This ain't Hell, but you can see it from here

Category: 2012 election

  • So, You Think Letting Everyone Vote By Mail Is a Great Idea?

    If so, maybe you should take a close look at Ohio this year.  It could prove quite . . . entertaining.  As well as provide another example of why good intentions pave the road to hell.

    Prior to this year, some Ohio counties sent absentee ballot applications to all registered voters; others didn’t.  Ohio decided to standardize their voting procedures.

    So this year, all counties in Ohio mailed registered voters absentee ballot applications.  (A side benefit would be to make it easy to vote by mail.)  All told, 6.9 million of the state’s 7.8 million registered voters were mailed an absentee ballot application.

    As expected, many took advantage of that opportunity – roughly 1.3 million as of about a week ago.   And as of about a week ago, roughly 950,000 absentee ballots had been returned.

    No one knows just how many absentee ballots ultimately will be requested in Ohio, or how many of those absentee ballots will be unused. In Ohio, this year absentee ballots may be requested up until November 3; they must be postmarked NLT November 5.

    Also obviously, a number of those who requested absentee ballots will change their mind and decide to vote in person instead.  Based on how many were outstanding a week ago, we’re talking potentially 350,000 or more people who could change their mind.

    Now the law of unintended consequences comes into play.

    In Ohio, if you (1) requested an absentee ballot, and (2) then show up to vote in person, you don’t get to just waltz into the voting booth and vote normally.  Instead, you must cast a paper provisional ballot.  Those provisional ballots are counted only after the voter’s eligibility to cast that vote has been verified.

    In the case of those who requested absentee ballots but did not vote absentee, that means after verifying that no absentee ballot bearing their name was cast.  The intent is obvious:  to prevent people from abusing the system by voting twice.

    So that means each unused Ohio absentee ballot can potentially generate a provisional ballot.  That’s potentially 350,000+ paper provisional ballots.

    Now, here are the unintended consequence.  Ohio law specifies that provisional ballots cannot be opened until 10 days after the election.

    So . . . that means in Ohio there could possibly be 350,000 or more paper, sealed provisional ballots.  Ballots which by Ohio law cannot by even be opened until 16 November.  Ballots which must be securely stored for those 10 days.  And they’re paper ballots which then must be counted – presumably by hand, with all the potential for honest mistakes, partisan arguments, and outright fraud inherent in counting a bunch of paper ballots.

    And remember:  this is happening in a state that could well determine the outcome of the 2012 Presidential election.  So it could well be 2+ weeks after Election Day before anyone knows who won.

    “Hey, ho, way to go Ohio . . . .”

  • “Hail Obama” chants at First Lady’s rally

    Yes, “Hail Obama”. We haven’t heard someone shout things like that in 70 years or so, and certainly not in this country. WOFL FOX 35‘s Mike Synan reports from Daytona Beach;

    The group was at times restless after standing in line since 8:30 in the morning to hear Mrs. Obama speak.

    At other times they were quite boisterous. Several times in the warm up to the event, chants of “Hail Obama” could be heard echoing through the standing room only event.

    He says it out loud at the end of this video report;

    FOX 35 News Orlando

    I’d prefer a video of the chant, but I guess this will do. Local Fox stations tend to be much more liberal than their parent news channel. It’s good that Obama supporters feel more comfortable in their slimy, reptilian skin the closer we get to the election and show us their true feelings.

  • Brown supporters berate veteran

    Union supporters of Sherrod Brown (Democrat) in Ohio berate a veteran. The woman claims she’s a 12-year veteran (repeatedly like she’s trying to convince someone) but she hardly sounds like one. She says something about taking an oath to protect the American people, and I don’t remember that particular oath.

    Here’s the link to the story at Breitbart. Apparently the veteran, who supports Sherrod’s Republican challenger Josh Mandel, being verbally assaulted tried to get into the Sherrod event and was turned away and when he tried to leave, union thugs blocked his exit so they could have some bullying fun.

    But I would have questioned the woman’s service because she displays all of the typical phony bullshit. Repeating that she’s a 12-year Army veteran, claiming to be the wife of and mother of other veterans (which is probably closer to the truth – but more likely she’s the neighbor of someone who has a cousin who saw a veteran once on TV). But the oath thing clinched it for me. She has no idea what’s in the oath.

  • Covering for Obama

    So a walk-through of the media and this morning and they’re doing their darndest to keep Libya off of the front page. Washington Post’s only mention of the President is a puff piece about how he walks a tight wire on race (what else). But nothing on Libya. The Washington Times, however, has finally picked up on the story, reporting that John McCain has shook the cobwebs from his brain and started talking about Libya;

    “For literally days and days they told the American people something that had no basis in fact whatsoever. And that is the president of the United States,” the Arizona Republican said in an interview on CBS‘ “Face the Nation.” Mr. Obama “said that he immediately ordered action to be taken no action was taken over seven hours. Now we find out the secretary of defense decided not to take any action.”

    […]

    “Somebody the other day said to me, ‘This is as bad as Watergate.’ Well, nobody died in Watergate,” Mr. McCain said. “This is either a massive coverup or incompetence that is not acceptable to the American people.”

    In the editorial pages, Joseph Curl picks up the Watergate analogy;

    The main lesson from Watergate (after the no-brainer that you should never hire a guy named “Tricky Dick”) was this: The Cover-Up Is Worse Than The Crime. For some reason, Professor Obama seems not to know this crucial lesson. Or he’s just arrogant enough to say, “Well, that doesn’t apply to someone as brilliant as moi.”

    Make no mistake, though: There is a massive cover-up under way in the White House. Nothing else can explain the endless contradictions over the attack that left the U.S. ambassador to Libya and three other Americans dead. The White House has already had to rewrite the entire narrative once, holding a late night conference call with reporters just before a House hearing two weeks ago in which State Department officials told a whole new tale: There was no “spontaneous” protest over some anti-Islam video posted on YouTube. Instead, there were dozens of heavily armed terrorists who poured over a 9-foot-high fence covered with barbed wire to attack America on 9/11.

    Yeah, the cover up has been going on since the irrational and implausible story that the attack occurred because of a spontaneous demonstration over a poorly executed movie – a movie the was produced more poorly than the attack on the consulate. Who brings a mortar tube to an impromptu demonstration?

    At Blackfive, Deebow doesn’t like the idea that Obama is blaming the military for his won paralysis in reacting to the attack in time so save four Americans.

    A link to the Washington Examiner sent to us by Ex-PH2 asks why Romney isn’t talking about Benghazi. For the record, I asked the campaign that question last night and I’m still waiting for an answer.

    As far as the media goes, a young sergeant in Afghanistan wrote to tell us that the TV in their messhall is tuned to BBC and al Jazeera, English because they can’t trust the US media to tell them the truth anymore.

  • Special Operations Speaks video

    If you’re not convinced that the Benghazi thing was important yet, the folks at Special Operations Speaks including our buddy, Larry Bailey, presents this video;

    Thanks to OWB for the link.

    William Kristol has ten questions for the President.

    John Hinderacker asks “Will Obama’s Benghazi Cover Up Succeed?”

    Fox News asks “what is the mainstream media’s excuse for cautiously engaging the president on Libya?”

  • Then who was it?

    Fox News is reporting that the president has been avoiding questions on the Benghazi raid and recent reports that the White House denied fire support for troops in contact at the consulate which resulted in the deaths of four Americans;

    The president said neither yes or no Friday when asked pointedly whether the Americans under attack in Benghazi, Libya, were denied requests for help during the attack.

    Fox News has learned from sources on the ground during the Sept. 11 attacks that the CIA chain of command twice told agency operatives to “stand down.”

    “The election has nothing to do with the four brave Americans getting killed and us wanting to find out exactly what happened,” the president said first in a TV interview with an NBC affiliate in Colorado.

    When asked again, Obama said, “The minute I found out what was going on, I gave three very clear directives — Number 1, make sure that we are securing our personnel and doing whatever we need to,” the president said in a TV interviews with an NBC affiliate in Colorado.

    But in the vacuum of non-answers from the President, the White House’s National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor recently told the folks at Yahoo News that “Neither the president nor anyone in the White House denied any requests for assistance in Benghazi” which still doesn’t answer the question. Since the Defense Department and the CIA have both told the media that neither of them denied fire support for the embattled Americans in the consulate, then who was it? It only leaves the State Department without a denial.

    Our new buddy, William Kristol at the Weekly Standard claims that only the White House could have made the decision to intercede, so someone isn’t being forthcoming with the American people who are clamoring for answers. COB6, a long-experienced special warfare officer, himself, agrees;

    Only two places could have called off the attack at that point; the WH situation command (based on POTUS direction) or AFRICOM commander based on information directly from the target area.

    If the AC130 never left Sigonella (as Penetta says) that means that the Predator that was filming the whole thing was armed.

    If that SEAL was actively “painting” a target; something was on station to engage! And the decision to stand down goes directly to POTUS!

    From the Fox News link;

    Obama also said in the TV interview, as he said previously said, the administration is going to “investigate what happened to make sure it never happens again” and find out who was involved in the attack so they can be brought to justice.

    Yeah, at this point, I think the only way we’re going to make sure that it doesn’t happen again is to remove everyone who was involved in the decision-making process in this instance come election day. Since the president is so adamant about NOT making this an election issue, it only makes me want to make it MORE of an election day issue. That might be the only way to get any straight answers out of this White House.

    There’s a rumor flying around the internet today that General Carter F. Ham, the Africom commander is being fired because he tried to send reinforcements to Benghazi to relieve the defenders of the consulate. While it’s true that his successor has been named (General Rodriguez was announced as replacement on Oct. 18), I’m not sure why Ham is leaving the post, so it appears to be just speculation at this point. Probably another issue that won’t be resolved until we change teams in the White House.

  • Absentee ballots lost in plane crash?

    Yeah, that’s an excuse that I’d use if I was worried about the absentee ballots going against me in an upcoming election. Stars & Stripes link;

    A top official in the Federal Voting Assistance Program this week notified election officials across the nation that a transport plane crashed at Shindad Air Base on Oct. 19.

    The crash resulted in the destruction of 4,700 pounds of mail inbound to troops serving in the area.

    Federal officials in their email to state election offices said they did not know if any ballots were destroyed. They also said the lost mail was limited to one zip code.

    I can find little about any crash at Shindad Air Base but it looks like there were no casualties, which seems odd. I’m just saying in light of the cover up at Benghazi, this one is small potatoes.

    If anyone out there has more information on the crash (apparently, almost all of the articles in Google are only related to the ballots), I’d welcome it, if just to mollify the voices in my head.

  • Washington Post endorses Obama

    Yes, I know, I’m shocked, too, by the fact that the Washington Post endorses Obama for President this election year. But the way that they do it should shame all Americans. The guilt-ridden white liberals at the Post are trying to make the election about race again. In an accompanying article to their endorsement in the editorial section, they report that the election polling is breaking down along ethnic lines;

    The slippage among whites is something of a setback for Obama, who campaigned on bridging the racial divide in his election and has sought to minimize rifts that have arisen in his presidency. Although Democrats typically win minorities and fare worse among white voters than their Republican rivals, Obama outpaced previous losing Democratic candidates with both groups.

    Less than two weeks before the election, the evidence suggests that a much more sharply divided country will head to the polls.

    And, of course, liberal bomb thrower, Eugene Robinson, who won a Pulitzer Prize in 2009 for cutting and pasting Obama campaign literature to the pages of the Post doesn’t mince words trying to bring the guilt-ridden liberals back into the fold;

    It is too simplistic to conclude that demography equals destiny. Both men are being sincere when they vow to serve the interests of all Americans. But it would be disingenuous to pretend not to notice the obvious cleavage between those who have long held power in this society and those who are beginning to attain it.

    When Republicans vow to “take back our country,” they never say from whom. But we can guess.

    […]

    Four years ago, we asked ourselves whether the nation would ever elect a black president. The question was front and center. Every time we see the president and his family walk across the White House lawn to board Marine One, we’re reminded of the answer.

    The intensity of the opposition to Obama has less to do with who he is than with the changes in U.S. society he not only represents but incarnates.

    Yeah, well, I’ve not voted for many more white people than others for the very same reasons I’m voting against Obama, so explain that, Washington Post. And since it seems that a larger percentage of Blacks are going to be voting against the white guy, maybe you liberals should look at that with a less-jaundiced eye.