Johnson, Stein, Goode, and Anderson debate tonight

The candidates from four political parties – Gary Johnson (Libertarian), Jill Stein (Green), Virgil Goode (Constitution) and Rocky Anderson (Justice) – will meet for a two-hour debate on Sunday, November 4, 6:30 p.m. CDT in Washington, DC.

The debate will be moderated by Ralph Nader, and will focus on subjects and issues that have largely been ignored or avoided, as they are too controversial, by the 2012 Republican and Democratic presidential candidates.

The mere mention of Ralph Nader should set blue partisans to grinding their teeth. You are invited to stop doing that.

Watch this debate tonight on the Green Party's streaming channel, or below.

Watch live streaming video from greenpartyus at livestream.com

You may also watch Stein and Johnson again tomorrow night, Monday November 5, at the Free and Equal.org Debate, beginning at 8 p.m. Central time, at Free and Equal's website, Free Speech TV, Stitcher, Orion Radio Network,Yes Magazine, NextNewsNetwork, RT America’s YouTube channel, American Free Press, and UK-based Reciva Internet Radio. Political correspondents gathered in advance of that debate (7 p.m. Central) for discussion include Thom Hartmann, Sam Seder, and others.

Update: Watch the Stein-Johnson debate from Monday night below.

Closing Argument Funnies

Swingin'

Harris County, you sexy in purple. Charles gets to go first...

I have the in person total at 700,216, the total that was on the daily record of early voting that Kim sends out. In 2008, the in person total was 678,312, so the in person early vote total was 3.2% higher this year. There were also 66,310 mail ballots returned out of 92,290 sent (71.8% return rate) versus 52,502 ballots returned out of 76,187 mailed in 2008 (68.9% return rate).

Remember that Democrats usually perform batter at in-person turnout while Republicans get more mailed ballots.

What does this mean for final turnout? In 2008, a bit less than 62% of all ballots were cast as of the end of early voting. If the exact same percentage of ballots were cast early or via mail this year, final turnout will be over 1.24 million – 1,246,819, to be ridiculously precise. 

That will still be a little higher than 2008. Everyone remembers how 2008 turned out locally, right? Now Greg...

Based on every available metric I’m seeing, the opening bell for Harris County should be as close as close gets. That will take into consideration both Early In-Person and Mail-In ballots. It almost goes without saying that this comes down to how successful each side is on E-Day. Almost, because in 2008, it was over by this time.

[...]

Whether you believe E-Day bodes well for you depends on whether you think the new normal will look like 2008, when Dems banked two-thirds of their vote before Election Day … or just about every year prior to 2008, when Dems typically got a little bit of a boost on E-Day.

By all appearances, the GOP did a better job this cycle of catching up and even surpassing Dems in EV GOTV. But for all that improvement, the game is still essentially tied going into the 9th inning. 

I read this as cautious optimism on the part of these two go-to-guys for this sort of thing. But it's still tight as a tick, and if all of these Obama supporters will stop calling Ohio and start calling their neighbors in their respective precincts and Texas House districts, everyone will be happy on Wednesday morning. Particularly Harris County judicial candidates.

For the past couple of months I have received three e-mails a day from Barack Obama asking me for $3. On Friday I cleaned about eight messages to that effect out of the in-box, and went to dinner. When I got home 2 1/2 hours later, I had four more.

I am more than ready for that pan-handling, stalking bullshit to stop.