Max

I lost interest in Sabato after his website went through some changes I didn't care for, but that's an interesting analysis.

If you don't mind, I'm curious as to what those changes were, Carl.

I wish that the government would stop trying for gun control. It's not going to happen, and if it does, the legislation will be more toothless than Gabby Hayes. This has to start at a local level. The lobbies are too powerful and gun control proponents have tin ears.

I've never been strongly pro-gun or anti-gun, but the Manchin/Toomey bill seemed like a decent compromise. (Ironically, Joe Manchin and Pat Toomey are both hated by progressives. Manchin is considered a DINO, and progressives have labeled Toomey a far-right loon.) Some gun control measures are long overdue, but I think that serious mental illness--as opposed to guns--is the #1 contributor to massacres like Aurora and Newtown. I believe that the left overreached when they championed the idea of deinstitutionalization (i.e., removing people from psychiatric hospitals because of a belief that they can be rehabilitated) in the 60's and 70's. (Because of the culture that deinstitutionalization caused, it is now so very difficult to hospitalize severely mentally ill people for any great length of time.) But, just as many Republicans are indebted to the NRA, many Democrats similarly fear the ACLU (whose leadership would be outraged to see a material rise in the number of people in psychiatric hospitals).

Aside from Toomey, Republicans John McCain (who has been hated by many progressives since 2008), Susan Collins, and Mark Kirk supported the bill. The four Democrats who opposed it were Max Baucus, Mark Begich, Heidi Heitkamp, and Mark Pryor. For those who are strongly pro-gun control, it would be extremely hypocritical to vote for any of these senators in their re-election bids. (I'm certainly not suggesting that you support their Republican opponents, but I do think liberals should just sit out those elections.) If a liberal chooses to vote for them, I highly suspect it is because of shameful partisanship/loyalty to the Democratic party (and to a Democratic Senate). (And I feel that it is unacceptable to vote for a candidate one objects to just for the sake of a Congressional majority.)

I blocked that out.

Seeing Kathrn Hays as blonde always freaks me out a little, especially the one she had in the early 80s.

Actually, I thought the short-lived beard that Don Hastings had was more of a visual shocker.

ATWT had a dud of a 50th Anniversary celebration, but I don't think it was any worse than what GH is getting. While GH is spending a lot more money, the Nurses Ball is ruined with all that idiotic Britt/Sabrina drama.

What did GL do to celebrate it's 50th (TV) Anniversary? I honestly don't know.

Does anybody know why Robert Reed's tenure as Lloyd Kendall was so brief. He joined SFT in 1986, but if I'm not mistaken, he soon left the show and the part was recast once more.

Max, the shows All My Children and One Life to Live are not back yet. The premieres are on April 29, at which time the suggestions you make would be appropriate.

That's a great point, Danfling.

Larry Sabato might not have a perfect record in political predictions like Nate Silver, but he's still among the most accurate in the business. In 2008, he correctly predicted the outcome in all the states except IN and MO (both of which were extremely close). In 2012, he was only wrong about FL (which was also very close) and VA (which wasn't all that close).

He runs a great website called The Crystal Ball. Here's an article on where he sees the Democratic Presidential nominating contest at this very early stage. (He'll cover the Republicans next week.)

http://www.centerforpolitics.org/crystalball/articles/16-for-16-part-1-democrats-again-hunger-for-history/

I hope this doesn't violate any copyright laws, but I wanted to post a table (in that article) that sums up where each of the likely or potential candidates stand:

First Tier
Candidate		Key Advantages	Key Disadvantages
	Hillary Clinton Fmr. Sec. of State	•High national popularity •Woman: chance to make history •Likely to unify party forces if she runs (unlike ‘08)	•Age (69 by Election Day ‘16) •Did not run strong ‘08 campaign •Keeping Bill in check and on the porch
Second Tier
	Joe Biden Vice President	•Vast experience •Next in line? Will Obama back him? •VP bully pulpit	•Age (already 70) •Gaffe machine •Poor pres campaign history
Third Tier
	Andrew Cuomo Governor, NY	•Very popular at home •Impressive policy record already •State/Fed. experience	•Too conventional? •Some liberals unhappy •Another Northeasterner?
	Elizabeth Warren Senator, MA	•Adored by Dem activists •Woman •National ID and fundraising network	•Little crossover appeal •’12 campaign baggage •Another Bay Stater?
Fourth Tier
	Mark Warner Senator, VA	•Strong executive record •Key swing state •Crossover appeal/ bipartisanship theme •Well-financed	•Too moderate? •No national constituency •Not a dynamic speaker
	Kirsten Gillibrand Senator, NY	•Woman •Strong liberal record •NY fundraising base	•Bland persona •Nationally unknown •Past NRA support?
	Martin O’Malley Governor, MD	•Willing and very available •Strong liberal record and policy achievements	•Maryland=small base •Little crossover appeal •Nationally unknown
	Brian Schweitzer Fmr. Governor, MT	•Westerner •Unique populist personality •Very popular Dem in Red state	•Westerner •Unique personality •Too unpredictable?
Wild Card?
	John Hickenlooper Governor, CO	•Swing state •Crossover appeal •Westerner •Gun control backer	•Nationally unknown •Not a dynamic pol •Interest in running?

This is just a suggestion, but I don't think that classic AMC & OLTL discussion should take place in the Cancelled Soaps section anymore. A more appropriate action would be to move these threads to the Discuss the Soaps section and rename them (something like) "Classic AMC (or Classic OLTL) thread." If classic AMC/OLTL discussion is to remain in the cancelled soaps section, the best thing to do would be to rename the threads "AMC [OLTL]: The ABC Years."

I realize that is just a trivial matter. The only reason why I brought this up was because I was quite vocal about AMC/OLTL being moved into the Cancelled Soaps section in the first place (while they remained in the Discuss the Soaps section). It would be hugely hypocritical of me to not say something now, after they have been brought back to life.

While I dont agree with Liz, and dont think she is as well informed as she believes, I also do not mind her and appreciate that she brings a different view to the show.

Joy tho is an insane extreamist who talks out of her ass. Shes awful, so glad she is gone.

I commend you for saying these things.

I dont mind Whoppi so much, aside from her rape-rape, racist defending comments of her celeb friends who can do no wrong.

IMO, Goldberg's "rape-rape" and Todd Akin's "legitimate rape" terminology both mean the same thing: forcible/violent rape (as opposed to date rape or statutory rape). I know that the feminist/PC thing is to say that "rape is rape," but I personally believe that some forms of rape (i.e., the violent kind) are more morally reprehensible than others. To lump all types of rape as equally horrible makes as much sense to me as saying "homicide is homicide" (when violent, premeditated murder is obviously more morally wrong than negligent manslaughter).

I obviously don't agree with the larger points that Goldberg (on the issue of Polanski's punishment) or Akin (on the idiotic notion that "the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down") were trying to make. My whole point is that too much s#it was made regarding their extremely poor choices of terminology. Furthermore, we need to remember that people who are in the age range of Goldberg or Akin aren't as enlightened about rape as younger people are; specifically, many believed (up until about 20 years ago) that violent rape was the only type of rape that existed (because concepts such as date rape weren't even well-defined).

Earlier in the politics thread, I lost my temper and used incendiary and possibly threatening language against Vee after he posted a .gif of Mitt Romney essentially burning himself alive (just like the terminator does in the closing scenes of Terminator 2). While I was appalled at what I saw in the .gif--and believe that public reaction here would be very different if the same .gif was made of Obama--it certainly did not give me license to behave the way I did. I wish there was a way to convince Vee that I did not mean the words I wrote, and that I am not a threat, but there is nothing I can do except to say I am sorry (which is meaningless).

I know that a lot of people are jubilant over Obama's re-election victory, and I am sorry for acting like a sore loser. But the flip side to sore losing is obnoxious gloating, which must also be avoided. Things like that .gif just reek of obnoxious gloating, rub salt into the wounds, and are completely unnecessary (to say the very least). For me, the Romney loss was devastating, because I feel that it will take much longer for a meaningful economic recovery to start (and for me to get a decent paying job). I have been extraordinarily depressed these past six months or so, to the point that there are times I think I would be better off dead. Please note that I have never attempted suicide nor will ever do so (thus don't panic over the statement that I think I would be better off dead), it is just that things seem totally hopeless in the Obama economy, and I am not convinced if things will ever turn around.

I didn't realize that Cheney and Romney were related. All throughout the campaign the Democratic message seemed to be that Bush = Romney.

It looks to me like you didn't recognize the clip or where it was from. I get that. I don't recognize most of the reality-TV based gifs on this board. But please don't pretend that this rip off of a 20-year-old sci-fi movie is the same as pictures of bullet holes on the face of a president who has had an unprecedented level of threats against him and his family.

I certainly did not believe that the number of death threats that Romney received were anywhere near what Obama has received. Marceline, I am sorry if I gave you that impression. However, perhaps precisely because the threats of an Obama assassination remain so real, I think that there would have been a lot more outrage if the same gif had been made regarding Obama.

Again, it's not "my" "animation," Max; it's a viral GIF that has been making the rounds of the Internet, with two dudes' heads stapled on a scene from Terminator 2.

And you and I both know there's plenty on the right who think Obama = Hitler. So your rationalization doesn't hold water. But unlike you, I don't care about it, and I'm not going to go around declaring you will burn in hell. Nor did I report you for your now-removed freakout post. But hey.

I am sorry for stating that it is your animation; that was my mistake.

I obviously don't want you to burn in hell, and I overreacted when I saw the animation. Please try to think at how Obama supporters would be feeling if they saw an identical animation if he had lost.

By the way, you are right that quite a few on the fringe right believe that Obama = Hitler. One of the reasons why I posted that cartoon was because I believe it contradicts that extreme and incorrect view. He is nowhere near as evil (or as good) as people think. When it comes down to it, I think he is an incompetent, two-term president (blessed with poor opposition) much like Bush, who leads a deeply polarized country.

LMAO! That's amazing! T2 is one of my favorite movies of all time!

I guess the cartoon with bullet holes in Obama's face was a barrel of laughs too, huh! What about Sarah Palin's fundraising map in 2010 with cross-hairs for endangered Democratic incumbents? Hilarious!

All this bluster and outrage from the same person who posted a supposedly "funny" image which included a picture of the President in a Nazi uniform. What a hypocrite. I wanted to cuss his ass out for posting that image, but didn't bother and here he is having a meltdown.

The context of the cartoon was that those on the fringe right thought that Obama was as bad as Hitler (while those on the fringe left thought he was as good as Jesus Christ), but in reality he was just like President Bush: not some terribly evil person, just incompetent. I can direct you to that cartoon if you have forgotten what it was about. Neither I nor the cartoon's artist thought Obama was a Nazi. Contrast Vee's animation, which showed the very process of Romney being burned alive.

Edit: Here is that cartoon:

So, not only is he dressed up in a Nazi uniform, but Obama is also in a Superman costume and in Jesus' garb. But Ann, the way you may it sound, it is like you have implied that I think Obama is some sort of Nazi.

He cannot self-terminate. You must lower him into the steel.

I just saw Vee's Terminator 2 animation trick with Mitt Romney that was beyond sick. Having "fun" watching Governor Romney die shows some severe mental sickness on his part. It reminds me of a fringe right wing cartoon that I saw several years back that had a couple bullet holes through President Obama's head.

I had no power or water for four days. Ten days I just would gone postal on someone. Are you on Staten Island?

Qfan, thank you so much for your concern. I am so sorry to read about your hardship.

I actually live in Morris County, which is in the northwestern part of NJ.

While I was fortunate enough to not have sustained any damage from Hurricane Sandy, I was without power for 10 days. I certainly don't know what Obama did regarding the storm that was so outstanding, but I don't blame him for the incompetence of the local response; that fault lies with fatasswipe Chris Christie, who had one entire year to get the emergence response ready after the Irene disaster. Then again, (excluding the last two weeks) he seems to be spending most of his time outside of the state cause his 2016 presidential bid occupies most of his time. Next year, I will be voting for a Democrat for the first time in my life (whoever is his general election opponent), and will enjoy it.

I found it odd and completely insincere that Obama reached out to Governor Romney and asked for his advice. Why exactly would he want to listen to a man who he himself said suffers from Romnesia and is a bulls-hitter. I guess the explanation is that he wants to heal the nation, but if he really wants to do that, then why not publicly apologize for those remarks?

I was never able to make my pre-election predictions, but I would have thought that Obama would win 281 electoral votes to 257 for Romney. (I was wrong on CO, VA, and FL, though I am not completely sure if FL has been called for Obama.) I thought that the popular vote would have been razor close (even Obama's actual two point victory is pretty close), though I guessed Romney would win it by less than 0.5%. It was very easy to predict that the Democrats would retain the Senate and the Republicans would retain the House. The two Senate races I predicted incorrectly were MT and ND.

I expected criticism regarding Joe Scarborough, because he is a Republican (yet one who is very respected by many Democrats). But, Mika Brzezinski concurred with his opinion, and she is a Democrat. The BBC journalist also agreed, and I doubt her beliefs align with the Republican party.

I really don't understand how anybody can solely blame the Republicans in Congress for Obama's failure to deliver on his promise of hope and change. The Democrats had lopsided majorities in both the House and the Senate during the first two years of his administration, and that party still controls the Senate.

The following left-leaning author at Bloomberg recognizes that many Congressional Republicans wanted Obama to fail but also pointed out that the president deserves blame by not pivoting to the center the way Bill Clinton did. He also accurately points out that racism has nothing to do with swing voters' dissatisfaction with the president.

http://www.bloomberg...-to-romney.html

Obama’s Blunder Was in Ceding Political Center to Romney

The third and final presidential debate did little to change the race between President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney, who are tied with just two weeks to go. Even so, this week’s inconsequential contest provides a key of sorts to understanding the election.

In the first debate -- which was consequential and then some -- Romney abruptly changed from the severely conservative Republican he’d presented to voters during the primaries to the reassuringly pragmatic moderate he’d seemed as governor of Massachusetts. It was an audacious move, and one that strains credulity, in two respects: for the sheer distance in ideology he had to walk back, and for the timing, because he left this second outrageous pivot so late in the campaign.

In the last debate, focused mainly on foreign policy, he moved further toward moderation. He struck a conciliatory tone and found little in what Obama said to disagree with, making the encounter in one sense a nonevent. He was cautious to a fault, careful to avoid seeming recklessly hawkish, allaying concerns that under his leadership the U.S. might blunder into another war. This peacemaking Romney couldn’t have won the Republican nomination. But he could very well win on Nov. 6.

The cipher to understanding this election is to ask, why didn’t Obama beat Romney to it? Why didn’t he deny his Republican opponent the middle ground of U.S. politics by seizing it himself?

Class War

At the outset, he was closer to the center than Romney was. And for Obama, this was far less of a stretch. Yet he’s fought a campaign aimed less at the middle of the electorate than at the Democratic Party’s base -- playing on class war and adopting as its overriding goal, at times almost its whole purpose, a tax increase on the rich.

If Obama should lose this election, many will say it was because the economy was weak and because the president is black. Actually, it will be because he fought it as a failed progressive rather than a successful centrist.

Certainly, the economy is a negative for the incumbent, but much less than generally supposed. Most voters understand all too well that the president inherited the worst recession since the 1930s, and that the recovery was going to be a long, hard haul. To be sure, they’re asking whether his policies are helping, and they are far from convinced. They’ve noticed his silence on where his economic policies go from here. But the mere fact that the economy is weak wasn’t fatal to Obama’s prospects.

As for race, the fact that Obama is black has been more an asset than a liability and it remains so. There’s racism in America, but there’s also an immense desire to overcome it. The voters swinging back to Romney aren’t racist, or they wouldn’t have supported Obama in 2008. Remember the joyous inauguration of 2009. The political center of the country was thrilled and proud to have elected a black president: an exceptionally talented man, and the best possible salve for the nation’s unhealed racial wounds.

Every voter who chose Obama in 2008 still wants him to succeed. But not all are convinced he can, and that’s partly because he has stopped trying to be the president he said he’d be. The need to fix Washington, the need for a bridge-building, post-partisan presidency was uppermost in centrist voters’ minds when they elected Obama, and he’d made that the core of his campaign. Washington is still broken -- more so than before -- and Obama is no longer even trying to mend it.

A fair response to this would be, can you blame him? After 2008, an increasingly radical Republican Party dedicated itself to ensuring Obama’s failure. It made compromise difficult and often impossible. On health-care reform and the fiscal stimulus of 2009 -- the signature achievements of Obama’s first term -- the president was forced to give ground and got nothing in return. The pattern repeated again and again. How can it be fair to criticize Obama for failing to build bridges?

Presidential Error

The president’s error wasn’t that he refused to compromise. It was that he compromised so reluctantly, denying himself ownership of his own policies and making every accomplishment seem like a defeat.

He should have boasted about his ability to get big, important things past an unyielding Republican Party. He should have boasted about the tax cuts in the fiscal stimulus, rather than allowing them to appear as if they were ground out of him as a concession to Republican priorities. (If he had, he might have won a bigger stimulus.) He should have explained why health-care reform without the so-called public option was a great success, pushing back against the view of many in his own party that this and other compromises rendered the effort largely pointless.

Obama could have been a strong centrist, which would have aroused even louder complaints from the Democratic left. Or he could have been a weak progressive, constantly on the retreat. He chose to be the latter. Policy-wise, the result might have been much the same: a stimulus with more tax cuts and less public investment than Democrats wanted and a health-care reform resting much more heavily on the existing private-insurance model than progressives would have liked. The crucial difference is that Obama the muscular centrist could have taken credit for these achievements -- which is what they are -- in a way that Obama the battered progressive has been unable to.

He would have been able to campaign on them, rather than leaving them unloved and unsold. He would have looked in charge rather than at the mercy of intransigent Republicans. He would have seemed his own man rather than an instrument of Nancy Pelosi and the House Democrats. He would have been the president who never stopped trying to fix Washington. Above all, he would have been ideologically aligned with the swing voters who decide elections.

Midterm Setback

Many in his party would have despised him for it, just as they despised Bill Clinton -- whom they now revere -- for moving to the center after his midterm setback in 1994. Obama had his 1994 moment in the Democrats’ rout in the 2010 congressional elections. He carried on as though nothing had changed. If anything, he hardened the anticapitalist line around which his campaign for re-election was forming.

The Bowles-Simpson deficit-reduction commission -- his own initiative -- gave him another chance to occupy the center and take command of public opinion. Again he was cowed by howls of protest from progressives, and meekly looked away.

None of this would have mattered if he was running against Rick Santorum or some other hardline conservative. Suddenly, though, he’s running against a moderate.

Democrats are correct to say that Republicans in Congress have moved far to the right. They are also correct that the country has taken note and doesn’t like it. Somehow they failed to notice the obvious implication. This vacating of the center gave Obama a historic opportunity to broaden the appeal of his party -- over its activists’ hysterical objections, but so what? -- and lock in a second term. He blew it, and an election he should have won easily will go down to the wire.

(Clive Crook is a Bloomberg View columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.)

I saw Obama is finally distributing his plan for the next four years. He waits for two weeks before the election? Ridiculous.

You deserve a lot of credit for writing that, Ann. And I criticize Romney for failing on this score as well. (He at least mentioned his five-point plan, but he needs to be far more specific than that.)

Even some at MSNBC are lamenting the highly negative campaign tactics Obama is using:

<iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/bVCMgaQde0E" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

The fear mongering and name calling are a far cry from the days of hope and change.

Funny

Wales, thank you so much for graciously accepting my apology and for clarifying your feelings about Chuck Todd.

Interesting comments this morning...

I really think, based on his performance last night, that Obama has lost the presidency. All Romney needed to do was hold firm and steady and not do anything to stem the current tide rising in his favor. He did, in fact, remain steady and did not get trapped on any policy issues. He was flat on foreign policy but not clueless; he demonstrated adequate capability, in my opinion.

This debate was Obama's best. He is consistent and steady. While I didn't feel he was overly aggressive, I did think he was overly defensive - but again not adequately defending his economic policies. This is what I believe will cost him the election. Obama is simply unable to defend his record. And it doesn't matter whether you are a Conservative who thinks the stimulus and Obamacare continue to hobble the economy... or if you are a Liberal who feels Obama didn't go far enough with the stimulus and that Obamacare isn't as all-encompassing as it should be - you just aren't satisfied with what Obama has or has not done.

Polls continue to indicate momentum in Romney's favor and nothing in last night's debate will change that. Unless, of course, some huge surprise comes our way and Gloria Allred produces shocking pictures of Romney at a gay orgy or taking a dump on the hood of somebody's car after a drunken binge... You never know. But without dirty tricks from either side... without some ridiculous nonsense from the media... odds are definitely in Romney's favor at this stage.

Brian, I wish I could agree with you, but (with all due respect) I fear that this is wishful thinking (though I hope I am wrong). If the election was held today, I do believe that Romney would win the popular vote (between 0.5% and 1.0%). Unfortunately, Romney seems screwed in the electoral college. If the election was held today, I think the results would look like this (these predictions are not final, as I will revisit this topic right before Election Day):

Obama: Non-Swing States (237)+IA (6)+OH (18)+NH (4)+NV (6)+WI (10)=281 EVs

Romney: Non-Swing States (191)+CO (9)+FL (29)+NC (15)+VA (13)=257 EVs

Also, I suspect there will be an October surprise from "Mother Jones." They were the ones who released the 47% video in September. If that was the worst they had on Romney, it would seem logical to release that video right before the election instead of then. Thus, it seems to be a reasonable assumption that they have something far worse to be released as an October surprise.

There is also the November unemployment report that will be issued the Friday before the election. I anticipate the unemployment rate to continue to go down because retailers are hiring part-time help for the holiday season and because more long-term unemployed will stop being counted as part of the labor force. These continued developments will give the false impression that the economy is experiencing a robust recovery and will be spun as a triumph by the mainstream media.

I don't care whether he's a Republican or not because I honestly never considered his possible party affiliation since neither he nor Andrea Mitchell are blatantly pushing any agendas as the rest of their MSNBC show mates are.

Even so, is it not possible that from 1992 to until now, he could have changed party affiliations, if he was ever affiliated with the Democrats to begin with? 20 years is a life time for some people and one can grow and see things so much more differently in that span of time--even shorter at that.

Also, it's possible for a person to work for a candidate without being affiliated with said candidate's party. He might have just believed in this man's platform.

And as far as the wife goes.....James Carvile and Mary Matalin ring a bell?

Carville and Matalin are most likely the exception, and not the rule.

If he believed in Harkin's platform, he was certainly a Democrat at the time, since Harkin is most definitely not a DINO.

Perhaps you don't care what Todd's party affiliation is. If that is the case, then why don't you take him seriously? When you responded to Ann's posting calling Todd a Republican stooge, I got the impression that you don't trust him because you think he is a Republican who biased in favor of Mitt Romney. (If that was the wrong impression, I apologize.)

It looks like nobody here knew that "Republican stooge" Chuck Todd worked for the 1992 presidential campaign of Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA). And his wife co-founded a company that "provides direct mail and consulting services for Democratic candidates and progressive causes."

http://en.wikipedia....wiki/Chuck_Todd

I was curious if anybody else wanted to rank the swing states in order of most to least favorable for Romney. Here are my rankings:

1. NC (the only swing state I feel very good about)

2. FL

3. CO

4. VA

5. NH

6. WI

7. IA

8. OH

9. NV

It's amazing that those who proclaim Romney "hates" women (especially in positions of power) are ignorant about one very important fact: he chose a woman to be his Lieutenant Governor.

Obama won the debate because he was aggressive and actually addressed a lot of the BS the GOP are spewing.i won't say it was a knockdown. Romney held his own to a great extent.

Except for the part about the GOP spewing BS, I agree with your assessment Jane. The general consensus seems to be that as well:

http://www.nationalj...efid=mostViewed

A lot of people rightfully criticized Jack Welch and others for questioning whether the government lied about the 7.8% unemployment rate. For the record, I don't believe that any lying was going on. Of course, I am smart enough to "read behind the number," and realize that this statistic is going down in large part because (1) we have a record number of long-term unemployed (and once they stop collecting benefits, they are not counted as part of the workforce, which in turn reduces the unemployment rate), (2) retailers increase the number of part-time workers during this time of year, and (3) many of those who have found new employment in the Obama economy are settling for a job that is paying less than their old one.

I wasn't able to post when the 7.8% unemployment figure was announced and Obama supporters were trashing Republicans for being unable to accept the facts. However, it isn't only Republicans who seem to be having difficulty with factual information. Democrats are still in denial over Bush's 2004 Ohio victory; for the record, he defeated John Kerry by 118,601 votes (a far cry from Bush's 537 vote margin over Gore in 2000 in Florida, which I don't begrudge any Democrat for doubting). Unfortunately, there are plenty of fringe nuts who honestly believe that "minority voter suppression" and "rigged" voting machines manufactured by Diebold robbed Senator Kerry of the presidency. Then, of course, we still have the Democratic bulls-hit that Mitt Romney is a "felon" because he never paid any taxes. But PriceWaterhouseCoopers, a highly respected CPA firm, vouched that from 1990 to 2009, the governor never paid an effective tax rate lower than 13%. (If you want to play the stupid game that PriceWaterhouseCoopers is lying on behalf of Romney because he employs them, then somebody could counter and say that the Department of Labor is lying about the unemployment rate because they are part of the Obama Administration.) Still, Harry Reid will not retract his slanderous statements (that Romney paid zero in taxes), and David Letterman called Romney a felon even after PriceWaterhouseCoopers vouched for him. Finally, the most extreme elements on the left fervently believe that President Bush had prior knowledge of 9/11 and was a co-conspirator in the event, even after an acclaimed report that was published by a committee chaired by two politicians known for their bipartisanship (Tom Kean and Lee Hamilton).

It certainly would be very nice if everybody could accept the facts and recognize the official unemployment rate is 7.8% and that Obama is a Hawaiian-born Christian. I just don't see that happening until the other side acknowledges that Mitt Romney isn't a felon and George W. Bush is the legitimate winner of the 2004 election who did not aid in the 9/11 attacks.