Consider this post the Oregon Commentator Elections Headquarters, where our team of crack political analysts will tell you exactly which states are still too close to call.  If any other OC bloggers want to post stuff here, go for it. Also, have at it in the comment thread. And … here we go:

• For anyone interested, the ol’ Commentator crew will be heading down to Rennie’s at about 6:30 p.m. to watch the elections coverage.
• Kentucky called for McCain and Vermont for Obama, via Politico.
• OC alum Bill Beutler has this nifty application he wants us to pimp out. It’s one of those, uh, visual aggregator twitter thingies. Check it out after the jump.
• The Ol’ Dirty reports on the absolutely shocking news that UO employees donated more to Dems than Republicans. Funny, almost like I’ve read that somewhere before.
• UO alum and friend of the OC Dallas Brown is running for city council in Bend.

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According to a recent Slate article if Obama loses it will spell the biggest political, societal and media fail ever.

… and then it proceeded to talk about how Obama’s camp wasn’t being overly optimistic, which was proceeded by analysis showing Obama being overly optimistic.

The worst part about this article, though, is really the ending:

“Great: Now another American institution could be in peril: If Obama loses, we may have reason to doubt the power of family, too.”

The writer might be acting facetiously, but come on. I don’t think I’ve read any articles this year that have been so straining for Obama like this one. Haha, family time couldn’t save Obama’s election.

Well, when you’ve been whipped by your wife like Obama has, then I could see how that might not save you. I’m personally looking at the photos where Obama and his daughters are all smiling and Michelle Obama seems to be imitating a chimpmunk.  I’m just saying: take a look.

Just had her wisdom teeth removed or caught mid bite during the family picnic?

“[…] Barack Obama isn’t only a presidential candidate — he’s a class marker, an item of conspicuous consumption.”

– Kevin Williamson, National Review Online

Nowhere is this more true than in Eugene.

I participated in “democracy” today by going down to the court house and writing in the greatest elder evil for president. I’m not sure taking a picture of my ballot was kosher, but I don’t particularly care. I also voted against extending mayoral term limits. And I voted in the Judicial races – for the LP candidates despite thinking the LP is a bunch of blue druid weirdos. At least they’re not Team Red and Team Blue, and more than one judicial race was Team Red vs LP. Truly, an electoral special Olympics.

Colin Powell’s endorsement of Obama for president has been big news, but isn’t that surprising. An endorsement of Obama from the editorial board of The Chicago Tribune, the paper’s first endorsement of a Democrat in its history (it had endorsed one independent, Horace Greeley, 1872, and a candidate from the Progressive Party, Theodore Roosevelt, 1912) is a bit more surprising, but makes sense.

The Tribune in its earliest days took up the abolition of slavery and linked itself to a powerful force for that cause–the Republican Party … The Republican Party, the party of limited government, has lost its way.

An LA Times blog takes note of an endorsement from The Salt Lake Tribune Editorial Board, which is upset Palin was chosen over Romney for VP. The LA Times made its first presidential endorsement since Nixon, for Obama. Up in my neck of the woods, the very conservative Columbian of Vancouver, Wash., endorsed Obama, resulting in a hilarious comment thread. The Record of Stockton, Cali., endorsed a Democrat for the first time since 1936. An Obama-endorsement by The News-Register of McMinnville, Ore. was its first of a non-Republican in its 80-year history.

Rich Lowry, Editor of The National Review, won’t say if his publication will make an endorsement, but former publisher Wick Allison endorsed Obama. So did Christopher Buckley, who argues his father would have done the same.

According to editorandpublisher.com, as of yesterday, Obama/Biden has about a 3-to-1 lead over McCain/Palin in endorsements from dailies, 121-42. In 1994, Kerry merely defeated Bush, 213-205, in the category.

CORRECTION: Kerry/Bush presidential race was 2004. Sorry for the error.

Looks like that damn liberal media is passing out that crazy Kool-Aid to conservative journalists nationwide. Kids, Don’t Drink the Kool-Aid!

With ACORN making sure Mickey Mouse isn’t denied his right to vote and dead goldfish getting voter registration cards, maybe it’s time to stop maintaining that requiring ID to vote isn’t a villainous racist tactic designed to suppress the minority vote by hearkening back to the days of Jim Crow?

Doubly so, in fact, since many of the voter ID laws in question are at this point several years old — more than enough time by any standard to go out and get some legitimate form of identification.

For their part, Obama supporters maintain that there’s nothing to worry about because vote fraud is extraordinarily rare and voter-registration fraud isn’t really a big deal anyways — an interesting about-face from the days when Diebold was stealing elections.*

* Diebold is, in fact, horrible.

According to a new survey, the Oregon Senate race has Gordon Smith and Jeff Merkley, who’ve been running two of the most disgusting campaigns I’ve ever seen, running neck and neck (41% and 46%, respectively), “undecided” pulling in 6% of the vote and… David Brownlow of the Constitution Party (?!) polling at 7%.

For those of you unfamiliar with the Constitution Party, whose Presidential candidate won the endorsement of gnomish kingmaker Ron Paul, their motto is “Life. Liberty. Limited Government.” So far, so good. Then you read their platform.

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From our inbox:

Esteemed Oregon Commentator,

Perhaps you have noticed that there are quite a few register to vote people out there that insist on treating students like they are children who constantly need to be reminded of their responsibilities. I’m guessing that you are as annoyed as much as I am with these officious people, and with that in mind I would like to mount a protest (Don’t worry – a protest utterly lacking in picket signs, slam poetry, and organization). My idea is that when people are asked if they want to register they write Frederich Nietzsche as the name of the applicant and then promptly walk away. This will waste their voter registration form, make it clear that their efforts are unwanted, and ultimately make them hesitant about asking students. Understand that I’m not against voting in the slightest, I am registered and certainly will be voting, but I loathe the people who seem to assume that I can’t handle my civic duty. I realize that this is a little late, but I only recently thought of it.

Sincerely, Nicholas “Ubermensch” Stachelrodt

In other news, everyone is butthurt because John Stossel had the cajones to suggest that some people are too stupid to vote.

Via Norm Geras, this interactive map of how the Electoral College has broken down for each election since 1789.

I rather like that in  1868 Oregon’s 3 mighty electoral votes went to Horatio Seymour, who was beaten badly by that old drunk Ulysses S. Grant. “Recreate ’68” indeed.

I’m proud to announce that one of my favorite comedians, and Palin impersonator, Ms. Benincasa, has been picked up by the Huffington Post to have her Palin videos featured in their comedy section 23/6.

While this video isn’t their funniest (it’s funny, but there are much better skits), I just loved this improvised line:

“Come on! People are going out getting raped right and left, I won’t… I can’t pay for all of that, we’ve got an arena to build!”

I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

In today’s Ol’ Dirty, Matt Petryni has done the world a favor by distilling the last eight years of the progressive movement’s bitterness, victim posturing, and recent Obamic messianism into what is surely going to top peoples’ lists for “Cutest Little Article of the Year“, starting thusly:

Since the 1980s, political liberals have largely been thought of as the minority. Their views were quickly discredited, their programs systematically dismantled, their diverse ranks were painted as latte-sipping demons who sought to micromanage the lives of “real Americans.” Any attempt to deny this is to deny reality… 

The liberal voice was, for the most part, silenced.

Thankfully, the revolutionary vanguard was struggling to ensure that folks like Noam Chomsky, Michael Moore, Jon Stewart, every pot-smoking, bedreadlocked college kid, and millions of anti-whatever protesters were spared a midnight visit from the Gestapo during these last 28 years of jackbooted oppression!

After this pouting, he intones a litany of boilerplate college progressive criticisms of the Bush Administration and Republicans in general, with a dash of hyperbole thrown in for good measure (“Our economic crisis, now front and center, will likely rival even the Great Depression in its severity.” The horror!)

But all that’s just a warm-up for the real meat of the article: Liberals only want to help, so vote for change! After informing his readership that there is no “good” way to resolve our country’s problems, he assures us that “[t]he only true way to effectively resolve the crisis we face is the liberal way”:

Liberals seek not to overburden the taxpayer with regulations, with social and diplomatic causes. They seek only to prevent the taxpayer from being burdened with the consequences of not pursuing those causes and regulations. Without levees, cities flood. Without allies, wars fail. Without regulations, greed prevails, and dangerous risks are assumed. And without environmental protections, natural resources are degraded. Without planning and prevention, consequences and costs result.

All of these terrible things are, of course, assumed to be the natural by-products of “conservative” boogeymen and their disastrous policies, which he goes on to limply admit that are arguably not to blame at all.

Instead of attempting to actually refute that criticism, however, Petryni simply suggests that we, as a society, “change” and start living up to our responsibilities as members of the “American community”, by which he presumably means “vote for Barack Obama”. After all, once Obama is President, things’ll be so great that taxes won’t even really be like taxes anymore — they’ll really be more like “investments”! Whether or not American “investors” will be “investing” their money in stuff like billions of dollars of bailouts for the financial industry and Detroit is left unsaid.

“What a monumental fuck-up,” indeed.

You have found a Wand of Hope and Change, +3 to Overblown Rhetoric:

Clearly, if the next US president were to be Barack Obama, the colour of his skin would do a great deal to change radically the image of America in the world. 

…

Suddenly America would move from a culture dominated by fear to a culture dominated by hope, at a time when Europeans would still be deeply immersed in a culture of fear.

What the hell does stuff like that even mean?

Someone’s been reading a little too much of Naomi Wolf’s paranoid ramblings about fascism, methinks:

“If Sarah Palin isn’t enough of a reason for you to get over whatever your problem is with Barack Obama, then you damn well had better pay attention,” Rep. Alcee Hastings of Florida said at a panel about the shared agenda of Jewish and African-American Democrats Wednesday. Hastings, who is African-American, was explaining what he intended to tell his Jewish constituents about the presidential race. “Anybody toting guns and stripping moose don’t care too much about what they do with Jews and blacks. So, you just think this through,” Hastings added as the room erupted in laughter and applause.

“What they do” with them? Words have meaning. So, you just think that through.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is what a tantrum looks like:

Please understand what you are looking at when you look at Sarah “Evita” Palin. You are looking at the designated muse of the coming American police state.

…

I believe the Rove-Cheney cabal is using Sarah Palin as a stalking horse, an Evita figure, to put a popular, populist face on the coming police state and be the talk show hostess for the end of elections as we know them. If McCain-Palin get in, this will be the last true American election.

I can tell you one thing, if electing Obama means we won’t be subjected to another four years of tiresome faux-antifa screeds and “Save the Republic!” posturing, I might consider voting for him.*

To be fair to Ms. Wolf, though, she’s been playing at this little game of hers for awhile now, so maybe she actually believes it.

* Not really.

“When the stock market crashed, Franklin Roosevelt got on the television and didn’t just talk about the princes of greed. He said, “look, here’s what happened.”

That was Joe “chock full o’ years and wisdom” Biden explaining an alternate version of history where FDR was elected four years earlier, televisions were already invented and the 1929 stock market crash directly led to the great depression.

Hat tip to Reason.