Inspirational Video of the President Meeting with His Campaign Staff
This is a great piece of video taken Wednesday when President Obama visited his Chicago campaign headquarters to thank staff for all their devotion and hard work. Moving stuff.
Election Night on FOX, Rove Ranted & the Network Pimped Megyn Kelly
As if more proof were needed, this Gabriel Sherman report in NY magazine, tipped to me by TPM, shows how intertwined FOX News continues to be with the Repub establishment. On Tuesday night, after FOX, following the same decision by other networks, called Ohio for President Obama, there was a meltdown on the right, culminating in Karl Rove’s rant on camera, when he sounded like a spoiled child who wanted his toys back:
“Instantly, FOX phones lit up with angry phone calls and e-mails from the Romney campaign, who believed that the call was premature, since tallies in several Republican-leaning Southern counties hadn’t been been fully tabulated. ‘The Romney people were totally screaming that we’re totally wrong,’ one FOX source said. ‘To various people, they were saying, ‘your decision team is wrong.’ According to a FOX insider, Rove had been in contact with the Romney people all night. After the Ohio call, Rove—whose super-PAC had spent as much as $300 million on the election, to little avail—took their complaints public, conducting an on-air primer on Ohio’s electoral math in disputing the call.
I guess phone numbers of FOX senior producers is something Repub operatives are given when they get hired.
Sherman’s story also makes clear how willing FOX is to dangle and pimp their on-air female talent before male viewers. In an impromptu episode that followed Rove’s refusal to accept the Ohio call for Obama, FOX producers sent host Megyn Kelly on a bizarre expedition down the hall to conduct an interview with the experts staffing the network’s election decision desk. Sherman reports that,
“One idea was for two members of the decision team, Mishkin and Fox’s digital politics editor Chris Stirewalt, to go on camera with Megyn Kelly and Bret Baier to squelch the doubts over the call. But then it was decided that Kelly would walk through the office and interview the decision team in the conference room. ‘This is Fox News,’ an insider said, ‘so anytime there’s a chance to show off Megyn Kelly’s legs they’ll go for it.’ The decision desk were given a three-minute warning that Kelly would be showing up.”
This isn’t a network, it’s a burlesque show.
Take that Sheldon Adelson!
Via TPM, most Jewish voters found Romney’s rhetoric about Israel, the United States and Iran, and that of his surrogates, completely unpersuasive. The president got 70% of Jewish voters, a slight shift down from 2008, but Romney managed only 30%! Can the media now stop shouting for a while about this topic, and enabling shouters like Rudy Giuliani, whose campaign excesses this time were egregious, even for him. It’s remarkable how much of Romney’s attacking rhetoric against the president was unavailing.
Grateful
Grateful, relieved, happy, and hopeful for so many things, a handful of them below:
1) Grateful that our president will be returned to office with the support of a majority of the nation’s voters; that so many progressive women will be serving in the Senate; and that marriage equality has been affirmed on the east coast and the west coast.
2) Relieved that the policies and cohort of the challenger won’t be installed in the White House.
3) Happy that I was able to lend my support to the Obama campaign with some phone banking (not as much as in 2008, though I still made some calls); that I connected with the Obama Campaign’s digital outreach staff, especially Teddy Goff and Erica Sackin, and was able to inform this blog with their informed content; and that the curation and writing of this blog spread accurate information and motivating commentary about the campaign to a widening circle of readers and sharers. Thanks to all.
4) Hopeful that four more years of President Obama’s astute leadership will heal our economy with more opportunities for all; nurture civil and human rights; and lead to more global understanding.
As this first day after the 2012 election goes along, I may have more items to list, but for now these will suffice. As always, thank you for subscribing, reading, and sharing from The Great Gray Bridge. If you care to, please share some things for which you are grateful, relieved, happy, and/or hopeful in the comments field below.
Canadians ♥ Barack Obama
I love that all my Canadian pals on my Twitter feed and Facebook page are going as crazy as my Yank pals. This is a big win for lots of people!
Four More Years!!
Yay, we did it! Barack Obama has won re-election!! What a night for DEMs
A PA Voting Machine Changes an Obama Vote to Romney
Via PoliticalWire.com I see that Zachary Roth of NBC News is reporting on a voter in PA who uploaded a brief video of a worrisome glitch on the voting machine he was using. Under a youtube account name ‘centralpavoter,’ he left a very reasonable-sounding comment just below. He doesn’t claim anything more than what he observed, but what happened is disturbing. Please note that Roth reports the machine was taken out of use, after ‘centralpavoter’ alerted officials to the problem.
“My wife and I went to the voting booths this morning before work. There were 4 older ladies running the show and 3 voting booths that are similar to a science fair project in how they fold up. They had an oval VOTE logo on top center and a cartridge slot on the left that the volunteers used to start your ballot.
I initially selected Obama but Romney was highlighted. I assumed it was being picky so I deselected Romney and tried Obama again, this time more carefully, and still got Romney. Being a software developer, I immediately went into troubleshoot mode. I first thought the calibration was off and tried selecting Jill Stein to actually highlight Obama. Nope. Jill Stein was selected just fine. Next I deselected her and started at the top of Romney’s name and started tapping very closely together to find the ‘active areas’. From the top of Romney’s button down to the bottom of the black checkbox beside Obama’s name was all active for Romney. From the bottom of that same checkbox to the bottom of the Obama button (basically a small white sliver) is what let me choose Obama. Stein’s button was fine. All other buttons worked fine.
I asked the voters on either side of me if they had any problems and they reported they did not. I then called over a volunteer to have a look at it. She him hawed for a bit then calmly said “It’s nothing to worry about, everything will be OK.” and went back to what she was doing. I then recorded this video.
There is a lot of speculation that the footage is edited. I’m not a video guy, but if it’s possible to prove whether a video has been altered or not, I will GLADLY provide the raw footage to anyone who is willing to do so. The jumping frames are a result of the shitty camera app on my Android phone, nothing more.”
—
This is the .18 sec video:
My Polling Place at 7 AM, Election Day 2012
I was voter #36 voter in my election district on the Upper West Side of Manhattan this morning. It was a thrill to vote for President Obama, having earlier voted for him when he was still “Senator” Obama. Now I’m free to volunteer at the local campaign office during the day. Here’s what my polling place on W. 103rd Street, the lobby of an apartment building, looked like this morning. 