The Week From Hell

Good morning from Chaos House. For different reasons, Stella and I both were up almost all night; then she had to dash to work at a speed that frightened me just watching her. The cats are sensitized to changes in her frame of mind; cats are good at that... and sometimes a simple "Feed me NAOW!!" can help the human, at least, to focus on a seemingly impossible series of tasks to be crammed into an impossibly short time. Stella is on her way. (Whew!)

As the week of elections begins tomorrow, I have inserted a short list of independent tracking and other polls in the sidebar for your convenience. Needless to say, I haven't the expertise to endorse any of their numbers, but Krugman says they at least have an honest approach which they are willing to talk about. In an election involving Republicans, it is good to have something or someone that is honest. Regular international visitors, I suppose I needn't even remind you to expect the worst America has to offer in the coming week; some of you do (or don't) have similar circumstances surrounding your own elections.

Josh Marshall summed up Rmoney's closing message:

Mitt Romney is closing out with a big message which seems to be “Mitt Romney has a Big Message!”

No kidding! Meanwhile, the Rmoney campaign's Lies and Obfuscations Division is working round the clock, claiming things like this offered by TNR:

As you may have heard, Romney on Thursday scared the bejeezus out of Ohio autoworkers when, during a rally, he cited a story claiming that Chrysler was moving Jeep production to China. Thousands of people work at a sprawling Jeep complex in Toledo and a nearby machining plant. Many thousands more work for suppliers or have jobs otherwise dependent on the Jeep factories. It’s fair to say that they owe their jobs to President Obama, who in 2009 rescued Chrysler and General Motors from likely liquidation. If Chrysler moved the plants overseas, most of those people would be out of work.

The story is, as California girls are supposed to say, "totally bogus." Chrysler is in talks with China about starting up new plants to address the growing Chinese market, and has no plans to close down or reduce production at US plants. The whole thing was a complete and utter baldfaced lie... told by Myth in Ohio to autoworkers, where it would do the most damage, 9 days from Election Day. Multiply this phenomenon by a few hundred and you have an idea how the Rmoney campaign works. Get ready for nine long days fielding and returning lobs like this. Debunking a lie isn't quite enough; they're like zombies, coming back to life (undeadness?) many times through the right-wing noise machine for... well, for longer than the period between now and the election.

Then you have Sandy. Calling this storm a hurricane doesn't do it justice; it has characteristics of tropical weather and a nor'easter combined. Bryan and others are calling it "Frankenstorm"; he has a good explanation. The potential to wreak havoc on elections is very real, including places like New Jersey where Democrats don't need havoc worked.

Finally, there's voter suppression, Republicans' signature activity marking their lack of anything resembling Obama's much-vaunted ground game. Just read a few articles. It doesn't take long to get the idea that GOPers really don't want people to vote, if they can stop them. Yes, of course it's un-American; why do you ask?

So here I am, on my second cup of very strong coffee since about 3:00 AM; hoping for something like mental clarity (which is, notwithstanding Rethugs' claims to the contrary, my normal state). May you all manage to survive the week with your health intact... and with anyone but Rmoney as president-elect when it's over. I expect a repeat of 2000, when it took until the Supreme Court's Dec. 12 eleventh-hour ruling to learn that GeeDubya won by a vote of 5 to 4. Today's court is only marginally better than that one. But if Rmoney takes office (phrase chosen advisedly), and makes a few Supreme Court appointments, we can kiss free and fair elections goodbye... not to mention undoing most of three generations' worth of progressive jurisprudence:

Replacing even one of the liberal justices with a conservative, legal scholars and advocates across the ideological spectrum agree, would position conservatives to scale back the social safety net and abortion rights in the near term. Over time, if a robust five-vote conservative bloc prevails on the court for years, the right would have the potential opportunity to reverse nearly a century of progressive jurisprudence.

For all those reasons, conservative legal activists anticipate that a Romney win would be the culmination of their decades-long project to remake the country’s legal architecture.

And there you have it. This could be a very bad week... or not; not all the polls look terrible. We need anyone but Rmoney if our nation is to survive. Go out and make it happen!