Election Night. Gimme My Fix.

[Bu🤠ns]

Now that the fun party is over can we now focus the critical eye back at the prez:

http://stpeteforpeace.org/obama.html

I just found this after checking out alty's graphic on FB...
http://sphotos-a.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-snc7/390106_382324195185679_649854656_n.jpg

Anyone have any other good similar resources?

[Cain]

I don't, but you could add to that "what about Africa?"

Most African leaders are deeply disappointed in Obama.  Bush, for whatever reason, pumped a load of money into the continent, into development and aid programs, education...leaders had hoped given Obama's heritage, he would also take a great interest in the continent.  Instead, Obama has only shown interest in where military bases are going to go.

Of course, I suspect most American voters don't care about Africa (5% of American voters named foreign policy as their top concern...something like 57% of those thought Obama was better than Romney on that), but it could be used to shame some liberals.

[Cain]

So, an interesting correlation has been noted in the UK.

By and large, Tory party members loathe Romney.  The reasons for this are partly political, and partly petty.  Politically, they see Romney is a shameless opportunist who had no plan for paying off the US public debt - no plan that would work anyway.  He was needlessly antagonist towards China, a major British trading partner and possible future EU arms client.  He seemed uninterested and unknowledgeable about the European financial crisis - except using it as a stick to beat his political enemies with.

In addition to that, he came over here, abused our hospitality in order to cast doubt on our ability to put on the Games and annoyed the Prime Minister.  That's the function of the Tory Right, not smarmy foreigners.  He's their Prime Minister to abuse, Romney needs to get in line and wait for his turn.

Not to say they're keen on the Kenyan Marxist Usurper...but they find him a known quantity, and his excesses to be considerably less than Romney's.

Yet, a quick reading of the Telegraph Blogs section will quickly show that right wing pundits, on the other hand, were hugely enthusiastic about a Romney Presidency.  They couldn't shut up about how Romney would thrash the moochers, belittle the global warming scientists, bring back Morality and Law And Order and other fantastical tales.

Why the difference?

Well, it's a matter of incentives.  The Tory base have little to gain from a Romney presidency, despite his apparent love of the "special relationship".  Said relationship doesn't exactly bring trade benefits to the UK, you know.  In fact, maintaining said relationship can end up making a Prime Minister deeply unpopular with their own voters, such as happened to Tony Blair.  This can tarnish an entire party as being "lapdogs" of a foreign regime - as it did with Blair (though the likes of Denis MacShane running around the place abusing everyone to the left of Attila the Hun as "pro-Saddam" and then publically rimming Bibi did not help matters), which would be very unfortunate for the Conservatives, who are typically more nationalist than internationalist in outlook and voting base.

However, Telegraph writers and similar can, if they play up the posh accent and semi-respectable academic credentials enough, get a gig on the US Wingnut Welfare Scheme - a system that subsidises the lifestyles of those who are willing to become propagandists for the GOP with a variety of interesting writing and speaking jobs, or think tank positions for the more academically inclined.  It is this route that Christopher Hitchens (sort of) and Niall Ferguson have trod, that Melanie Phillips and James Dellingpole are desperately trying to tread, and that the Telegraph blog crowd are hoping to be considered for.

Que bono?  should be an obvious question to ask when considering any question involving people.

[Cain]

Somewhat more importantly...

Marijuana legalization won in Colorado, with 50,000 more votes than Obama.  Massachusetts legalized medical pot. Washington legalized pot AND gay marriage. Detroit decriminalized pot. A few other places either legalized gay marriage or at least prevented pre-emptive gay marriage bans.

The less people that get put in prison as a result of the drug war (which Obama has ramped up since the Bush years) the better, since said war has an incredibly outsized impact on minorities and the poorest segments of society.

[Cain]

American politics, thy name is Spite:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-20247097

Barack Obama has returned to Washington focused on broaching an impasse with Republicans over the deficit reduction deal needed to avoid a fiscal crisis.

The newly reelected US president faces a fiscal "cliff" of spending cuts and tax rises unless agreement is reached.

The Republicans retained control of the House of Representatives on Tuesday, but failed to take the Senate.

House Speaker John Boehner hinted at the possibility of a compromise if the president agreed to tax reform.

Mr Boehner, who negotiated with Mr Obama over a so-called "grand bargain" of spending cuts and new revenues in 2011, said he would accept new revenue-raising as part of a tax reform deal.

Even before he flew with his family from their Chicago base to Andrews Air Force Base in Washington on Wednesday evening, Mr Obama had phoned the speaker to emphasise the need to reach a budget compromise when Congress returns next week.

In other words, cut taxes on those earning $250,000 or more, or the borrowing limit stays in place and the economy is fucked.

The GOP have no reason not to go for this.  They lost the election, and are riding high on butthurt and nihilism.  They can't force the issue in the Senate, but they sure as hell can stall things in the House.

[LMNO]

I love how the GOP is saying that the House remaining in control because of "voter choice" and not because of absolutely insane gerrymandering.

[Cain]

http://swampland.time.com/2012/11/07/inside-the-secret-world-of-quants-and-data-crunchers-who-helped-obama-win/2/

A large portion of the cash raised online came through an intricate, metric-driven e-mail campaign in which dozens of fundraising appeals went out each day. Here again, data collection and analysis were paramount. Many of the e-mails sent to supporters were just tests, with different subject lines, senders and messages. Inside the campaign, there were office pools on which combination would raise the most money, and often the pools got it wrong. Michelle Obama's e-mails performed best in the spring, and at times, campaign boss Messina performed better than Vice President Joe Biden. In many cases, the top performers raised 10 times as much money for the campaign as the underperformers.

Chicago discovered that people who signed up for the campaign's Quick Donate program, which allowed repeat giving online or via text message without having to re-enter credit-card information, gave about four times as much as other donors. So the program was expanded and incentivized. By the end of October, Quick Donate had become a big part of the campaign's messaging to supporters, and first-time donors were offered a free bumper sticker to sign up.

The magic tricks that opened wallets were then repurposed to turn out votes. The analytics team used four streams of polling data to build a detailed picture of voters in key states. In the past month, said one official, the analytics team had polling data from about 29,000 people in Ohio alone — a whopping sample that composed nearly half of 1% of all voters there — allowing for deep dives into exactly where each demographic and regional group was trending at any given moment. This was a huge advantage: when polls started to slip after the first debate, they could check to see which voters were changing sides and which were not.

It was this database that helped steady campaign aides in October's choppy waters, assuring them that most of the Ohioans in motion were not Obama backers but likely Romney supporters whom Romney had lost because of his September blunders. "We were much calmer than others," said one of the officials. The polling and voter-contact data were processed and reprocessed nightly to account for every imaginable scenario. "We ran the election 66,000 times every night," said a senior official, describing the computer simulations the campaign ran to figure out Obama's odds of winning each swing state. "And every morning we got the spit-out — here are your chances of winning these states. And that is how we allocated resources."

Data helped drive the campaign's ad buying too. Rather than rely on outside media consultants to decide where ads should run, Messina based his purchases on the massive internal data sets. "We were able to put our target voters through some really complicated modeling, to say, O.K., if Miami-Dade women under 35 are the targets, [here is] how to reach them," said one official. As a result, the campaign bought ads to air during unconventional programming, like Sons of Anarchy, The Walking Dead and Don't Trust the B—- in Apt. 23, skirting the traditional route of buying ads next to local news programming. How much more efficient was the Obama campaign of 2012 than 2008 at ad buying? Chicago has a number for that: "On TV we were able to buy 14% more efficiently ... to make sure we were talking to our persuadable voters," the same official said.

The numbers also led the campaign to escort their man down roads not usually taken in the late stages of a presidential campaign. In August, Obama decided to answer questions on the social news website Reddit, which many of the President's senior aides did not know about. "Why did we put Barack Obama on Reddit?" an official asked rhetorically. "Because a whole bunch of our turnout targets were on Reddit."

Also worth noting - Obama's team built their own data-driven systems, which allowed for them to be repurposed and adjusted for other purposes (like voting metrics), whereas Team Romney relied on off-the-shelf products provided by corporate backers, which usually only did one thing, and badly (but looked real pretty on their Apple Macs, I'm sure).

[Suu]

I'm so glad I'm not getting those emails anymore.

Anyways, why is it that every Republican is accusing Democratic voters of being jobless leeches now? I just had to embarrass two people I know into making actual apologies.

[Cain]

Because ressenitment.

Basically, losers have to make themselves feel better, so they claim to be morally superior to those who defeated them.  Nietzsche talked about this a lot, in relation to Christian morals, which makes it an even better fit for the modern GOP supporter than their actual behaviour.

[LMNO]

Cain, in relation to money: One of the takeaways being pushed is that tons of anonymous money was spent on the election, but it didn't really push the results one way or the other (for example, Romney spent massively in the swing states that he lost). 

If this is true, it either implies that the Citizens United decision wasn't as bad as we thought and money doesn't have as much influence as assumed, or that it simply takes an imbalance of spending in order to make a difference, which only serves to escalate the amount of money spent per election.

[Cain]

A lot of the stuff about Citizens United was hot air, yes.  The US Presidential system was awash in money well before this decision was made, spending normally only shifts about 1% of the vote, maximum, and the two candidates are usually far closer in economic policy than most people want to admit, meaning they get a roughly equal share of spending money.

However, the more pernicious aspects of Citizens United are the ones which are not getting much press, how large employers are pressuring their employees to vote in particular ways, using corporate funds to create propaganda which is then handed out to employees who are required to read it, having them turn up for ersatz political rallies and so on.

That's rather similar to how voting works in Russia.  Except the Russian system has more dead Chechens.

[Luna]

Wow, the butthurt...

http://www.libertarianrepublican.net/2012/11/the-end-of-liberty-in-america-only.html

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Wow, the butthurt...

http://www.libertarianrepublican.net/2012/11/the-end-of-liberty-in-america-only.html

Like many all Libertarians, he believes in Freedom, as long as you agree with him.

Wow, also I seriously hope he really does all that, so that he becomes that crazy guy who's 86'd from Wal-Mart.

[Nephew Twiddleton]

Somewhat more importantly...

Marijuana legalization won in Colorado, with 50,000 more votes than Obama.  Massachusetts legalized medical pot. Washington legalized pot AND gay marriage. Detroit decriminalized pot. A few other places either legalized gay marriage or at least prevented pre-emptive gay marriage bans.

The less people that get put in prison as a result of the drug war (which Obama has ramped up since the Bush years) the better, since said war has an incredibly outsized impact on minorities and the poorest segments of society.

I get chronic pains in various parts of my body.

I should mention this to my doctor.

[Juana]

Somewhat more importantly...

Marijuana legalization won in Colorado, with 50,000 more votes than Obama.  Massachusetts legalized medical pot. Washington legalized pot AND gay marriage. Detroit decriminalized pot. A few other places either legalized gay marriage or at least prevented pre-emptive gay marriage bans.

The less people that get put in prison as a result of the drug war (which Obama has ramped up since the Bush years) the better, since said war has an incredibly outsized impact on minorities and the poorest segments of society.

California also just revamped our three strikes law - if it's not a violent crime, you don't get life. Thank god. That will help a lot on that front.