Kudos to the Providence Board of Canvassers who will keep the Providence City Hall office, first floor, open Saturday from 1pm to 4pm to get you last-minute voters registered.  And what are you waiting for anyway?  I know that Rhode Island is pretty safely in the Obama column, but don’t you want to be a part of history? Plus, it will really piss off your ultra-conservative parents!

Go to the RI Board of Elections site for details on what identification you will need.  The FAQ section is helpful (particularly if you are a recent transplant or college student). You can’t register online, but they have a pdf filing form you can fill out, print out and bring in. My thanks to Kathy Placencia in the City Hall office for replying so quickly to my email — forget trying to call on the phone.

(Not a Providence resident? The list of Local Boards of Canvassers.)

Obama is doing for the t-shirt industry what Bush has done for bumper stickers. Now available at What Cheer Antiques & Vintage in Wayland Square, these Be Bold Obama tees are the work of Providence design shop, The Design Office.  $1 from the $20 purchase price of each shirt is donated to the Obama campaign ($3 if ordered from a swing state). The message is addressed both to undecided voters and to Obama himself.  Amen to that.

MoveOn.org has another one for $12. You will be invited to donate more than that to the cause.  Finally, there are many online sources for the Shep Fairey t-shirt,  just don’t assume that these sources are sending any money to the Obama campaign.  Pix after jump.

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Ooh this is neat! My favorite political blog, fivethirtyeight.com, so named because of the number of electoral votes, is doing a running breakdown of all of the states, and is graciously including states like Rhode Island where Obama literally cannot lose unless he performs a partial-birth abortion on national TV. Which he couldn’t do anyway because there’s no such thing.

Fivethirtyeight is all about the numbers; the basic feature of the site is a sophisticated electoral college simulator which takes state and national polling data, along with demographic and historical trends, postulates state outcomes based on the data, and then runs itself 10,000 times a day to come out with an overall win percentage. Either that’s really cool, or I am shockingly lame.

Either way, the table reproduced here has the basic demographic data, which is pretty interesting. You may have known that we’re the most catholic state. But did you know we’re the least white evangelical state? Also, 2nd highest unemployment rate? Ouch.

In the site’s RI roundup, we learn about the potential advantages as well as the hulking, soul-engulfing hurdles faced by McCain in this unwinnable state. Also, some of the commenters have clearly been here. more »

Six days left! Look, if you find yourself presently residing in Rhode Island but you are still registered in … oh… maybe… Florida or Pennsylvania… then of course we want you to ‘do the right thing’.  But, if you are living here now and you aren’t registered to vote anywhere, then ferchrissake get your ass in gear and get registered.  You have through the day Saturday, October 4th.

You can’t register online, but you can fill out and print the form, and find out the requirements on The Rhode Board of Elections website.  BUT, their office will not be open on Saturday.  Contact your local Board of Canvassers for more info on Saturday locations. We’ll be on it, but this is your first heads-up.  (See, I don’t just sit around watching cartoons all day. I’m a grown-up.)

You heard it here first! And by here, I mean the New York Times, which leads this snappy piece on McCain’s pervasive influence over one of his favorite past-times - legally dropping thousands of dollars on the roll of the dice - with a vignette of the maverick from gambletown in his natural environment: surrounded by high roller lobbyists at a private craps table at Foxwoods:

Senator John McCain was on a roll. In a room reserved for high-stakes gamblers at the Foxwoods Resort Casino in Connecticut, he tossed $100 chips around a hot craps table. When the marathon session ended around 2:30 a.m., the Arizona senator and his entourage emerged with thousands of dollars in winnings.

While this article is pure gold simply for referring to McCain as a “lifelong/high-stakes gambler,” thereby reinforcing the image of the senator (pictured here at a Bellagio craps table) drunkenly gambling America’s future away like the deed to one of his many, many houses, there’s also some good reporting here on how the Indian gaming industry came to be, and to be so powerful. Turns out McCain’s played a big role, taking favors, and directions, from plenty of unseemly lobbyists along the way, many of whom are still big-time supporters and advisers.

Mr. McCain was betting at a casino he oversaw as a member of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, and he was doing so with the lobbyist who represents that casino, according to three associates of Mr. McCain.

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* Ballot Measure in Massachusetts would eliminate income taxes. And all they have to give up are roads and public education!

* Out-of-character Colbert sez living under Bush has been “eating a shitburger supreme,” stays mum on how Mooseshitburger supreme tastes.

* McCain campaign literally wetting its Depends over the idea of a highly exploitable, media-heavy pre-election wedding for knocked up Alaskan teen Bristol Palin. Baby-daddy Levi Johnston desperately trying to wake up from this godawful nightmare. America feels you, Levi.

* Somali Piratez R Stealing Ur Tankz. Wait, what? more »

The Great Schlep is here! Young Jews from across our great, somewhat confused nation will trek down to Ft. Lauderdale and harangue their grandparents and their friends into voting for Obama. Time to cash in all those years of cheek pinching. The LA Times explains:

The Jewish Council for Education and Research — a new pro-Obama political action committee — is organizing “The Great Schlep,” in which hundreds of Jews will make the Southern exodus on Columbus Day weekend, Oct. 10-13. They will travel to the Fort Lauderdale area, where they will visit their grandparents, organize political salons in their condos and eat incredibly bad food. The grandkids also will meet up at a bar one night, which — if the psychological impact of spending a few days with frail, elderly, widowed relatives is taken fully into account — may do more to repopulate the world’s Jews than the creation of Israel.

In case you’re interested, but aren’t exactly sure how to pitch Obama to your elderly, hard-of-hearing, maybe-a-little-racist snowbird relations down in the Sunshine State, I’ve cooked up a nice mock pitch, to be delivered to “Aunt Ethel.”

Here’s the thing Aunt Ethel: I came all the way down to Palm Beach because, well, this election is important. Really important. Now look, remember how upset you were when you accidentally voted for Pat Buchanan in 2000? We don’t want that to happen again. And this John McCain character, he’s got less menschkeit than Shabbatai Zevi. He’s a real shlemiel. And this Palin. Don’t get me started. She’s just no good for the Jews. You know she bans books? You know who else banned books? Hitler, that’s who.

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While animal rights might not be at the top of most people’s list of issues to consider when deciding their vote for President, as a vegetarian (with occasional lapses of tuna-eating), I found this to be noteworthy. 

As the Humane Society Legislative Fund explains in their first-ever endorsement in the presidential election, an endorsement HSLF felt compelled to make due to Palin’s especially cruel and heartless policies:

Palin engineered a campaign of shooting predators from airplanes and helicopters, in order to artificially boost the populations of moose and caribou for trophy hunters. She offered a $150 bounty for the left foreleg of each dead wolf as an economic incentive for pilots and aerial gunners to kill more of the animals, even though Alaska voters had twice approved a ban on the practice. This year, the issue was up again for a vote of the people, and Palin led the fight against it — in fact, she helped to spend $400,000 of public funds to defeat the initiative.

Paying a bounty to people to cruelly and brutally shoot wild animals from planes and helicopters doesn’t strike me as. . . what are the words. . . oh yeah, fiscally conservative, nor does spending $400,000 in taxpayers money to ram this initiative through. 

This Defenders of Wildlife ad is actually one of the more powerful political ads I’ve seen this year.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQobIUE1zTU]

Isn’t this really similar to how the American buffalo became extinct?

You? Perfect.

Just mosey on over to the Alpine Country Club, fork over a G, and you can hobnob with Joe “The Lipstickless Pitbull” Biden, Master of Foreign Policy and Hairplugs.

The event’s tomorrow, so better double check your account balance before you sign up online.

Reception with Senator Joe Biden
Thursday, September 25
7:30 p.m.
Alpine Country Club, 251 Pippin Orchard Road, Cranston
Reception tickets: $1,000 per person

Just remember, whatever you do, DONT ask Joe about Clean Coal, China or Renewable Energy, unless you’re willing for him to grab your shoulders and yell vaguely encouraging-yet-ominous things in your face:

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7rXyTRT-NZg]

Read the very thoughtful and succinct ‘Letter to the Editor’ by Matt Jerzyk, of Rhode Island’s Future fame, in today’s ProJo regarding the judgment shown by the two presidential candidates in their veep selections.

“… after their respective vice-presidential selections, Rhode Islanders have been given a glimpse into who exactly has the judgment to lead.”

And don’t forget ‘Drinking Liberally’ 8pm to 10pm tonight at the Wild Colonial.  MJ has been known to stop by. (According to The New York Times, beer sales are waaaaay up in the bars around Wall Street.  So, bar owners and repo men are loving this new economy.)

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n5JW8XWX6oU]

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One of my favorite bits from the Simpsons ever; Only audio below, but you can watch the quicktime video here.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8WpwAWUpsXM]

Also, note that the Flag-Burning Amendment is a real thing. Lyrics after the jump: more »

Lehman’s toast. AIG needs a massive bailout. Just another day in the slow and steady collapse of our financial system..

Adding insult to injury, former Fed Chair and de-regulation advocate Alan Greenspan has come out and basically said we’re totally screwed, at least in the immediate future.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fO9idrZs30M&e]

Don’t worry, though, John McCain says the fundamentals of our economy are still strong. Translation: I own 15 houses.

Greenspan, for his part, had this to say about McCain’s plan to extend the Bush tax cuts: “I’m not in favor of financing tax cuts with borrowed money.” A little late for that, eh Alan?

The Sunday New York Times devoted an entire op-ed page to the question “Are We Experienced?” that readers might consider exactly what life experiences are useful preparation for the presidency. (Given the current situation on Wall Street, I think we can all agree that an MBA from Harvard is pretty useless.) Among the contributors was our own Lincoln Chafee who discussed the Senate, “One of the first things I did upon joining the Senate was to reread the Constitution…”.

That’s reread. Law school grads and political science majors have read the Constitution, but Linc studied Classics at Brown, then got an advanced degree at horseshoeing school, all of which led naturally to the mayor’s office in Warwick. So I’m guessing he read the Constitution the first time around just to be a really good mayor. Compare that to the current president who reveals daily that he has never read this same document, nor had it explained to him. He heard the phrase ‘Commander in Chief’ and just ran with it.

One of the all-time best SNL bits … EVER!

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pc3Zxq078ns]

Threshold issue: the President of the United States must believe that dinosaurs walked the earth millions of years ago.  Sarah Palin could become our president and we absolutely have a right and a need to know if she believes in science.  If this constitutes an attack on her faith, sobeit.  After 8 years of faith-based administrative appointments, the EPA, NIH, CDC, NASA and NOAA have lost many of the talented career scientists who could no longer warp their research and thinking to conform with Bible stories.   If Palin truly believes that fossils are a trick of the devil to test our faith, I think the American people should hear her say that… out loud. Turns out I have an ally in Matt Damon of all people, my new favorite guy.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C6urw_PWHYk]