From a poll taken this morning:
Poll Population: 14 people, 8 female/6 male. Youngest - 28. Oldest - 63.
Education: Between us - 10 PhD’s, 12 MScience, 2 MBA’s, over 20 BS’s.
Ethnicity: 9 white, 3 black, 1 Arab, 1 Asian
Intending to Vote: 13 Obama, 1 McCain
Religions: 1 Jewish, 1 Muslim, 1 “sort-of” Buhdist, 4 Catholic, 4 Protestant, 2 “rather not say” and 1 solidly anti-deist.
Income: Estimated from $50,000 to $300,000

In addition, between us we had 21 voting-age children. 21 of those, we were quite confident, are voting Obama.

So - looks like 34 to 1 among intelligent, well educated, mixed gender, mixed racial, mixed religion, mixed age population with good incomes.
My explanation - these are people who recognize and appreciate intellectual curiosity, problem solving skills, calm leadership and are not swayed by blind rhetoric. Only one candidate reaching out to that demographic.
(poll taken very informally and tastefully by secret ballot at scientific conference near D.C.)

The greatest redistribution of wealth ever to occur in the history on this country has been happening over the past 8 years. In that time, more money (trillions!) has been taken from the hard working middle and lower classes and transferred very effectively to the upper class. The last ditch effort to get $800billion (or more) to “shore up” our financial system was, in actuality, the last attempt by these crooks to cash in BIG before their brain-dead politician-pets get voted out. Imagine that! And we all fell for it!
Of course, they have not given up entirely. If you think that the people currently in power in this country (I mean Oil Companies, Haliburton and the like) would have any hesitation in breaking a stupid law or two to keep control, just remember the $trillions of dollars involved! Vote suppression - done that, it’s easy! Miscounting and losing ballots - so what if they even find out, only some poor schmuck clerk is gonna do time. Rigging voting machines - they don’t even care that we know they are doing it, just try to prove it!
The stakes are high - eternal damnation for the right-wing nuts for voting for a Black Muslim, but even higher for those that will destroy this country rather than “redistributing” any of their spoils of class war.

By PatrickHenry, October 18 at 6:40 am #

(bypassing do not call lists)

The National Do Not Call Registry does not limit calls by political organizations, charities, or telephone surveyors

The new “political do not call” list is not free

Maybe they are afraid Mickey will run for office. He couldn’t do worse than we have had for the last eight years.

The GOP is quite scared this election and probably confused that their normal tactics can’t be done in secret this election cycle.  After 8 years of Bush, we have finally gotten wise and are paying more attention to the underhanded dealings.

Or, Why Are Republicans Really Attacking Non-Profit ACORN?

  John McCain insists that ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, and it’s efforts to register low income and other under represented residents encouraging them to turn out for the vote will somehow be the biggest voter fraud in history.  An astonishing claim. 

  As supposed “evidence,” Republicans like McCain and their paid prejudiced pundits cite that some petitioners have signed voter registration cards with names of non-existent people such as “Mickey Mouse,” forgetting of course that anyone actually showing up on November 4 claiming he is Mickey Mouse will have to produce ID to that effect.  As usual though, little in the way of genuine hard evidence to support the Republican’s theory and wild speculations is ever produced as to any actual voter fraud that resulted from such silly false names.  And if any is, it typically is exaggerated and anecdotal at best.  In other words, there are never any verifiable totals provided which even remotely hint this really is any sort of a significant problem. 

  Ignored entirely was the efforts of ACORN itself to prevent fraud from occurring and the fact that many such instances were only exposed because it was ACORN, not Republicans, who revealed them so they could be removed.  It is even possible in light of prior dirty tricks by Republicans that some of the false names may even have been submitted covertly by Republicans hoping to discredit ACORN.  False signings may be a fraud against ACORN, but it is not vote fraud unless and until it is attempted to be used by someone to actually vote.  There are already laws against that.

  And, have you ever noticed how it is almost exclusively Republicans, those who loudly assert they supposedly are all for “freedom and democracy,” that constantly attempt to prevent others from voting?  Yet, the mere suggestion of the possibility that Mr. Mickey Mouse will show up to ask for a ballot is sufficient for Republican legislatures to pass laws making it increasing difficult for poor, new, elderly, disabled and/or minority voters who would likely vote Democrat, and only such potential voters, to exercise their rights. 

  In contrast, the far greater possibility, in fact the proven opportunity, of hackable electronic voting machines with their secret “proprietary” software built and serviced exclusively by Republican zealot owned companies like Diebold is completely dismissed despite tests showing again and again how quickly and easy it is to do so.  Also, largely dismissed by the same Republican legislators and pundits is the unquestionably large number of legitimate votes by low income groups almost routinely blocked or thwarted by misinformation given to prospective voters either deliberately or inadvertently,  purging of rolls without timely alerting the voters purged, direct and indirect nuisance intimidation of such groups by police or press or partisans, unequal treatment of voting stations regarding number of voting machines and polling staff available which adversely affects length of time and stress on voters election day.  And, have we forgotten difficult ballots (remember the Florida “butterfly ballots”)?  All of these tactics tend to punish or disenfranchise primarily the poor, new, elderly, disabled and/or minority voters who tend to vote for anyone other than McCain.

  Over time, it has become fairly clear that Republicans would apparently secretly prefer the only people who get to vote in America be white, elderly, males who are registered Republican . . . and sit on the US Supreme Court.