Mr. Rogers Weighs In

Election Night Blogging

7:00pm:
Richard Mourdock is leading? How in the hell is anyone voting for Richard "rape pregnancies are God's plan" Mourdock?

7:10:
Geezus, Tim Kaine, if you can't beat George "Macaca" Allen, you might as well hang it up!

7:11:
I think Mitt Romney just won President of Kentucky.

Chuck Todd looks like a rumpled drunk.
Also, I hate that guy.

7:30:
Is South Carolina in play? That's pretty shocking.

How is Sherrod Brown not blowing out Josh Mandel? The guy called Mourdock a "class act!" How is that not electoral poison?

Oh, and speaking of Mourdock, he's losing now. So things are not completely insane.

7:35:
Aaaaaand, it's gone! South Carolina goes for Romney. I knew that was too weird to be true. I've been to South Carolina, there's no way Obama was going to have a chance there.

7:40:
Why does Chuck Todd keep saying that Barack Obama is "overperforming" in this or that county? How does one "over-perform?"
On a related note, why is Chuck Todd on television?

7:45:
Wow, is Ezra Klein wearing lipstick?
I'm not saying it's not workin'.

7:50:
Barack Obama is leading in Florida. Let the shenanigans begin!

8:00:
I just found out that if the National League team wins the World Series, the Democrats win the White House, so another good reason to love the SF Giants.
And hate the Yankees.

8:05:
Congratulations, Angus King. Cool to see another independent.

8:10:
Chuck Todd: if Obama wins 60% of Hispanics, he can't lose Florida. It will certainly make it too close to call all night. If that makes sense to you, congratulations, you're Chuck Todd!

8:15:
Oh my God, Chris Matthews, there IS NO  BRADLEY EFFECT! How are you trotting that shit out in 2012?

8:20:
Howard Feinman just pronounced "Stratum" like "Stray-tum." Have I been saying it wrong all these years?

8:25:
Chris Matthews, you really shouldn't brag about being good friends with the people you're supposed to cover.

8:30:
You know, Rachel Maddow, you really don't need to break in to tell us that Romney is winning Arkansas.

8:40:
Just saw this picture of the world's most douchey furries:


8:45:
Oh, hey, here's an idea. How about NOT interviewing Ken Blackwell? The guy can't even get through his bullshit talking points without smirking.

8:47:
Ken Blackwell is more full of shit than a fertilizer factory. Just don't have him on the show. Don't give this liar a platform.

8:50:
Blackwell is lucky he didn't come in studio for this interview, because Al Sharpton and Ed Schultz would be beating his ass right now.

Don't you apologize to him, Rachel!

8:55:
Apparently, #VoteWhite  is a real thing on Twitter:

The Funny Racist™ ‏@TheFunnyRacist

I heard Michelle Obama will be wearing a cotton dress tonight. I wonder if she "picked it" out herself? #VoteWhite
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Carter Bloom ‏@CarterBloom

Remember commit to Mitt! #VoteWhite
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"Johnny Bravo" is apparently a HUUUUUUGE piece of shit:

Profile summary
Johnny Bravo
Johnny Bravo
@Jsiweckyj

Thug life

Don't #VoteObama do the right thing and #VoteWhite


@NatTowsen hey after slavery they were free to go back to Africa. #whiteandproud
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1h Johnny Bravo Johnny Bravo ‏@Jsiweckyj

@NatTowsen @m_lehman24 oh they need protection now? Well maybe I wanna get some of the klan out and about and "protect" "whitey"
1h Johnny Bravo Johnny Bravo ‏@Jsiweckyj

9:05:
The Electoral College was the founders' worst idea, totally anti-democratic (intentionally) but it sure makes election night more exciting. It's like the first round of the NCAA basketball tournament: Breaking news, there's an upset brewing in Carolina!

9:10:
NBC should totally not be doing this "democracy Plaza" or whatever thing when so many New Yorkers are still without electricity. The money they spent turning Rockefeller Center into a giant election map could maybe have been spent better?

9:15:
Wasn't Pennsylvania supposed to be a "swing state?" Obama is destroying Romney there!

9:17:
I didn't know Tammy Baldwin was gay. You go, Wisconsin!

9:25:
This exists:


9:35:
Gee, adding Paul Ryan to the ticket didn't help Mittens in Wisconsin! I'm shocked!

9:45:
Yay! Mourdock slinks home in defeat! Which is something that God intended to happen.

9:47:
Um, Chuck Todd, when you say "46+4+50," which you really needn't say, you totally don't need to add "that's Five-Oh." No one was asking "did he say 50 or 15?"

9:50:
 If Elizabeth Warren had lost, I would have wept myself to death by dehydration.

10:05:
Down goes Akin! Don't worry, maybe it wasn't a legitimate defeat.

10:10:
Linda McMahon lost? But her husband is a famous buffoon! That totally qualifies her to hold elected office!

 

Senatorial!   

10:15:
Hey, Chuck Todd, the election is going on RIGHT NOW! Are you seriously running a segment entitled "road to 270, WHAT IF?"

10:20:
Ben Nelson replaced by a Republican? But how will we tell the difference?

10:25:
I know there's a long way to go, but my brain is still on daylight savings time and I'm going to bed.

They are going to steal this election.

Or at least, they are going to try.

They are doing everything they can to keep people from voting.

They know they can't win this one, so they are going to steal it. They are going to steal it in Florida, they are going to steal it in Ohio.

Remember the Rick Scott voter purge in Florida?

Remember the guy that got caught throwing out registrations?



Now Absentee ballots are being thrown out in Florida:
In Volusia County, officials have already thrown out 153 ballots, because the signature on the ballot did not match the one on the registration card.

“To be told my signature didn't match, it was a shock,” said voter Bill Archer.

Archer registered to vote in Volusia County 30 years ago.  He’s since had multiple strokes and now has to sign with his left hand instead of his right hand, and his signature now looks nothing like it used to.

Ohio's secretary of state first tried to have early voting only in Republican districts, then eliminated it all together. Then refused to comply with a court order to restore early voting and then everyone kind of got tired of that story, so who knows what eventually happened?

And "True the Vote" has somehow gotten their members installed as election officials.
True the Vote and its affiliated Ohio organization, the Voter Integrity Project, have signed up as observers at polling places Tuesday in various precincts across the state.

Chapin worries about the reliability of voter information the groups may have. Earlier this fall, the Voter Integrity Project unsuccessfully tried to remove dozens of Franklin County voters from the rolls that members said were improperly registered.

Tim Burke, Hamilton County elections director, said, “We know that the Voter Integrity Project has recruited and through the (Hamilton) County Republican Party has placed some poll workers

And these right-wing "poll watchers" are going to be eeeeeeeeverywhere.

Mitt Romney’s campaign has been training poll watchers in Wisconsin with highly misleading — and sometimes downright false — information about voters’ rights.

 Documents from a recent Romney poll watcher training obtained by ThinkProgress contain several misleading or untrue claims about the rights of Wisconsin voters. . . . One blatant falsehood occurs on page 5 of the training packet, which informed poll watchers that any “person [who] has been convicted of treason, a felony, or bribery” isn’t eligible to vote. This is not true. Once a Wisconsin voter who has been convicted of a felony completes his or her sentence, that person is once again eligible to vote…. On page 3 of the packet, Romney poll workers were instructed to hide their affiliation with the campaign and told to sign in at the polls as a “concerned citizen” instead.

Oh, and don't forget, Tagg Romney owns the voting machines.

Broward is a Democratic stronghold that Barack Obama is expected to carry by a large margin. But initial early vote totals reported by the office of the Broward Supervisor of Elections changed on Sunday, in some cases dramatically, causing some to question the numbers.

An analysis of the unofficial totals by early voting location on the Broward Supervisor of Elections website from Saturday, compared to the tallies posted on Sunday, shows that in one location, the E. Pat Larkins Community Center, located on Martin Luther King Blvd. in Pompano Beach, the revised totals showed 1,003 fewer votes. The initial tally reported from the polling place in the heavily black neighborhood showed 2,945 votes, but the revised tally was 1,401. Across the 17 Broward polling locations, 15 saw their vote totals revised, mostly by minute amounts of between 1 and 7 votes. But the three more significant changes, including the addition of 398 votes in Tamarac (a racially mixed community) and adding 99 votes to the totals from Pompano Beach City Hall, whose demographic is majority white.

They are going to steal this election. Everybody needs to go out and vote, we can't let it be close enough to steal.

The less relevant you become, the wackier things you have to say

Because no one gives a shit about Rudy Giuliani anymore, this:

Rudy Giuliani: 'This is a worse response 

than Katrina'
    Former NYC Mayor criticizes president's response in Northeast


"Right now is doing a terrible job of disaster relief in my city, but no one is talking about," said Giuliani. "People don't have water, they don't have food, electricity and his FEMA is no where to be found. This is a worse response than Katrina."

"They are still finding bodies in Staten Island," said Giuliani. "People are yelling and screaming, 'How does the president get all this praise for disaster relief? How does Gov. Christie give him all this praise?' He's doing a terrible job with disaster relief," said Giuiliani. "This is a much worse than it used to be under President Bush."

I never understood the whole Giuliani thing. He was mayor of New York when 9/11 happened. That's pretty much it. Obviously, you can't put any of the blame for 9/11 on Giuliani, but I never understood how hw got to be considered some sort of hero either. What did he do? It's not like he ran into the burning buildings to rescue people.

 

None of these guys are Giuliani.

But somehow, people started referring to him as "America's mayor," and he built his entire campaign for president on the fact that he was mayor when something awful happened. It never made any sense to me. 

But now, no one  cares about him any more, so on the rare occasion that someone sticks a mic in his face these days, he has to say something like that. Something so ridiculous that it's bound to get noticed. Something that might help him book another couple of appearances on FOX. 

Pathetic1

John Stossel continues to be the worst excuse for a human being on the planet. (Now that Andrew Breitbart is dead)

John Stossel just might be the biggest bag of douche on the entire FOX payroll.

In praise of 'price gouging'

By John Stossel

Published November 01, 2012

FoxNews.com

Because for some reason, price gouging has gotten a bad reputation somehow?

Desperate New Jersey drivers wait in long lines to buy gasoline. One line was two miles long
The media blame “a lack of electricity”

Why the quotes? Is there some doubt as to whether there really is a lack of electricity in Jersey? I don't know, there's no explanation given for the quotes.

The media blame “a lack of electricity” and report that “Governor Christie has acted to boost supplies of gasoline…by directing Treasury officials to waive licensing requirements that affect merchants’ ability to buy fuel from out-of-state suppliers.”

Ordinarily, removing any sort of licensing requirements gives John Stossel a boner for which he needs to seek medical attention, so what is he going to find to complain about in this scenario?

That would help, but Christie would help more if he could suspend New Jersey’s foolish law forbidding price increases of more than 10% during an “emergency,” and if he’d apologize for bragging that the state will crack down on price “gouging!”  

 

Allowing gas companies to jack up their prices would help. . . help what, exactly?

Complaining about greedy profiteers is probably politically smart. But if you're one of the people the law "protects," you won't fare as well.

As well as what? You won't fare as well as. . . ? How is that the end of the paragraph? Did you ever take high school English?

What politicians call “gouging” is just the free market.

 

Holy cow! John Stossel just said something that's sort of true. Gouging isn't actually the "free market," but it is the free market that allows suppliers to engage in price gouging. Now, to a normal person, that would be an indication that maybe the "free market" isn't such a great idea, but if you're someone like John Stossel, well, you're not going to go around thinking logically!

See, if you're a free marketeer like Stossel, you begin with the conclusion that the free market is inherently good, then make everything else fit that conclusion. So if price gouging is a symptom of the free market, and we know that the free market is entirely good and awesome in every way, then ipso facto presto chango, price gouging can't possibly be bad.

It's like when a fundamentalist is confronted with something unsettling in his religious scripture. Instead of thinking "hmm, maybe I can't take the entire book literally," he is forced to come to the conclusion that  whatever it is that seems disturbing, like the Bible justifying slavery, or God ordering the Isrealites to kill every living creature in the city of Jericho (aka genocide) must somehow be good because otherwise his whole world view falls apart.

What politicians call “gouging” is just the free market. When markets are allowed to work their magic, lines disappear.  The high price is a big flag planted in the ground that says, “Hey, come over here and make money.”

You know, any economic philosophy that relies on "magic" is probably not all that sound. 

 

 

 

  

Economics!

But yeah, if the price goes high enough, lines would disappear. Because most people wouldn't be able to afford super-expensive gasoline. But how does that help anybody?

Today, some car owners wait in line just to top off their tanks. If gas stations could raise prices, many of those drivers would wait, and drive less.  Drivers who really need gas would be able to get it.    At the same time, entrepreneurs would rush gasoline to gas stations that have the highest prices.   The lines would quickly vanish, and prices would come back down.

 

Really? People are waiting in two-mile-long lines just to top off their tanks? Look at the picture that accompanies your column:

 

See anyone "topping off?" People appear to be buying gasoline to run generators, not cars. These people are not buying gas on a whim. They are buying gasoline to be able to get back to some semblance of a normal home life. How much do you think the price of gas should be raised to get these folks to forgo that gallon or two that will power their kids' nightlight or provide a little heat, or refrigeration? 

And if I'm getting your theory, the idea is to raise prices to lower demand which would cause supply to increase (somehow) which would lower prices. If that convoluted ridiculous theory worked, we end up right back where we started. So what's the point? 

Remember The 1970s “gas crisis?”  The media claimed it was caused by a lack of gasoline.  It wasn’t.  It was caused by President Nixon’s price controls.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure the gas crisis was caused by the OPEC oil embargo. And I'm pretty sure that once Venezuela broke the embargo, gas prices came way back down again, just in time for Ronald reagen to take credit. Of course, I was a child in the 1970's, but I'm pretty sure I have a better understanding than you do, you ridiculous libertarian hack. I mean, if Nixon's price controls were so onerous, how is it that the price of a gallon of gas managed to skyrocket?

 Remember the lines in the Soviet Union?   Most shortages are caused by politicians interfering with the market.

That one example proves it! Also, New Jersey having a law against price gouging? Yeah, totally  like the Soviet Union's complete governmental control of every aspect of their economy. Exactly the same thing.

Here's the real question: What is the best way to help people after a disaster?

Yes, obviously helping people is your main concern. Your such a caring individual!

What is the best way to help people after a disaster?Any number of services -- roofing, for example, carpentry, tree removal, and gasoline -- are in overwhelming demand.  If this were a totalitarian country, government could just order gasoline tankers roofers, carpenters, etc., to travel to New Jersey. But in a free society, entrepreneurs must be persuaded to leave their homes and families and drive from say, Texas, to the East Coast. If they can't make more money in New Jersey, why make the trip?

Um, I'm pretty sure that they can make more money in New Jersey because there are so many more potential customers there? Whereas in Texas, a contractor might bid on a job and have three other guys under-bid him so he has to lower his price so much that it's hardly worth doing? But in a disaster area, people don't have time to entertain multiple bids and it's either their insurance company or FEMA paying the bill so they don't feel like they need to bargain all that aggressively? I don't know, I'm not a contractor.

Some want to be heroic, but we can't expect enough heroes to fill the need.  Most travel for the same reason most Americans work: to make money. Most tradesmen will go to a disaster area only if it wins him higher pay than he would get in his hometown.  
Yet if he charges enough to justify his venture, he's likely to be condemned morally or legally by the very people he's trying to help.

Trying to help?  You just said, just one sentence ago, that the only reason he's going there is to make more money. And according to you, this is perfectly fine, and he has no obligation to be heroic, so why one sentence later, do you have to paint him as making some sort of noble sacrifice? Oh, he only wanted to help these poor people! You know, assuming he can make more money that way. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with wanting to make more money, but you can't have it both ways!

 

Of course I can! I'm on FOX!

 

 

They just don't understand basic economics. Force prices down, and you keep suppliers out.

Okay, that's probably true, but that's not what's happening. Chris Christie isn't forcing prices down. He's just not allowing them to go up as much as they might otherwise. Not only are prices not being pushed down, they are allowed to be pushed UP an extra 10%.

It's price "gougers" who bring the water, ship the gasoline, fix the roof, and rebuild cities. You might not believe me but will you believe Nobel Prize-winning economists Gary Becker, Vernon Smith and Milton Friedman? All three have said “ gouging” is good. Milton Friedman said, “price ‘gougers’ save lives.”

Well, I don't know anything about Becker or Smith, but I do know that Milton Friedman has been proven completely dead wrong about everything. I know supply-siders like to pretend that his theories have some sort of magic in them, but the Reagen deficits are really all the evidence we need that Friedman was full of shit.

God damn it, John Stossel is a piece of shit. What kind of a human being looks at the devastation on the East Coast and says, hmm, those people are really suffering. If only amoral companies were allowed to extract more money from these desperate people? How does someone like Stossel sleep at night?