Daily Pundit’s new Roving Editor “martinra” begins his tenure with a bang:

Rest assured, no matter what Orwellian newspeak is used to cover it up, if we see large units of new “police” or “security” forces being formed and recruited, big, big trouble is in the works.  If Obama actually creates, staffs, and funds such a new force or forces, then it’s an attempt to make the USA into a Banana Republic in truth - one man, one vote, one last time.  If Obama both cuts the real military and spends vast sums to create a paramilitary “security force”, staffed with his partisans, then get ready for Civil War II.  Soon.

Posted by: Old Grouch in Linkage at 20:12:56 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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Voted this morning about 8:30am (polls open at 6:00, but since I’m not needed at work until around 10:00, I usually skip the early rush by morning commuters). This year they added a second precinct to my location, but voters had separate check-in lines and voting stations. The combined precincts resulted in a lot more electioneering (more signs and party representatives outside the polls) than in previous years, and more cars in the parking lot, but no line out the door.

We vote paper ballots with machine scan, and there are usually a couple of people waiting to use the isolation booths (actually a two-foot by two-foot counter-height podium with a screen around it). This year had the normal wait, nothing exceptional. My ballot was the 157^th scanned, which IIRC is about 10% ahead of 2004. (My precinct has a lot of retirees who tend to vote early in the afternoon.)

There has been heavy early voting this year, but absentee ballots don’t get processed until after the polls close,^[1] so I have no idea of the extent of early voting at my location.

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Posted by: Old Grouch in Dear Diary... at 19:01:08 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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60 posts in October.  Same as one year ago, one more than September (59), and the most since February (62).

The October linklist is below the jump...
more...

Posted by: Old Grouch in Meta at 17:23:18 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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