This is it! Open Thread
Vote. Vote today. Vote early, and then come to the blog … all day and check for updates and participate in the live chat room. In the meantime register here and leave a comment about the voting in your district.
Early turnout seems to be strong if you base it on where I voted and where Mr Joyce voted early this morning. But in a blue state like Connecticut, it is critical you get everyone in your family who is eligible (ha) to vote. This year, every vote will count.
It’s been an amazing journey, my brothers and sisters. For most of us, it began decades ago and for my listeners it began 7 years ago as we began to preach the gospel of personal freedom and individual liberty. That a smaller local government is far superior and responsive to the electorate.
A journey that was rejuvenated two years ago as we stood in front of that oak tree in front of the capitol. 150 citizens, shivering in the cold and promising our representatives that they would hear from us … we … the people. They did not listen to us then and thereafter, and our numbers grew as we began to tap into the inner libertarian that so much a part of every New Englander. And now they will listen. We will make our voices heard, sending a clear message that we, the people, are here to stay, now, and forever.
So, let them hear you loud and clear. Tell them to take off that fancy pin and get up from that fancy leather chair. Neither belongs to you. This is the people’s seat.
SO, leave your comments below and I will read some on the air and it’s also great reading for all the RVOers trying to keep up with the election.
Need a boost? How’s this?
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XObcP69dhCg&feature=related
30 Comments
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I voted at 6:10 this morning at the Nathan Hale School in Manchester. There was 2 others voting, and everything went smoothly. I "pulled" the Republican lever so to speak (i.e. voted for everyone on line 1), which is something I rarely do. I'm am afraid that we are currently heading down the socialist trail in the name of fairness, just as other socialist countries are coming back up the trail. I just hope the Republicans that do get elected this time around start acting like Republicans, not RINO's like we had from 2000 – 2008.
Voted @ 6:30 this a.m. at the Willington Town Hall. The parking lot was PACKED (which is saying a lot for a little town like Willington).
There are four eligible voters in my house and ALL are voting. I'm already a nag….my daughter and son would NEVER hear the end of it from me if they didn't vote.
Your vote is yours and no one can take it away from you! VOTE! VOTE! VOTE! VOTE!
Wilbraham Ma. I was in line at 6:45 am. Polls open at 7:00, I was #17 and quickly became the middle of the line. When asked for my street, I handed them my ID and no question they took my Name and Add off it. It looks like there will be a big turnout. I know this is the first step in what will be a long road back to a Gov. Of The People, By The People and For The People. It is our job to hold our elected open, honest and accountable. God Bless Us and God Bless America
"If there's any one deciding factor, vote against the politician with "Incumbent" next to their name. Vote them out. Vote them all out. … We didn't want the stimulus but you voted for it anyways? GONE. We didn't want the bank bailout but you voted for it anyways? GONE. We didn't want the automaker bailout but you voted for it anyways? GONE.We didn't want ØbamaCare but you voted for it anyways? GONE." Today begins REAL CHANGE!
I have a few bucks to chase this morning, then I'm dragging myself and my wife to the polls. My wife is going to vote for the first time EVER today. She's as old as I am (> 50) and just as sick of the Socialist path our so-called representatives have put us on. GARBAGE OUT TODAY. NO RECYCLES.
Before I went to the polls at 6:30, I took my spiffy looking Blue Recycling Container to the curb and prayed that when I returned this evening, that swell looking garbage truck would answer my prayers.
I voted straight R's.
For Liberty, vote Republican.
For Tyranny, vote Democrat. Lennin, Stalin and Marx would vote Dem.
Is there a transcript of this available? I could see a great 76 foot from polling place sign in the works.
Being retired, I have the luxury of waiting for the mid-morning lull (I hope that there isn't one!) but I am recalling the number of people who voted against George Bush two years ago, even though he wasn't on the ballot. My question this morning: How many are voting against Nancy Pelosi? Simply taking her airplane away would balance the budget!
Gotta pick up my 85 year old mother in law at 11:00 to take her to vote (all R)…. Then I'll go vote ALL "R" for the first time in my life.
I did NOT vote for Obama and now I feel I have to vote against him. I have voted for Mr. Larson in the past but the health reform bill circus soured me to him and the dem agenda. If the "R"s win the day, they better not eff it up this time. I promise I will vote again in 2 years.
29 y.o. from a very Democrat family….. Voted for a Republican for the first time (all of them actually). Will probably be banished from future family functions, but it's a sacrifice that is needed. 🙂
Jim, I went early this morning, as SOON as the polls at Hocuknum School in East Hartford opened up, 30 minutes after the 6:00 AM early morning start. The people were going in and out to vote, a steady early morning stream. Had been told by the nice lady on the Democratic side that the votting ballot was going to be two-sided, back and front. The REAL NICE THING is that after I voted and got my little "I Have Voted Today" sticker, I so on the GOP table side Dunkin Donuts and its famous coffee offered, and I was in HEAVEN having my raspberry jelly donut and cup of coffee to go home with afterwards. You would be in Heaven too Jim if that was offered to you Jim. 🙂 =^..^=
First of all, thanks Jim, for all you have done to awaken a sleeping public over the years with your steady drum beat. Secondly, please keep beating the drum after Nov 2nd and help us hold our elected officials' feet to the fire to investigate the disgraceful disenfranchisement of our Military by not having their ballots mailed to them in time. I am calling for an all-out investigation as to why and who is responsible for this fraud. SOMEBODY is and we need names. They need to be put on trial or court marshaled, and make this very public for all our nation to see. I believe this was intentional and malicious, and it infuriates me that of all the voters across this great nation, our brave men and women in our Military need to have their votes counted FIRST, and not have a door slammed in their faces while they put their lives on the line to defend our right to vote, all the while being denied theirs. I am shaking with fury as I type this! This is a travesty and a disgrace and we need to get names, shine a white hot light on these cockroaches, and put those responsible in jail where they belong. The veracity of our voting process is under attack and has been for some time now. We need to return to the old voting machines which served our country so well for decades. Take some of the so-called stimulus money, designate some of the many machining factories which have closed in Connecticut, hire the machinists (as in REAL jobs), and start manufacturing these reliable machines again. Get rid of the fraud-ridden new voting machines and standardize the old ones as the ONLY valid ones to be used across the country. I have already fired off a letter about this to Sen. Lieberman, one of many. We need to turn the heat up on this, and keep it up; our Armed Forces deserve better than this, and it is up to us to stand up for them. Just my two-cents, Jim. Again, thanks for all you have done and continue to do.
I enjoyed voting today more than I did in 2000 or in 2004 – those days I relished casting my vote for Bush against Gore and then against Kerry. Today? Like Christmas, my birthday, my wedding day and the days my children were born all wrapped into one.
Happily voted today for all of the Republicans! The sweetest vote was against Chris Murphy, who I pray gets sent to Lame Duck Land today! Go Sam!
In the past week I presented the facts and convinced 3 family members who were going to vote for Blumenthal to vote for Linda McMahon. They all agree that a vote for Blumenthal is a vote for Obama and his socialist agenda! Go Linda!
It is going to be a great night!
p.s. – Thank you Barack for coming to CT this past Saturday to campaign with Blumenthal and Himes. Having you standing there next to Bumenthal sealed the deal for me when stating my case that Blumenthal will be an automatic YES vote for you, and that he would be living in your back pocket for the next 2 years.
This has got to be the best Description of what the Tea Party has all been about, you must read this, from a Brit no less. Awesome.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/jan…
More than three centuries ago, the residents of America staged a rebellion against an oppressive ruler who taxed them unjustly, ignored their discontents and treated their longing for freedom with contempt. They are about to revisit that tradition this week, when their anger and exasperation sweep through Congress like avenging angels. This time the hated oppressor isn’t a foreign colonial government, but their own professional political class.
In New York last week I was struck by the startling shift of mood since my last visit, during Barack Obama’s first year in office. This phenomenon took varying forms, of course, depending on the political orientation of my interlocutor, but the underlying theme of despair and disgust was almost universal. Liberal Democrats (who hugely outnumber most other factions in that city) were despondent and disappointed with the collapse of Obama’s popularity. A few of them (remarkably few, actually) were ready to blame this on a “Right-wing conspiracy” of vaguely racist motivation. But most of them were frankly critical of the strategic mistakes they believed the White House had made, and the baffling inability of their President to connect with the people in an engaging way. His shocking lack of emotional expression during last month’s commemoration of 9/11 – a point of particular significance to New Yorkers – was remarked upon by a number of people I met.
<!– BEFORE ACI –>
There was a general sense that his personality was over-controlled and repressed, and that this was perhaps a function of his self-invention: the effect of having made a conscious choice to adopt an identity and a history (the Chicago black activist) which was unconnected to his real past. It occurred to me that, in an odd way, he was a Gatsby-like figure who had reinvented himself but whose new persona could be sustained only with a tremendous act of will. This psychological analysis seemed not unconnected to the political one, which revolved around his peculiar inability to sense what most Americans would regard as alienating and contrary to their own values and culture.
My Republican friends, perhaps surprisingly, were not gloating. They were too furious. But contrary to the superficial British assumption (heavily promoted by the BBC), they were not devoting their excoriation exclusively to the Obama Administration – or even to its clique of Congressional henchmen, led by Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. That they were opposed to the Big State, European social democratic model of government which Obama had imported to Washington went almost without saying. But they were at least as angry with the leadership of their own party for having conceded far too much of the argument.
And this anger – again, contrary to the general understanding in Britain – is not new: it goes all the way back to the Bush presidency. It was widely known in Europe that the American Left hated George Bush (and even more, Dick Cheney) because of his military adventurism. What was less understood was that the Right disliked him almost as much for selling the pass over government spending, bailing out the banks, and failing to keep faith with the fundamental Republican principle of containing the power of central government.
So the Republicans are, if anything, as much in revolt against the establishment within their own party as they are against the Democrats. And this is what the Tea Parties (which should always be referred to in the plural, because they are not a monolithic movement) are all about: they are not just a reaction against a Left-liberal president but a repudiation of the official Opposition as well.
Nor are they simply the embodiment of reactionary social conservatism, which has been the last redoubt of the traditional Republican Right. There were plenty of people in New York who wanted to believe that Tea Partiers were just a new incarnation of the gun-totin’, gay-bashing right-to-lifers whom they found it so easy to dismiss as risible throwbacks. This is a huge political miscalculation, which quite misses the point of what makes the Congressional midterm elections this week such an interesting and historic political event. This is so much more than the predictable to-ing and fro-ing of party control midway through a presidential term. What the grassroots rebellion is really about is an attempt to pull the Republican party back to its basic philosophy of low-tax, low-spend, small government: the great Jeffersonian principle that the best government is that which governs least.
One of the more electorally far-reaching effects of this is that Republicanism could become the home once again of a plausible political and economic programme, rather than simply an outpost for those who seem to reject many of the features of modern life. The gun-toters and gay-bashers and pro-lifers may have jumped aboard the bandwagon, and Sarah Palin may be frantically attaching herself to the parade, but this is not their show: the Tea Party protests began (as their name suggests) as a campaign against high taxation and the illegitimate intrusiveness of federal powers. That is what they are still about.
As some astute commentators have observed, the ascendancy of the Tea Parties has meant that fiscal conservatism can replace social conservatism as the raison d’être of the Republican cause. So rather than being a threat to Republicanism, the election of Tea Party candidates might be its salvation. It represents a rank-and-file rejection of what many Americans see as a conspiracy of the governing elite against ordinary working people. All of which makes clearer the appeal of even the naivety and inexperience of some of the Tea Party contenders who have challenged incumbent Republican candidates. If what you are rebelling against is a generation of smug, out-of-touch professional politicians, then a little dose of amateurishness or innocence might strike you as positively refreshing. (In a poll last week, more than 50 per cent of voters said that they would be more willing this year than usual to vote for someone with little political experience.)
The Democrats, too, are experiencing internal turmoil, with the Blue Dog congressmen (who represent conservative Democratic states) having to fight all their natural instincts to support Obama’s healthcare and cap-and-trade policies. If they are annihilated in these midterm elections, their resentment against the White House will be terrible to behold. This could be a seminal moment in American post-war history, when popular rage against the political elite brings about realignments within parties which change the whole nature of the country’s democratic choices.
This is great! Funny stuff…wonder what these Hollywood elites are thinking now?
http://www.redstate.com/moe_lane/2010/11/02/for-y…
Just like OkieJim wife. My wife also voted for the first time ever. She was not pleased though that I wore my BFD shirt. Anyway, speaking from Vernon, spoke with friend who is working at Rockville High. Turnout of voters has been very heavy and steady. More than years past. Daughter 1 is on her way now to vote also. All filling out the top line across only. Thank you Jim and Steve for all you have done.
Thanks to all of you, that convinced wives or other family members and friends to vote for the first time. Having worked on an Election that, after a recount was lost by 21 votes, I can tell you every vote counts. In this Blue state every red vote counts. If you can think of anyone else that has not voted offer to drive them to the polls!
I voted in Middletown this morning. It took all of 5 minutes. I'm so glad I voted.
Bye Bye Blumie !
From Central Florida…
I arrived at my voting precinct at about 2pm to find a line of about 20 people, with 15 more filling out their ballots inside. A typical turnout at that time of day would be 10 to 15. I asked one of the poll workers if turn out was high. She said if it continues as it has, turnout might be higher than in the presidential election of 2008. Oh, my part of Florida is quite conservative Republican. I suspect this is good news.
Here's something from everyone's favorite congressman <a title="http://www.theblaze.com/stories/alan-grayson-i-want-to-win-so-that-i-can-tell-glenn-beck-to-stick-it/" href="http://www.theblaze.com/stories/alan-grayson-i-want-to-win-so-that-i-can-tell-glenn-beck-to-stick-it/" rel="nofollow"> <a href="http://;http://www.theblaze.com/stories/alan-grayson-i-want-to-win-so-that-i-can-tell-glenn-beck-to-stick-it/” target=”_blank”>;http://www.theblaze.com/stories/alan-grayson-i-want-to-win-so-that-i-can-tell-glenn-beck-to-stick-it/
I'm heading out right now, ready to wrestle hope 'n change to the stinking canvas.
Was in Southington today with a "Vote The Bums Out" sign – standing on the Southington Green with Ann Brickley – received many many thumbs up and honks from those driving by!
Arrived a t 12:00PM stood in a modest line and the line continued to build. Not bad for a town of 1,600. Today is the day we come together and make real change!
In Litchfield, the turn out has been steady and generous, the democrats seem a bit somber, no laughter or chuckling about being the winner, although in line you could here twittering regarding getting Blumenthal out; a further good sign was twitterings of agreement. The line was long, maybe fifty or more but the wait was about 25 minutes, and well worth the wait.
News from Thomaston, part of our district, was they ran out of ballots, had to get some copied, which will add to the delay in counting, since the copied ones are not recognized by the machine and will have to be hand counted. This was at about 3, giving a sign of turn out in that small blue collar town. Voting fraud is being carefully watched for, harassment of any kind will not be tolerated, as I was told, the constable will be called. So far, things are quiet, running smoothly.
America is becoming like Egypt, corruption runs the show, but this election needs to given to the people's choice and start to turn the tide back to where it needs to be. No more thugs running the government, today is the turning point, if we can keep the thugs out of our affairs for one more day, a few more hours, We the People have a chance.
For liberty's sake, vote!
FOUR–count 'em–FOUR peeps in my house voted for Linda McMahon and (I think) republican across the board. I sure am a proud mama tonight…It's days like this when I know that Rush & I (& Jim over the past few years) have raised my kids to think for the future AND to be compassionate. Smaller government does NOT mean people dying in the streets.
Vernon checking in, voted after I got out of work today. Looked like a pretty good turnout. Voted mostly Republican, including McMahon and Foley.
Gonna get my dinner on and read this ~60 page PDF from the first day of The Supreme Court taking up the video game violence bill. Remember, Blumenthal wanted to jump in on this failwhale of a bill awhile back.
Voted early lot of glum faces – except for me!
Live chat tonight?
Thomaston voter, turn out seemed about average for what I've seen since I lived there. Voted at about 6:30 last night, so if they ran out of ballots, they must of gotten some more when I arrived. Voted all "R" and it looks like everyone I voted for has lost or may lose, since the state can't seem to decide how they want to screw Foley out of this election. Can't say I'm very happy with how this went, I really feel like someone pulld something here, fraud? Who knows. I just know I am not going back to sleep, I will not forget what happened around the country, and I will not stop fighting until Obama and all his little cronies are gone!