Your debate prep for this evening

As with last week's fight between the Kenyan (sic) Assassin and the Stormin' Mormon, tonight's Biden-Ryan tilt -- one is the Boomer washing his Pontiac in the driveway, the other is Atlas shrugging and shredding a P90X workout -- you need to be prepared for all the wonky goodness that will flow forth across the Kentucky landscape... and out of your preferred broadcast source. That is, if you prefer your style as a sauce for the substance, and not as the main course.

-- Five things to watch for, from CNN, the WaPo, Politico, and the Blaze. Think Progress has twelve.

-- As with last week's debate, the major/minor parties are disinvited, so the Greens' vice-presidential nominee, Cheri Honkala, is hosting a street party down a few blocks from the small liberal arts college where Biden-Ryan is being waged, about two hours south of Cincinnatti, OH.

What: "Paul Ryan" Austerity Wagon protest with Cheri Honkala
Where: 317 W. Main Street, Danville, KY (6 blocks from Centre campus)
When: Thursday Oct. 11, 7 PM (action starts at 8 PM sharp)

 Join Green Party VP candidate Cheri Honkala to Occupy the Vice Presidential Debate at Centre College in Danville, Kentucky on Thursday, October 11!

Occupy activists around Kentucky and Southern Ohio are organizing some really fun street theatre highlighting Paul Ryan's devastating budget plan that would redistribute wealth upward from the poor and middle class to the wealthy. We aren't counting on Joe Biden or the debate's pre-approved moderator and format, tightly regulated by both campaigns, to bring up that issue -- or any of the other issues we really want to hear more about.

-- Judge Jim Gray, the Libertarian vice-presidential candidate, is just going to Hang Out on Google.

-- Finally... the fact-checking is already under way. It will probably still be going on by the time of the second Romney-Obama debate next Tuesday.

A Republican Unicorn in Fort Bend County

Running for commissioner, and voting in two states.

A Republican precinct chairman running for a seat on the Fort Bend County Commissioner's Court has cast ballots in both Texas and Pennsylvania in the last three federal elections, official records in both states show.

Bruce J. Fleming, a Sugar Land resident running for Precinct 1 commissioner, voted in person in Sugar Land in 2006, 2008 and 2010 and by mail in each of those years in Yardley, Pa., according to election records in both states.

Fleming, who owns a home in Yardley, voted for Hillary Rodham Clinton in the 2008 presidential primary in Texas. His wife, Nancy Fleming, who is listed as a resident of Yardley, voted by mail in both places in the 2010 general election, records show.

"The less said is better," Bruce Fleming said when contacted by phone late Tuesday afternoon. "Until we can determine the situation, I can't really comment."

Like the Chupacabra, it turns out that voter fraud does exist (at the discovered rate of less than once per year since 2000, nationwide) and it's being committed by the people doing the most complaining about it.

Doesn't that True the Vote queen Catherine Englebrecht live in Fort Bend County? Why yes she does, and in this very precinct. From the source that first broke this story -- and got the Traditional Media right on it -- here's Juanita Jean from the WMDBS (I am sure she picked those words on purpose like that).

Cathy Engelbretch did not sniff out voter fraud when it was right under her nose smelling like a goat with a three day old catfish on its back.  And here’s how I know that.

You have to read it all. KPRC even managed coverage.

"To be honest with you, the tip was Mr. Fleming had bragged to Rick Miller that he had voted twice against Barack Obama," said Don Bankston of the Texas State Democratic Party.

(It should be noted here that Bankston is Juanita Jean's husband. And I love 'em both for the work they do down there in the belly of the GOP beast.)

Voter ID legislation doesn't prevent this kind of voter fraud, you see. Forget that requiring photo IDs at the polling place is even meant to prevent voter fraud anyway.

What this exposes, again, is the entire fraud of Republicans generally. They cannot govern seriously, but only by an ideology so warped that they themselves are twisted up by it. They think by committing this second-degree felony that they're simply evening things out for their team.

That is literally what they think.

If you vote for any Republican over the next few weeks, then you get what you deserve.

Those swinging single women

Wading into an explosive social issue, Republican Mitt Romney on Tuesday said he would not pursue any abortion-related legislation if elected president.

"There's no legislation with regards to abortion that I'm familiar with that would become part of my agenda," he told the Des Moines Register in an interview posted on the newspaper's website.

That sounds a little slippery on the face of it; "that I'm familiar with".

Romney's statement to the newspaper represents an apparent shift on a topic Obama's campaign has tried to use against him, particularly with female voters. Soon after the comments were posted on the Register's website, the president's campaign pounced.

"We know the truth about where he stands on a woman's right to choose: He's said he'd be delighted to sign a bill banning all abortions, and called Roe v. Wade 'one of the darkest moments in Supreme Court history,' while pledging to appoint Supreme Court justices who will overturn it. Women simply can't trust him," Obama spokeswoman Lis Smith said.

As recently as a presidential debate in January, Romney said the Supreme Court should overturn Roe v. Wade, the landmark ruling that legalized abortion across the nation.

My feeling here is that Romney has slid too much to the left -- aka closer to the center -- for this to be of help to his cause. Update: It only took the campaign a couple of hours to walk that back.

Then again, he may just be divining the polling.

(Democratic pollster Stan) Greenberg told (the Washington Post's Greg Sargent) in an interview that his new research persuaded him that Mitt Romney beat Obama in the debate for a simple reason. Unmarried women — a critical piece of Obama’s coalition — did not hear Obama telling him how they would make their lives better. By contrast, they did hear Romney telling them he’d improve their lives. 

Recall that in yesterday's post, this erosion of support from women was mentioned.

Romney, however, succeeded in communicating with unmarried women, Greenberg says, by prefacing talk of his five point plan with an extended discussion of the economic strain of middle-income Americans — which Greenberg calls an effective “set up that gave his details meaning.”

“When Romney talked about what he is going to do for the middle class, his five point plan, they were very responsive,” Greenberg says. “The president had a lot of detail but didn’t have the set up in values.”

Unmarried women are a key piece of the “rising American electorate,” which includes young voters and minorities and propelled Obama's 2008 victory. “The key issues for them are the suite of economic issues around rebuilding the middle class,” Page Gardner, the president of Women’s Voices Women Vote, who commissioned Greenberg’s research, says. “They are the most stressed and stretched.”

Greenberg’s research also included a national survey, and focus groups in Ohio and Virginia, that suggest a course correction for Obama. The national survey found that before the debate, Obama was doing extremely well among unmarried women, beating Romney among them by 63-24. He held a 19 point edge among them on who would do better on “issues important to you.” 

So Mitt's reaching out with another line to the constituency that will apparently decide 2012: unmarried females in a handful of swing states.

I'd like to say here that I weep for the future for a segment of the electorate that appears to have overlooked the whole War on Women thing, but it just doesn't come as a big enough surprise.

Women -- single women, with children or without, irrespective of nationality -- have had it worse in this economy than anybody. I can't blame them one little bit for reaching for any lifeline thrown near them.

It's a shame they aren't aware of the two female candidates running on a New Deal platform, isn't it?

If Obama -- or more immediately, Joe Biden -- doesn't mention 47% in the next debate, the Democrats could succeed in snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

I think they can hold on, but they need to do more than just try to run out the clock. As they say in auto racing: it's the last lap of the Daytona 500; you don't take your foot off the gas.

(Maybe I should look for less sports-related macho analogies.)