … Read more

EMail Doodlings – OK, putting this up a couple days late.

But actually, it turned out to be a bit prescient, as in two races here in NH in my mind (Frank Guinta & Bob Burns), what I warned about came true:

This may not sit well….

It seems to me that the full bore / hard core Libertarians (“HCLs”) on this list (which, after all is the REPUBLICAN Liberty Caucus and not the LIBERTARIAN Liberty Caucus – I could not resist) are turning out to be not Libertarians concerning this election but Nihilists.

Given that their more favored candidates absolutely bombed out during the primary and have gotten no traction since, you folks are all deciding to go home and pout. Given that the expected Home Run At Bat (perhaps expected given the tremendous gains that Libertarians had here in NH in 2010) has turned out in THIS election to be the Biggest Whiff since Casey in Mudville in actual candidate attraction to the general electorate (as opposed to other Libertarians), all I am hearing is a massive hissy fit. Instead of treating it as a double or triple in 2010 and knowing that sometimes that only singles or strikeouts happen, if you can’t get that four bagger, then the game is rigged, the umps stink, and the ball has lard on it. So effectively, you all are going to throw your votes away. Period. That is how you all are coming across (and that means you Jane – I saw some of the NHTEAParty tweets and retweets during the debates you sent and utterly cringed).

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Voting – 11/6/2012 Results compendium

Fox News calls it: President Obama has been re-elected

Romney does not have a mathematical road to victory

My unexpected guests have left, the ‘Grok dogs have had some attention paid to them, hopefully the laptop problems have gone to sleep.  Long nite ahead, so time to see what polls are doing.  Pretty much will just update this post with observations, pithy words, and anything else considered “election kitchen sink”.

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NH Exec Council – 3 to 2 R to D thus far

Fox announces US House to remain in Republican hands

NH Kuster is leading almost 2-1 over Bass

NH Constitution: Banning income tax is leading

NH Constitution: Legislation to have oversight over Judiciary losing

No Constitutional Convention is winning

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WMUR, Associated Press has just called the race for Maggie Hassan

Governor
NH Ovide Hassan Babiarz
WMUR 08:22 PM 575 1,862 85

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Interesting way to think about it:

One of the claims was that he had a “first-class temperament.” And I was thinking, yesterday, “That’s possibly the thing I like least about Obama — his temperament.” His big-government policies are bad enough. But the temperament? “Mitt Romney: Not one of us,” and all that? I think he’s a nasty and divisive figure.

Mitt Romney — there’s a first-class temperament, come of think of it. At least I have that impression. If he has four years in the White House, we’ll see.

I believe that Obama hates the likes of us — Reagan conservatives. I believed the same about Al Gore. I remember saying during the 2000 campaign, “I’d rather be stranded on a desert island with Bill Clinton for a year than have a brief, delicious lunch at the Four Seasons with Al Gore.” You could tell that Al Gore hated you: It was on his face and in his tongue. Joe Lieberman, I felt, did not hate you. Hillary did. Kerry did. John Edwards loved himself, mainly, I thought.

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Historic Voting in Gilford, NH?

Just returned from voting  – in my little hamlet in Central New Hampsha, it seems like this may be a record setting vote. We have 5,454 registered voter (excluding new registrations today) – as of 12:30pm when I left, there were 2,093 votes today and 600 absentee ballots to be counted. That’s almost 50% – … Read more

Libertarians – some might be the “Cloward-Pivens of the Right this election”?

This may not sit well…. Actually, what I wrote below I did before stumbling on this: “The Cloward – Pivens of the Right” where the topic is about a Libertarian that will be voting for Johnson and will not even consider a vote against Obama:

The fact that his vote might end up causing Romney to lose and Obama to win is irrelevant to this man. He and others of his ilk, who might be addressed by Bill Whittle’s video [here -Skip] but who close themselves to its message and who look instead to the imminent arrival of an economic apocalypse, have more in common with the far left than they think they do. They are the Cloward-Pivenistas [who willingly almost drove New York City into bankruptcy; more here   -Skip] of the right. They believe that, if things get bad enough, the system will break down and enough people will see the light and then the true conservative dawn will break.

Cloward and Piven thought the breakdown would lead people towards the leftist light. People like Susanamantha’s friend think it will be the light on the right. But the idea is similar: endure (or even cause) pain now for future gain….Both sides are idealists, Don Quixotes if you will (although perhaps that’s being unfair to the Don) against the rest of us plodding Sancho Panzas. It’s an old story, isn’t it? A perfectionistic idealism is where the Don Quixotes on the right meet those on the left, in a dangerous no man’s land. The ones on the right could well end up encouraging the triumph of what they most hate.

It seems to me that the full bore / hard core Libertarians (“HCLs”) on this list (which, after all is the REPUBLICAN Liberty Caucus and not the LIBERTARIAN Liberty Caucus – I could not resist) are turning out to be not Libertarians concerning this election but Nihilists.

Given that their more favored candidates absolutely bombed out during the primary and have gotten no traction since, you folks are all deciding to go home and pout.  Given that the expected Home Run At Bat (perhaps expected given the tremendous gains that Libertarians had here in NH in 2010) has turned out in THIS election to be the Biggest Whiff since Casey in Mudville in actual candidate attraction to the general electorate (as opposed to other Libertarians), all I am hearing is a massive hissy fit.  Instead of treating it as a double or triple in 2010 and knowing that sometimes that only singles or strikeouts happen, if you can’t get that four bagger, then the game is rigged, the umps stink, and the ball has lard on it.  So effectively, you all are going to throw your votes away.  Period.  That is how you all are coming across (and that means you Jane – I saw some of the NHTEAParty tweets and retweets during the debates you sent and utterly cringed).

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RightWingNews Right of Center Poll: Result of Tuesday Night?

Updated and bumped:  The results are in at RightWingNews:

1) Who do you think is going to win the election?

  •  Mitt Romney 87.9% (58 votes)
  • Barack Obama 12.1% (8 votes)

 2) Whom are you voting for?

  •  Mitt Romney 92.6% (63 votes)
  • Gary Johnson 2.9% (2 votes)
  • I’m not voting 2.9% (2 votes)
  • Won’t say 1.5% (1 votes)

Original post after the jump:

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FaceBook Doodlings: Libertarians & Free Staters: let me amplify what Tim said about Tuesday

Tim put up this post, urging movement Libertarians to consider how they’d be voting on Tuesday:

If you are a libertarian, or if you are a Free Stater, or if you just believe in limited government, individual freedom, and personal responsibility….

David Mamet, the famed playwright that was hard Left and just veered Right after finally realizing what the results of the Left have done, put it another way (even as he was speaking to Liberal Jews, it fits here):

Are you prepared to explain to your children not the principles upon which your vote is cast, but its probable effects upon them?

Go read the whole thing.  Tim’s post started a bit of a conversation on Facebook and I waded in (note: I’ve not been active on FB for a while but given the tenor (pretty much, I “went there”.  Now Leah was the main respondent and we’ve been friendly ever since we met when the TEA Party decided to “meet & greet” back in 2009 when Obama sojourned to Portsmouth, NH.  On FB, she expressed an attitude that many Libertarians seem to hold:  both Romney and Obama are pretty much communists and there’s no difference between them (and many view Romney as actually being worse).  The comment that set me off was one about Romney not being able to reverse what Obama has done:

He is not a king, and cannot just make a pronouncement that he declares a law null and void.

Have you not been paying attention!!  What the heck do you think Obama has actually been doing????  My response (edited to be more bloggish and a bit more expanded here):

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Obama: I will bankrupt the coal industry

When is the last time you saw a Gadsden Flag on a coal barge?  Remember what he said just before the last election? (H/T: Chicago Boyz via Instapundit)

NH Guv race – what’s the polling saying?

There’s LOTS of folks doing polls this year. I know this personally as every day I am getting between 2 and 8 calls / day wanting to know what I think (silly people, asking this ordinary schlub from Central New Hampsha, as if it mattered – heh!).  Of all the polls, I generally trust Rassmussen the most as they consistently ask likely voters versus just adults or registered voters.  Likely voters are the important ones, as they, of the three groups, will actually get into the car, drive to the polls, and actually cast their opinions to be tallied – remember, our voting percentages are nothing to raise a “Huzzah!” about in the vast majority of elections.  So getting those that do so give more accurate results.  Not only that, the others often end up with likely voters in their “election season ending” polls but use the other groups earlier on (it’s cheaper). Thus that is why you start seeing all of the polls start to congregate around the same numbers a week or two before the election – like we are doing now.

So, here in NH, what does Rasmussen say about the top races?

  • Romney over Obama: 50% to 48% (500 Likely Voters on 10/23, with 95% confidence level).  Margin: +/- 4.5%
  • Ovide over Maggie The Red: 48% to 46% (500 Likely Voters on 10/23, with 95% confident level).  Margin: 4.5%

Disclosure – I got called for this poll.  Also, I notice that Rasmussen also has 1% choosing another candidate.  Given the large number of Libertarians and rabid Ron Paul supporters in NH, I have consistently raised an eyebrow as to this low number (which has varies 1 – 5%). That said, it’s a toss up.  I have not “gotten out” this season like I have in the recent past (for a number of personal reason), so I’m not so sure that I have a handle on this one.  Certainly the Margin of Error for both says “Toss Up!”.  Certainly the absolute blizzard of political ads by both sides has injected name recognition into peoples minds (conscious or not) so I don’t think that this will be THE factor.

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Once again, the Dems role out kids as Political Fodder

You can tell when the Dems are either at the top of their form or are scared out of the wits.  With either extreme, they go back to the old trick in their book – roll out “the kids”.  Now, the Adults in the Room (pretty much, Conservatives and Libertarians) are pretty much disgusted with this, but the Dems keep thinking that this is smart politics – playing on Society’s and parents’ emotions.  If “Forward!”doesn’t get to you …”It’s for the kids” should.  After all, they are our future (and paying for our Social Security checks and checking us into our final nursing homes, right?) as if that is supposed to cover all ills – and ideologies.  Sure, we want to protect our kids and provide for them, but for Dems, they often are just mere political props.

Sidenote: “FORWARD!”  –  The new Obama campaign “phrase” updated with “!” as if that is supposed to make it more imperative to vote for Obamessiah.  You know what it makes me think of immediately?

  • A military commander urging his troops onward to battle to protect the homeland.  Imagine that: voting for Obama is Patriotism itself!
  • Didn’t somebody back in 1917 start using that as well?

Like here:

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Data Point – Rasmussen

  Every day, Rasmussen has been polling likely voters (not just adults, not just registered, but LIKELY voters) as to their picks for Prez.  Now, like the stock market, today’s result is cannot be held to be tomorrow’s result.  However, when you start piling up all the other polls (but throwing those out that are … Read more

“Coquettish waif discussing electoral virginity” – the sequels are coming

That Steve – he certainly has his way with words, eh?  The video that Steve posted of Lena Dunham has received all kinds of attention today from the Right side of the blogosphere – and none of it positive.  Pretty much, it has made the faux Julia by the Obama campaign look tame by comparison.  For all of the sturm und drang by the Left about the War on Women by those of us on the Right, isn’t this much worse treatment?

Like many, when I first saw it, I was speechless – how much lower can these folks go?  Equating voting with sex?  Really?  I know that most would consider me to be a prude – no sex before marriage and only with your spouse.  So to listen to a young lady making double entendres in a loving voice towards Obama – and this is supposed to be Presidential?  Contrast that with George Bush who always wore a jacket and tie in honor of the Office.  Who really has the honor?

Obama saying that voting for him is like giving up one’s virginity? With him?  No, not all the words are there – but that is the intent, full on.

Hip, cool – and promiscuous with a married man.   I grew up before the “hook up” culture – I consider it part of the coarsening of the culture, an abandonment of most sense of morality, and a total lack of self-respect for oneself.  Really?  Sex for voting?  And this presents Obama….how?  And what about Michelle – his wife?  Will this go down as “I did not have sex with that woman” as part of his legacy?  The campaign set this table – and then invited everyone to have a seat.

Anyways, the parodies that you expected are now inbound (and frankly, Steve Crowder does a better than Lena at this…):

And this works well too(#ObamaAbstinence):

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Paul Ryan on Poverty

“The mindset behind this approach is that a nation should measure compassion by the size of the federal government and how much it spends….The problem is, starting in the 1960s, this top-down approach created and perpetuated a debilitating culture of dependency, wrecking families and communities.”

There’s a vast middle ground between the government and the individual.  Our families and our neighborhoods, the groups we join and our places of worship – this is where we live our lives.  They shape our character, give our lives direction, and help make us a self-governing people.”

From Paul Ryan’s speech of yesterday (courtesy of Washington Examiner via Heritage).

 I’ve listened, for years now, that we have to help the poor, the misfortunate, and those well off than ourselves.  Actually, I’ve heard that message almost since I became “self-aware” – time after time hearing that from my parents, my family, and in church.  According to them, it was a moral imperative.  And I still, to this day, agree with it wholeheartedly.  It was up to me – that *I* had to be the one to personally do the reaching out, to personally roll up the sleeves, to personally unload my wallet.

In other words – the message was one of personal responsibility – that the Sermon on the Mount was meant for ME; that Jesus’s admonish of “to the least” was directed to my heart, my compassion, and my willingness to put away my idea of what was important and to just go and do.  And “do” was not something to be outsourced to others – it was, and remains, a personal responsibility, an outgrowth of a Christian heart and a demonstration of obedience to His Commandments of a personal transformation and willingness to walk in His footsteps.

It was never a command to “outsource that responsibility to unknown people in Government to do it for me”.  Yet, that is what our current society has done – especially those Progressives who believe that ONLY government programs can suffice.  In fact, during a recent John Stossel program, the head of NYC’s Human Resources Administration Robert Doar openly and publicly stated that it was his determined opinion that charity could NEVER do what Government could.  And Big Govt folks, in area after area after area, have used the size, money, and coercion of the State to crowed out almost all of the formerly private charitable organizations and have co-opted many of those that remain with money – with strings attached (in essence, making them nothing more than a further outreach of governmental bodies and kingdoms).

And most Progressives agree – yet, even having spent over $20 Trillion on the “poor” since the War on Poverty began, and now almost $1 Trillion annually, is that really the solution?    I disagree vehemently – the Progressive intent, started in full measure by FDR, has not had the result of that intent.  In fact, it has been a failure by the easiest of measures – has all that money actually solved the problem?

The answer, plain and simple, is no.  And Progressives continue to shriek that decreasing Federal and State budgets “will hurt the poor” – a self-continuing circle (and one in which, if you simply look at Joe Biden’s charitable contributions on his tax returns as a typical example, show little personal concern in what used to be a personal responsibility).

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Part of the Preference Cascade? IMHO, the constant apologies….

And let’s not forget about the speech in Berlin: I know my country has not perfected itself. At times, we’ve struggled to keep the promise of liberty and equality for all of our people. We’ve made our share of mistakes, and there are times when our actions around the world have not lived up to … Read more

Preference Cascade – it is happening against Obama.

Winston Churchill: “Americans can always be counted on to do the right thing…after they have exhausted all other possibilities.” I just returned Mark Levin’s Ameritopia to ‘Grok friend Jean who has been VERY patient in waiting for me to return it.  It is a very disturbing book to read (listen to) as when one compares … Read more

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