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Ryan Warns Evangelicals: Obama Threatens "Judeo-Christian Values"

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The Republican vice presidential nominee tries to fire up the Evangelical vote. In private, a departure from the moderate rhetoric of the closing days.

Image by Eric Thayer / Reuters

DENVER — Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan told a group of Evangelical Christians Sunday that President Obama's plans threaten "Judeo-Christian values" — a dramatic charge aimed at the Republican base, and delivered during a conference call that did not appear on his public schedule.

In his remarks to what organizers said were tens of thousands of members of the Faith and Freedom Coalition, Ryan said that President Barack Obama's path for the next four years is a "dangerous" one.

"[It is] a path that compromises those values — those Judeo-Christian values that made us a great nation in the first place," he said, referring to religious liberty and Obamacare.

Criticizing Obama over his health care bill's coverage mandate for birth control, the Roman-Catholic Ryan noted that "my church is suing the federal government."

"We should not have to sue the federal government to keep our constitutional freedoms," he said. "Imagine what he would do if he actually got reelected. It just puts a chill down my spine."

According to the group's founder, former Christian Coalition official Ralph Reed, 17 million Evangelical voters didn't vote in 2008, and the group claims it plans to muster between 4 and 6 million of them to turn out to the polls this year

On the call, Ryan said he has been "sustained" on the campaign trail by the people he has met who tell him that they are praying for him.

"I can’t tell you how important it is to have the prayers of the tens of thousands of people we meet across the country," Ryan said.

Ryan also highlighted his own faith, saying he keeps a rosary in his pocket and prays with his wife and children each day.

"It keeps us somber, it keeps us strong, it keeps us in a solid state of mind," he said, adding that his three kids are loving their time on the trail. "We brought their homework on the trail!"

Adding that he starts each day with the Serenity Prayer, Ryan said, "That’s how the Lord sustains me — no fear."

Reed emphasized that it was the religious duty of Christians to cast their ballots, saying the "Bible clearly teaches" that there is an obligation to take part in their government.

“We believe being registered to vote, being educated, and going to the polls is part of our witness as believers, because we are dual citizens," Reed said, referring to the "Kingdom of Heaven" and the United States.

He said that his organization has the cell phone numbers of 13.2 million Evangelical voters, and plans to make 122 million voter contacts this cycle, including mail, emails, robocalls, and door knocks.

Ryan spokesman Michael Steel elaborated on Ryan's remarks, saying he "was talking about issues like religious liberty and ObamaCare — topics he has mentioned frequently during the campaign."


The Vices Of The Knife: Oliver Stone Talks Politics, Weed, And The Potential Petraeus Coup

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The BuzzFeed Interview features the Oscar-winning director, whose ten-part reassessment of modern American history launches this month on Showtime. Included: He voted for Obama, but explains how a Romney vote could make sense. “You burn faster…It'll wreck [the country] faster … the more mistakes you make, the faster the changes.”

Image by John Gara/Buzzfeed

HOLLYWOOD, CA — Oliver Stone places his new 738-page book down on a patio table in his home, a mansion tucked cozily away near the bottom of a canyon, just as his 16-year-old daughter walks into the room.

“Hey Tara, check this book out,” Stone says to her, one of his three kids, suggesting she show it to her classmate who’d come over to study. It’s called The Untold History of the United States, released this week to accompany a new ten-part documentary series set to air on Showtime. “Take it to school tomorrow and show it to your teachers.”

“This?” she says skeptically, picking it up and shaking her head. “Oh, it's by you?! That's cool!”

“It's dedicated to you, sweetheart,” he says. “Your name's there.”

“Wait, oh, okay,” she says. “Thank you — I really appreciate that.”

The proud father smiles — reaching a younger generation, he says, is the point of the project he describes as his most ambitious to date, an energetically suspicious re-telling of American history in the 20th century, documenting the growth of the national security state, the CIA’s secret wars, and various men and women who he thinks “history has forgotten.”

Over four and a half years in the making with co-author Peter Kuznick, a history professor at American University, the series begins with World War II and the atomic bomb, passes through Korea, Vietnam, and Grenada, and ends with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, critiquing leaders current (Obama “doesn’t have the courage or integrity” of JFK) and past (Truman is a “caveman”) and describing a United States that, while certainly more sinister than the one our country’s candidates are currently rhapsodizing, is not necessarily one that readers of radical historians like Howard Zinn will recognize, either. (Stone is a fan of former Senate majority leader Tom Daschle.)

“It's the biggest thing I've ever done,” he says. “It’s a combination of all the themes that I've been interested in — JFK, Nixon, W., the power of money, the corruption of empire. This is a chance to say, 'Hey, I don't have to dramatize it, I can just go to the real record.”

Stone gave BuzzFeed the first extensive interview related to the series. In a discussion, conducted last month, the 61-year-old iconoclast and Vietnam veteran — he was a lowly foot solider in the war — talked Obama (he gave him money in 2008; this time, no dice) Romney, weed, his most recent feature Savages, his encounters with the devious and powerful (Bob Gates, Gorbachev), and his new project, among other things.

The ground rules? I told him I’d publish as much as I could, with the understanding we would likely take the most inflammatory thing he said and make a headline of it, and it’d probably be interpreted wildly out of context elsewhere in the media. He agreed.

“So, I’ll start with the softball question,” I say.

“Softball? There is no softball,” he says, then pauses. “I know that technique. Okay, the softball question.”

Image by John Gara/Buzzfeed

POLITICS

MH: Are you going to vote?

OS: I just got a write-in ballot. I don't know, I think I should, but they demoralize you. They say California makes no difference anyway. And we vote last. In which case they've announced practically the whole thing. So what would you do?

MH: Would you vote for Obama?

OS: I feel like I should. You should, right? [Ed.: Stone did later vote for Obama.] I guess if I was another kind of personality, I would say I'd vote for Romney because it'll wreck it faster. And you know, we're going to go down, but it's going to be faster, and maybe that's better. Maybe we should just bankrupt the whole fucking thing. If [Romney] declares currency war on China…I'm worried about his Iran position, certainly. And, I think if he said geopolitical enemy number one [was Russia].

MH: Yeah, that's a quote…

OS: The more they boast during the campaign, the more danger they put the whole thing in. The boasting is what turns people off the most.

MH: There’s an intoxicating power to the American presidency — you can bomb almost any country, at any time, really.

OS: Well, Nixon said that in the interview with Frost, right? If he's the president, he can bomb anything he likes. Do you remember that? Have you seen that movie?

MH: It's great. What did you think of Obama when you met him?

OS: I thought he was very impressive.

MH: Could you talk about that?

OS: It was his early days in the Senate, but he was starting to raise money for the presidency.

MH: He came out to Hollywood.

OS: I met him here twice. He was hot from the beginning. I was in that anti-Hillary…I was disgusted with Clinton's Iraq vote. I was in that group that gave him money and everything. I haven't seen him since. I'm dangerous to him, in the sense that, you know, he has to be respectable, he can't be seen with me.

MH: You don't think you're respectable?

OS: They would see me as a danger for them — as a radical person and mentality, so it would not be good for the voter to be…He would lose his image as a moderate. Not that I'm not a moderate, but….

MH: Has Obama been that big of a disappointment to you? Did you expect anything different?

OS: Yeah. I mean, I did. But I'm not saying he could have lit the world on fire — he had a lot of enemies right away. But no, I admire him.

MH: Do you regret funding him in the beginning?

OS: No. Listen, McCain — we'd be at war now in about three other places.


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Top Ohio Elections Official Accuses Critics Of "Trying To Introduce Chaos"

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Republican Secretary of State Jon Husted is battling Democrats over a provisional voting form dispute . “We want the voter to do this so … that their vote will be counted,” Husted says. “What we're talking about are a handful of ballots in the big scheme of things.”

Source: youtube.com

Ohio's chief election official, under fire from the left for the way he's handling provisional ballots cast in the Buckeye State, defended his election administration efforts on Sunday evening, saying that accusations of suppression are "absurd."

CNN's Don Lemon asked Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted, a Republican, point-blank whether he's trying to "suppress the vote for the Democratic Party, for minorities, for people in urban areas."

Husted said, "That's just an absurd notion. The rules are the same for everybody. They don't target any one group or individual."

He also took aim at his critics on the left, saying, "I didn't file the 11th-hour lawsuits. These are the rules. These are the rules the way they have been. There are a lot of folks who are trying to introduce chaos into this so that they can literally have a cause for litigating post-election in case it's close."

Husted defended his office's decision to issue a directive on Friday that would appear to order county election boards to reject provisional ballots where a voter did not correctly note which form of ID the individual provided to the poll worker. In a pending case, those challenging the order say that Ohio law requires the poll worker to make such a notation.

Occupy Movement Finds A Mission In Sandy's Wake

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A fading crusade is finally working. “Guerrilla volunteering” for Occupy Sandy.

FAR ROCKAWAY, N.Y. — The isolated Rockaways in Queens have faced some of the worst that Hurricane Sandy had to offer. Flooding has destroyed houses. The public housing projects that dominate the landscape have been left largely without power, and residents worry about the cold that's setting in. Their desperation looks like that of Staten Island or coastal Brooklyn, but maybe worse; drive down Beach Channel Drive, from the more affluent parts of the island to those less so, and people are straggling down the street, carrying empty carts and bags. Everyone's possessions are out on the street, cast out of ruined living rooms.

Occupy Wall Street, of all things, has re-emerged as a vital presence in this grim scene. The Rockaways' depressed main artery is dotted with bright spots: volunteer stations manned by Occupy volunteers, whose Occupy Sandy organization has filled the holes that government agencies and charity organizations have been unable to in some parts of New York City. Nearly every day since the aftermath of the storm began, Occupy Sandy has been at St. Gertrude's Church and a few other spots in the area, delivering supplies in a van adorned with "99%" stickers, giving out food and clothing, and organizing canvassers to go to people's houses and offer help.

St. Gertrude's, on Beach 37th Street, bustled on Sunday afternoon. Volunteers stood next to clothing, food, and other supply stations, while others fanned out across the neighborhood on bikes or on foot in the neighborhood. A steady stream of people from the neighborhood gathered to collect supplies; some spontaneously thanked this reporter, assuming she was one of the volunteers.

"Yesterday, people were crying and saying 'God bless you,'" said a volunteer who gave her name as Denelle, who had been working in the Rockaways for the past few days. "Today it got a little crazy." She said that the demand for services was high, and grew higher farther into Far Rockaway.

"Further down there's less of a presence," she said, referring to FEMA and city government agencies. "We were doing some guerrilla volunteering, you know, just four of us in the car, down at Beach 8th Street. And the police said, you shouldn't be here, it's not safe for you."

After months of failed attempts at a revival, interspersed with long periods of basically nothing, Occupy has found a crisis that is a surprising match for the capacities it developed as a flexible and sometimes amorphous focus movement and builder of tent cities, seeking at times to speak for the poor with no clear mandate from its would-be constituents. Now Occupy is working directly with the people it has tried to advocate for by protesting Wall Street banks. The generally white and upper-middle-class protesters have made other attempts to gain traction in disadvantaged neighborhoods, including a disastrous attempt to re-appropriate a foreclosed home for a family in East New York. But the Occupy Sandy effort is doing real good in a situation where the needs are obvious and widespread. And the Rockaways truly need it. Problems run the gamut from hunger to cold to where voting will occur on Tuesday.

Volunteers looking to help out after Sandy have a large array of options, from the Red Cross to the New York Road Runners, but few are as clearly advertised and centralized as Occupy Sandy. The occupiers have set up a hub at St. Jacobi Church, in the south Brooklyn neighborhood of Sunset Park, and on Sunday it was packed with people inside and out. The basement of the church was full of volunteers making sandwiches, packing bags, and rushing around, and new volunteers were being registered outside. Volunteers can get there by hitching rides a couple times a day at a few predetermined Brooklyn locations in hip gentrifying neighborhoods like East Williamsburg or Clinton Hill.

A volunteer with a clipboard named Jenni said she couldn't even count how many people had come in to help. "They're all listed on stacks of paper upstairs," she said. Jenni, like many others, heard about the effort through Facebook and Twitter and decided to come down.

Once oriented and loaded up with supplies, volunteers share cars or bike to get to affected areas of the city like Coney Island or Staten Island. The operation bears few overtly Occupy hallmarks; a 99% sign could be seen at St. Jacobi; the stickers on the van; and the makeshift nametags volunteers made from duct tape.


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Bill Clinton Is Obama's Real Running Mate, Says Romney Spokesman

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“He's arguably more important to them than Joe Biden because Joe Biden makes a mistake at every single event he goes to.”

Image by Matt Rourke / AP

NEWPORT NEWS, Va. — How does the Romney campaign know President Obama is nervous about losing Pennsylvania? He's sending Bill Clinton — not his gaffe-prone running-mate — to blitz the state on the eve of the election.

Talking to reporters Sunday night, senior Romney adviser Kevin Madden mocked the vice president, and said the Obama campaign was relying on Clinton to do the heavy lifting while Biden bumbled his way through the final days of the race.

"They're sending arguably their number one surrogate, their number two principal, President Bill Clinton, to campaign all day in Pennsylvania," Madden said. "He's arguably more important to them than Joe Biden because Joe Biden makes a mistake at every single event he goes to."

Pressed on whether he believed the Obama campaign views Clinton as a more valuable asset than number two on the ticket, Madden didn't back down.

"I think that's very clear," he said. "They would rather have him out on the stump making news than Vice President Biden out there making the wrong kind of news."

Jay-Z Performs: "I Got 99 Problems But Mitt Ain't One"

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The rapper performed before President Obama in Columbus, Ohio, Monday.

Source: youtube.com

The Best Cory Booker Tweet Probably Ever

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Newark's Twitter-savvy , “superhero” mayor has outdone himself.

Both Parties Want Change, But There's No Clear Path Forward On Immigration

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Are House Republicans an immovable object? “The president has no interest in working with Republicans honestly,” complains a GOP aide.

Image by Darryl Webb / Reuters

Every four years, immigration reform emerges as an issue of “top priority” for Democratic and Republican presidential candidates, and like clockwork both Barack Obama and Mitt Romney have vowed to address a rolling crisis in which millions of undocumented immigrants work in the shadows and millions of qualified foreigners find it impossible to work in the United States.

But just because both men are paying lip service to the issue now, anti-immigration conservatives and advocates of legalization alike warn the prospect of any significant changes to the law will remain elusive, regardless of who’s president come January 21.

The biggest obstacle to reform being done over the next two years — the nation’s continued dire economic straits. Regardless of who wins the presidency, major issues like the fiscal cliff and another debt limit increase will dominate the political discussion for the next six months, leaving no room for a thorny issue like immigration.

And both parties have made clear that once those crises are addressed — assuming they can be — the next priority on the table is tax reform, a process that could take a year or more to complete. That timetable would put Congress smack in the middle of 2014 midterm elections, hardly the moment politicians of either party facing reelection would want to take up immigration.

But the problems facing immigration reform run even deeper than scheduling difficulties or even political expediency. To realistically expect a change in the status quo on immigration, the two sides need to first come to some basic agreement on what the parameters of reform might be — something neither side has been capable of.

“There is a fundamental difference in what House Republicans and what Senate Democrats view as immigration reform. In the House, there has been a myopic unfaltering view of immigration reform as being about enforcement and enforcement only,” said Angela Maria Kelley, vice president for immigration policy and advocacy at the Democratic Center for American Progress.

“In the Senate, with Republicans and Democrats, there has been a broader view going back to the McCain-Kennedy immigration bill in 2006,” she argued.

“I don’t think there’s a comprehensive middle ground. There are clearly pieces and parts that people can agree on, but that’s a step-by-step approach, which a lot of people on the left are loath to do,” said the conservative group Heritage Action's Communications Director Dan Holler.

To be sure, a number of Republicans argued that there is a shift within the party from the hardline stance that torpedoed former President George W. Bush’s reform push — but it's just not toward comprehensive changes.

“You’ve got a lot of members of Congress who know the demographics are becoming much more of an issue,” and that could create “the start of some sort of a process,” a veteran Republican aide who’s worked in both chambers said. However, the aide acknowledged that “I wouldn’t say it could be comprehensive.”

Rep. Chris Van Hollen, agreed, noting Monday, “I think there are enough Republicans who recognize that their extreme anti-immigration agenda has hurt them, that they're ready to have some conversation. What the outcome is, I don't know.”

But even then, Van Hollen acknowledged the level of GOP support isn’t enough for much to get done.

“There are a few pragmatists, but there aren't many in the House. My guess is any Republican support for comprehensive immigration reform would begin in the Senate. I actually think it's an issue where John Boehner has historically been pretty good, but he's got to deal with the Tea Party caucus.”

But even if the two sides could come to an agreement on some basic definition of what reform should mean, a Romney presidency would face open hostility from reform activists, while Obama’s chilly relationship with conservatives is only expected to get worse.

“The Republican notion that Romney would have a better chance of passing immigration — I would call that bullshit," said Frank Sharry, the executive director of the group America's Voice, which has pushed for an immigration bargain that would provide legal status to immigrants inside the country. "That gives wishful thinking a bad name. Romney sold his soul to the nativists to win the GOP primary, and besides a few vague references to permanent solutions, he hasn't retracted the statements he's made this year on the trail."

As for Obama, a House Republican leadership aide dismissed the possibility of a deal with him out of hand.

“The president has no interest in working Republicans honestly,” the aide said.

Alfonso Aguilar, executive director of the Latino Partinership for Conservative Principles agreed. “The problem with Obama is he burned so many bridges on this issue. I don't know where he would start to build that consensus. He may have to go on an apology tour on the Hill,” Aguilar said.

Reform activists, of course, have seen this scenario play out after countless elections, which is why they have become increasingly aggressive in the demand for immediate action.

“From our perspective, we need comprehensive reform — 2013 will be the window of opportunity to finally fix this problem," said Eliseo Medina, a leader of the labor union SEIU. "We're gonna reward and we're gonna punish in 2014."

With additional reporting by Rebecca Berg.


Democrats' Budget Chief Weighing Options On Leadership Push

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In an interview with BuzzFeed, the top Democrat on the House Budget Committee leaves the door open for a move up.

Image by Brendan Hoffman / Getty Images

WASHINGTON, DC — Rep. Chris Van Hollen could make a move to return to the ranks of party leadership and continue his swift rise through the Democratic ranks, according to Democratic operatives familiar with his thinking.

In an interview with BuzzFeed, Van Hollen, already the top Democrat on the House Budget Committee, demurred when asked explicitly if he would seek a position in leadership — but left the door to that hypothetical wide open.

"I think it's really important that we have leaders who are open to compromise but recognize the important principles at stake," Van Hollen said. "That's the best I can do right now. Let's just see what — because we don't know what decisions others will be making."

When asked, without mention of any lawmakers in particular, if he would elaborate, Van Hollen immediately mentioned House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi.

"I think Leader Pelosi has done a tremendous job, first as speaker and then as Democratic leader," he said. "I think it'd be great if she continues on — but those are her decisions to make, obviously."

Recently, Pelosi created buzz about a potential leadership shuffle when she scheduled the House leadership election, which is usually held at the beginning of the lame duck session, for after Thanksgiving. Speculation abounded that the move indicated Pelosi won't run for another term as minority leader.

Van Hollen, for his part, is known among his colleagues in Congress to be highly ambitious, and, with his high-profile position on the Budget Committee, he is already considered a de facto member of Democratic leadership in the House.

"I cannot underplay how ambitious Van Hollen is," said one consultant with ties to the Democratic House leadership, who added that Van Hollen likely aspires either to be House speaker or to hold a seat in the Senate.

"I think the trajectory is only up for Chris Van Hollen."

Joe Biden Delivers Pizzas

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The Vice President delivered pizzas from Benny Marconi's to campaign volunteers in Roanoke, Virginia, on Monday.

Image by Kevin Lamarque / Reuters

Image by Kevin Lamarque / Reuters

Image by Kevin Lamarque / Reuters

Image by Kevin Lamarque / Reuters


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Chris Christie Wept After Meeting Bruce Springsteen

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“He told me it's official: We're friends,” the New Jersey governor said The Boss told him.

Via: myfoxny.com

Planned Parenthood Hopes To Scare Liberals With Last-Minute Ad Campaign

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A hypothetical world in which Romney appoints a judge to the Supreme Court who helps overturn Roe v. Wade . And it's all your fault.

Via: facebook.com

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Taking a page from the Obama campaign playbook, Planned Parenthood Monday rolled out a last-ditch Facebook campaign aimed at scaring liberal voters to the polls highlighting what they imagine a future Supreme Court would look like under Mitt Romney.

The ad features a June 2014 New York Times front page — with imagined "stories" with bylines of actual NYT reporters Jeff Zeleny and Adam Liptak — trumpeting the overturning of Roe v. Wade and ominously warning that a Romney court nominee turned out to be the decicive vote.

The image, posted on Facebook by Planned Parenthood Action, imagines "newcomer Justice Kavanaugh" as joining in an opinion "written by Chief Justice John G. Roberts" that "threw the status quo on abortion rights out the window." Judge Brett Kavanaugh, currently on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, is imagined to have replaced Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who does not appear in the line-up of votes in the ad and is said to have "passed away" in the fake article.

Although not a household name, Kavanaugh, who had served on the staff of Kenneth Starr during his Independent Counsel investigation of President Clinton, was nominated to the D.C. Circuit by former President George W. Bush. Kavanaugh, who had worked for Bush as well, faced nearly three years of opposition from Democrats but eventually was confirmed on May 26, 2006, by a vote of 57-36.

Judge Kavanaugh did not respond Monday afternoon to a request for comment about the ad.

Iowa Store Does Not Welcome Secret Service

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“We just employ several Colombian prostitutes and don't want to tempt you guys.”

DES MOINES, Iowa — The managers of Raygun, a t-shirt emporium next door to President Barack Obama's rally there Monday, refused to allow the Secret Service to search their stores in advance of the rally.

Employees also said they were asked by an Obama campaign official to take down a sign referring to the agency's prostitution scandal, but they refused.

"The Secret Service didn't think it was funny," one employee told BuzzFeed.

7 Obama/Romney Battle Rap Videos To Get You In The Mood For The Election

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Everything you didn’t realize was a thing is in fact on YouTube. Including Mitt Romney vs. Barack Obama rap battle videos.

The Mitt Masta is in the Hizzy. There are no words.

Source: youtube.com

I don't even know how you have a rap battle with neither raps nor rappers, but this video succeeds.

Source: youtube.com

This is a pretty typical Obama v Romney battle rap video.

Source: youtube.com

There's also a subgenre involving dancing.

Source: youtube.com


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The Last 24 Hours Of Obama’s Final Campaign

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Springsteen. Fleeces. Beards. A 2008 reunion inside the bubble, and the very end of the long, strange trip.

David Plouffe steps off Air Force One in Columbus, Ohio, November 5, 2012.

Image by Jason Reed / Reuters

MADISON, WI — David Axelrod stood outside the large white press tent in the blocked-off streets below the Wisconsin State Capitol building, surrounded by a half dozen reporters and flanked by his two close friends, David Plouffe and Robert Gibbs.

Axe, the 57-year-old chief strategist of the president’s campaign, admitted under questioning that he and Plouffe were, yes, wearing matching 2008 Obama campaign fleeces.

Axe also noted that Gibbs, dressed in jeans and a sports shirt, didn’t get the memo.

Everyone laughed, a combination of serenity and sleep deprivation, no hint of nerves.

The last 24 hours before the election are going to be filled with such memories, the three men agreed, from how they dressed themselves to the final campaign stops on Air Force One to the unflinching confidence they projected to the reporters, a dozen digital recorders shoved in their faces, all of it with the bittersweet recognition in that this is probably it.

The last real campaign. Wouldn’t be the same again. Nope. Not a chance. This trip doesn’t have a sequel, and the future, no matter how bright, will always be a pale imitation of this: a cold, sunny November morning in Madison, Wisconsin, the most important human being in your life, Barack Obama, on stage, giving a speech you’ve heard at least 123 times, raising his voice, feeling it, bringing the audience to a kind of political ecstasy as you know only he can, finding the love, and going for the win.

Yes, the rush that only a billion-dollar gamble of a presidential campaign can provide. Stakes don’t get higher than keeping control of the most powerful office in the world. And on this day, November 5, we are witnessing the penultimate scenes in the cinematic drama known as The 2012 Reelection of President Barack Obama playing out, with rock legend Bruce Springsteen there to provide the theme songs as the credits start to roll.

Does having Springsteen and other celebrities on the trail help to get out the vote? a reporter asked.

“No, we just like their music,” Axe joked to laughs.

“They provide a marvelous soundtrack to our little briefing here,” Gibbs said.

“They can’t compete with Meat Loaf and Kid Rock, but they do alright,” Axe zinged, a sly poke at the GOP’s perennial lack of star power.

“It was a lot different from the beginning of this journey,” Plouffe added. “When it’d be Robert, Reggie, and then Senator [Obama] on Southwest and 10 people at events and you know we’ve come a long way—“

“The only music was on their iPods,” Axe cracked.

Four years ago, Obama and his advisers had pulled off one of the most shocking upsets in American political history, ushering in a new age of cool in Washington politics, a kind of post-racial Camelot. The first black president had convinced an entire generation to come out to the polls to put him in office, and the tight crew he surrounded himself with were the brains and savvy behind that once-in-a-lifetime ride.

It’d been a long four years — from the can-you-believe-it first day in the West Wing to the inevitable crash of expectations, the tragedies from the BP oil spill to Joplin to Aurora to Sandy. The world-historic events — escalate in Afghanistan, kill Bin Laden, secret drones, kill Gaddaffi, ride the rough surf of the Arab Spring. The bitter domestic fights over health care and bank regulations, and the joy in seeing those pieces of legislation stay intact. And now staring into the hopeful void — probably going to win this thing, and if so, let’s enjoy this last bit of air before getting back to the grind.

In that spirit, the core group that made up Obamaland had jumped on the trail for a mad dash around the country that would conclude Monday evening in Chicago, the spiritual home of the Obama White House. Accompanied by the hipness of celebrity — Bruce Springsteen in Madison, Jay-Z in Ohio, Pitbull in Florida — they tried to take it all in.

“I feel remarkably good," Gibbs told BuzzFeed a few minutes later. “A little nostalgic as we make the last few stops, [but] we said for a long time we have had the path to 270 electoral votes.”

Twenty feet away, national security adviser Ben Rhodes and speechwriter Jon Favreau hung out, watching the crowd react to their boss's speech and chatting with passing friends and colleagues.

How were they feeling? Very good, they said — good-sized crowds, good early numbers, and somehow “energized” despite three hours of sleep.

“It’s typical us,” Favreau said. “It’s not like I’ve felt super panicked or super overconfident.”

“We’re running our play and it looks good,” Rhodes said.

Both have been growing playoff beards, part superstition, part saving an extra 10 minutes in the morning, eeking out those last few seconds in whatever the Marriott/Sheraton/Westin/Holiday Inn hotel bed you fall down on.

At this stage, no one on the trail, even those responsible for the travel, know where they’ve been, and events of days ago feel like months — Cincinnati, Vegas, Orlando, Tampa, Manchester, Dubuque.

A few feet from Rhodes and Favreau, Jen Psaki, the campaign spokesperson, also a veteran of 2008, stood waiting for yet one more cable hit in front of the cameras on the silver riser nearby, her sunny smile, sharp fashion sense, and unmissable red hair flying out over the airwaves to spin the pundit class and reach the voters perhaps just finally tuning in.

Also on the trail from 2008, Reggie Love, the president’s body man who’d left the White House and was now joining him for the final leg.

Even President Obama was getting in on the nostalgia kick.

“I cannot imagine not being fired up after listening to Bruce Springsteen,” he said as he took the stage in front of a crowd of 18,000. “And I get to fly around with him on the last day that I will ever campaign — so that’s not a bad way to end things.”

In the last 24 hours of the campaign, time has taken on an elastic quality, staffers say, accelerating yet slowing down to the final stop-motion act for what for many has been a yearlong grind on the road.

After the Wisconsin event, staffers and press piled onto the bus, then into the airport, then onto the press charter, then onto to the final event, a series of actions that had been repeated hundreds of times over the past few months. The charter plane headed on an hour flight to Iowa, the state where Obama’s presidential aspirations became a reality. Landing at Des Moines International airport, staffers and press climbed down the steps, getting into what would now be only three bus rides left.

“It’s surreal, especially for people who were here a long time to be driving to the last campaign event,” said one Obama official who’d been with them in 2008. “It certainly is.”


Joe Biden Ready To Take On "Mitch Romney"

Stephanie Cutter Admits Pennsylvania Has Tightened

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But the Obama campaign still believes they have it in the bag, as Romney prepares to make an Election Day stop in Pittsburgh.

Source: youtube.com

Romney Communications Director Dodges Question On Plan To Win Iowa

14 Races LGBT People Will Be Watching Closely On Tuesday

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From Washington, D.C., to Washington State, a night of votes with consequences for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people.

On Tuesday, lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Americans will be focused on the presidential race like everyone else — but other elections across the country may also give LGBT people cause for celebration or frustration.

Voters Wisconsin will be deciding whether to send the first out LGBT person to the Senate in Rep. Tammy Baldwin's race against former Gov. Tommy Thompson. In the House, voters could be sending an unprecedented number of out LGBT people to Congress — including Richard Tisei, who would be the first LGBT Republican to have been elected as an out official from his first term. Then, there are the ballot measures on marriage equality issues and more.

Here are just a few of the key races:

President: Obama v. Romney

President: Obama v. Romney

Image by Pablo Martinez Monsivais / AP

President Obama personally supports marriage equality, he announced in May, and discussed in an MTV interview this past week. WIth the prominent place the issue has played in the debate over gay rights, the May move stood as a marker in the long-fought battle — and helped cement the support of many LGBT voters and, perhaps more importantly, big-money donors. In addition to that evolution, which took longer than many of those backers would have liked, Obama this past week formally announced he was backing this week's marriage equality ballot measures.

Supporters, including the Human Rights Campaign and National Stonewall Democrats, also point to the September 2011 end of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," which followed the 2010 congressional passage and presidential bill-signing of the legislation to repeal the 1993 law. In what is likely to be seen as the most important move Obama took to advance the rights of gay couples — even more than his personal support for marriage equality — Obama also reached the conclusion in February 2011 that the federal definition of "marriage" contained in the Defense of Marriage Act, which prohibits the federal government from recognizing gay couples, was unconstitutional. Since then, the Justice Department has been arguing in court against the law and the cases are awaiting Supreme Court action.

The biggest question for LGBT voters deciding to back Obama is that it is not clear what efforts Obama has planned on LGBT rights in his second term, and — assuming continued Republican control of the House — how he intends to accomplish them.

Asked two weeks ago what Obama's second-term plan for LGBT Americans is, campaign spokeswoman Clo Ewing pointed to Obama's record, saying, "LGBT voters will overwhelmingly support the President’s re-election because he’s been a strong advocate for the LGBT community and because he has a concrete and specific second-term plan to continue restoring economic security to the middle class."

Image by Rick Wilking / Reuters


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Email Voting Fails Some New Jersey Residents

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Bouncing email addresses, personal hotmail accounts. “It's really maddening,” says Tanz.

New Jersey's last-minute offer of email voting to displaced residents was greeted by concern by security experts, who warn that email offers a fast track to voter fraud.

But the system may have another problem as well: County election administrators are, according to anecdotal reports, simply not responding to all requests for ballots. In two major counties, the email address advertised on the website of the county clerk is not even accepting email.

The email address listed on the website of the Morris County Clerrk, asmith@co.morris.nj.us, is not receiving email. Nor is the email, info@essexclerk.com, listed on the website of the Essex County Clerk, info@essexclerk.com and the County's site. (The Essex County Clerk posted to his Facebook page Monday that voters could email requests to his personal Hotmail account.

Essex County, which includes Newark, is the state's third-largest. Morris County, with nearly 500,000 residents in largely prosperous suburbs of New York City, is the 10th largest.

Jason Tanz, a Wired Magazine editor who lives in Essex County, told BuzzFeed he filled out a ballot application, set it to the clerk — and received no response. He called twice and emailed, he said, — only to find that the email address was bouncing.

"If you're going to do something like this, you have to do it right," Tanz said in an email. "This was obviously a rush job, and I'm sure thousands of people won't be able to vote because they couldnt figure out where to send their applications, and couldn't get anyone to tell them.

"It's really maddening," he said. "I've sent in my application three times now, and I still don't know if I'm going to get a chance to vote tomorrow."

And New Jersey residents in areas where email addresses are technically working may also be having problems. Kiersten Mahon, who evacuated Rumson in Monmouth county for the Washington, DC area forwarded BuzzFeed emails showing she had submitted her application for an absentee ballot to her county clerk at 1:45 p.m. As of near-midnight Monday — hours after the 5:00 p.m. deadline to apply for a ballot, she had received no response.

The Essex County Clerk and a spokeswoman for Governor Chris Christie did not respond to inquiries about the technical shortcomings.

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