You might want to listen to a few Cassandras who have been trying to get your attention for a quite a while now:

Although the Presidential ticket may have enough spread to prevent the Rethuglicans from stealing that race, there are still potentially lots of Democrats who will not win because of this:

Non-Profit Offers $100,000 Reward for Information Tying Karl Rove and Michael Connell to Election Rigging (link in sig)

Money quote from the coverage today at Raw Story:

Citing testimony from another technology expert named Stephen Spoonamore, Velvet Revolution accuses the Republican Party of rigging elections for years by using Connell to exploit electronic voting systems.

Spoonamore filed an affidavit warning that the coming presidential election will be stolen by the GOP unless it is exposed. A colleague of Connell, Spoonamore gives evidence explaining Connell's involvement with past election rigging.

Estimates vary, but Republican vote stealing in 2006 may have cost Democrats 10-20 new seats (David Swanson - http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/14146)

Please volunteer to be a poll watcher or, better, if you're a lawyer or legal professional, you help is needed here: http://my.barackobama.com/VoterProtection

This is a not a pro-Obama diary. His campaign is just one vehicle to take action.

isn't it interesting the economy has had its worst meltdown in the last two years under pelosi and reid. And of course frank.

Like the GOP, Howard Kurtz, who I usually enjoy reading, appears to believe that I am not smart enough to evaluate the VP candidate on my own---specifically, in the context of a televised debate. He wrote in his column yesterday:

Journalists score debates differently than ordinary people. They know when each candidate has ducked or fudged key nuances (is Palin really as moderate as Biden on gay rights?). But average voters wonder about things like why McCain never looked at Obama.

REALLY??? That statement assumes two things. First, it assumes that I do not possess in my brain any knowledge about the candidate from which to conclude (in real time) that a statement made by a candidate is dead wrong or is BS dressed up and presented as fact. Second, Kurtz's statement assumes that I am too stupid to know how to (or too stupid to recognize that I need to) research---e.g., search the internet---the accuracy of a claim made by a candidate in order to confirm or dispel any suspicion I have about a statement made by a candidate.

Bottom line, the arrogant superiority is not limited to the GOP, and it can be found in unexpected places, as I discovered yesterday. Moreover, the GOP and many in the media are woefully overconfident about their own intellectual superiority.

What is so clear, but where the conversation always stops short of going, is the real reason behind the impending economic collapse of this country.

It's decades worth of traitorous economic polices pushed by our plutocratic government, with the willing participation of both parties.

It's the loss of a critical mass of living wage jobs in this country that is now rearing it's head.

Why the home foreclosures? Because too many people can't earn enough to pay a mortgage or rent anymore.

Why the credit market collapse? Because too many people can't earn enough to pay for mortgages, rents, or even utilities and food, and when that started happening the markets had to find ways to continue to make loans even though people clearly couldn't afford them. The markets simply followed the result of a shrinking middle class, turning to any device it could come up with to continue to make money off them, even if it was destined to fail in the long run.

Over the past decades we've lost tens of millions of middle class jobs - manufacturing jobs - which were the backbone of the middle class. Mostly once union jobs, these core jobs paid well and offered benefits. People could live the American dream on one.

Each of those jobs used to bring home a paycheck into the local community, where it was spent, supporting many more downstream jobs. A single paycheck from a single factor worker circulated around local and by extension a national economy many times. Many other middle class jobs were a result of that one factory job.

When the factory's closed and moved across borders, those paychecks ceased coming into the community. Those paychecks stopped supporting other local businesses and those jobs were eventually lost as well. And the jobs that those jobs supported downstream as well.

The ripple effect of losing tens of millions of what were arguably the best working class jobs in the country is immeasurable, but the consequences are obvious. Not just tens of millions of living-wage middle class jobs lost, but many times that.

A critical mass of middle class, living wage jobs has been systematically destroyed in this country and the results were only just beginning to see the tip of the iceberg.

It's not really just 8 years of Bush, or deregulating Wall Street, or 10 billion a month in Iraq that is to blame. Those are just icing on the cake of destruction.

No, it's decades worth of plutocratic economic policies, supported by both parties, which have devastated the middle class in this country past a point of critical mass. The system is now in self-destruct mode and nothing can be done about it.

It took decades go steer this country to this point, and it would take decades to reverse course. It would require the re-imposition of "protectionist" (what's wrong with protecting what you've got?) trade policies which force manufacturing to return to this country. That's simply not going to happen.

Especially since few people are willing to look at and acknowledge what's really going on here.

It's the loss of a critical mass of middle class jobs, stupid!

The debates aren't. In a real debate, a proposition is presented and the validity or lack thereof of the proposition is debated by the two sides (you can do this with more than two sides if you like). In the course of the debate, the sides present their assumptions, the facts they wish to use, and the logic that supports their conclusions. At that point, a winner can be determined by virtue of the quality of their arguments. Nothing could be further from the case in these so-called "debates" which are little more than an opportunity for the candidates to repeat stump speeches and talking points. I didn't need the debates to know that Joe Biden is one of the more interventionist members of Congress who thinks we have the divine right to stick our nose in everybody else's business or that Sarah Palin is a vapid, empty headed politician who probably wouldn't get any further than county commissioner in a more populous state.

I think it's pretty safe to assume Deep Stupidity on the part of the average voter. They reelected Shrub in 2004 didn't they? Long term thinking and considerations of consequences clearly are not their strong suit. This doesn't mean that they can't or don't change their opinions. The difference is this: upon seeing a man approaching them with a cudgel, instead of running away right then because they can see what's coming, they wait until they are being pummeled about the head and shoulders and then they run away.

It continues to be an amazement to me that the chattering classes can make a good living spouting tripe. Everybody makes mistakes but after a series of clueless and false pronouncements (many of which you have highlighted) you'd think people would stop listening. But they don't.

I would completely agree that the country is in a shambles and, indeed, it has been during the Republican's watch.