Damned straight there should be protest.

[pecunium]

Teresa, at Making Light, has a bangi-up post about What kind of “Election Day unrest” are we talking about?

She has a lot to support the question. The skinny is... McCain has lost. The polling data is very good (and if you have any interest in the numbers, Five Thirty Eight is THE place to go. Nate Silver was a sabremetrician which is to say he played with the records/stats of baseball. He knows how to read them, and they do a bang up job of not just giving you the results, but showing you how they got there. It is the best polling spot on the web). The polling data has been trending Obama for weeks, and it seems pretty tight. McCain is going to lose.

But there's a lot of intimation the people who staged a riot in Florida, whose supporters were firebombing Democratic offices in 2004, who have sent death threats to ACORN (unless you think it was an Obama Supporter who attacked them, after Palin and McCain started telling us what a threat to democracy they are), aren't looking forward to losing the, "Permanent Republican Majority".

This is no time to be complacent Make your vote. If you can, vote early. If it's a touchscreen, do your damndest to verify the vote. Encourage your friends to vote. Encourage your enemies to vote. Why? Because the Republicans have said, for more than 40 years, they do better when fewer people vote.

An honest election will have Obama win, or there will be an obvious shift in the mind of the nation, and we will know McCain won legitimately. But this idea that McCain winning an honest election will lead to riots... with the emphasis on prevention in cities like Detroit, and Oakland (which, co-incidentally have large black populations... race baiting much?) is meant to intimidate people.

Cops on the streets are not conducive to going out in peaceful enterprises. I'm white, and they make me nervous.

It's also a way to get the wishy-washy racists out. The ones who don't like either candidate, and so might stay home. This gives them something to go out for; keep them uppity-types from getting their way; remind 'em who's boss.

If that sudden groundswell of McCain Mania doesn't appear, and the 6 point lead Obama has suddenly melts away, and McCain comes out of nowhere? I will not be typing. I don't know where I will be, but someplace I can be seen, and heard. If it takes fifty, a hundred, "Orange Revolutions", we need to have them. If I have to hitchhike to Washington to stand on the Mall and be counted... well there are times and places to put it all on the line, and that would be one of them.

Comments

Re: cops in the streets

[swseat.livejournal.com]

He also tried to increase the tax on them by 500%. He also wanted to ban assault rifles and define assault rifle by foot pounds of energy. For those who know nothing about guns (you) that would include those rifles and shotguns you mentioned. He also approved of a law in his state (didn't pass) that would prevent sale of a gun in a 5 mile radius of a school. That would put the closest gun store hundreds of miles from downtown Chicago and most areas of the state. Absent a national forest with a small private piece of ground, that would probably eliminate all places to sell them. He supported the idea that you could sue gun manufacturers for personal injury produced by robbers who used the guns in a crime. (back door to eliminate their manufacture by financially breaking the manufacturer) And exactly what is the purpose to keep you from buying more than one firearm in 30 days? It's like a salesman. Get your foot in the door.

Re: cops in the streets

[calimac.livejournal.com]

Not one of those things - not all of them put together - amounts to anything close to "you will be turning in your guns or face a felony." That a person who did have that aim would support these as beginning waystations is no evidence that Obama has that aim. And he could hardly achieve it if he did. We're in paranoid delusion country here.