Congratulations to the Chicago Cubs

art credit: Ms. Yackle's 5th Grade

But there is no joy in Mudville Cleveland . . .

Ohio Governor John Kasich votes for . . . John McCain

Branco cartoon via Walid Shoebat

Cleveland.com reports:

Gov. John Kasich, who had vowed not to vote for Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, voted Monday by absentee ballot.

His choice? Sen. John McCain of Arizona.

. . .

The vote essentially is a symbolic gesture. Because McCain is not among the 18 certified write-in candidates in Ohio, Kasich's vote for president will not count.

Kasich ran unsuccessfully for this year's Republican nomination and made clear his concerns about Trump's rhetoric. He did not set foot inside Quicken Loans Arena during the GOP convention in Cleveland, despite being governor of the host state. He long hinted he would not be voting for Trump, even though he was among a crop of other GOP hopefuls who initially pledged to back the eventual nominee.

So much for Gov. Kasich's pledge. What a disgrace.

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Hillary, Doug Schoen, and the FBI investigation(s)

photo credit: RT.com

Over the weekend, Democrat pundit Doug Schoen stunned TV viewers when he went wobbly on his support of Hillary Clinton. He's concerned about the fallout from the FBI investigation. From his follow-up column at The Hill:

However, in good conscience, and as a Democrat, I am actively doubting whether I can vote for the Secretary of State. I also want to make clear that I cannot vote for Donald Trump as his world view and mine are very different.

So, it would seem that Mr. Schoen will either vote third party or not vote for any presidential candidate. Either way, that’s more bad news for Mrs. Clinton.

On a related subject, Andrew McCarthy raised some interesting points concerning the FBI Director’s decision to re-open the email investigation. From PJ Media:

I have never been a fan of the notion – at the Justice Department, it is the received wisdom – that the election calendar should factor into criminal investigations.

Law-enforcement people will tell you that taking action too close to Election Day can affect the outcome of the vote; therefore, it should not be done because law enforcement is supposed to be apolitical. But of course, not taking action one would take but for the political timing is as political as it gets. To my mind, it is more political because the negatively affected candidate is denied any opportunity to rebut the law-enforcement action publicly.

The unavoidable fact of the matter is that, through no fault of law enforcement, investigations of political corruption are inherently political. Thus, I’ve always thought the best thing to do is bring the case when it’s ready, don’t bring it if it’s not ready, and don’t worry about the calendar any more than is required by the principle of avoiding the appearance of impropriety.

A problem arises, however, when you start bending other rules. FBI Director James Comey bent a few of them when he decided to (a) make a public recommendation against prosecution, (b) nevertheless make a public disclosure of the evidence amassed by the FBI, and (c) include a public announcement that the investigation was closed.

McCarthy had more to say about Director Comey’s decisions and his bending of the rules at NRO here.

It is fair enough to say that Director Comey should not have started down the wayward road of making public comments about pending investigations in which no charges have been filed. Such comments inexorably lead to the need to make more comments when new information arises. Not that the director needs advice from me, but at this point, he ought to announce that — just as in any other investigation — there will be no further public statements about the Clinton investigation unless and until charges are filed, which may never happen.

As for the election, Mrs. Clinton is under the cloud of suspicion not because of Comey but because of her own egregious misconduct. She had no right to know back in July whether the investigation was closed. She has no right to know it now. Like any other criminal suspect, she simply has to wait . . . and wonder . . . and worry.

There were other worthy Democrats, but the party chose to nominate the subject of a criminal investigation. That is the Democrats’ own recklessness; Jim Comey is not to blame. And if the American people are foolish enough to elect an arrantly corrupt and compromised subject of a criminal investigation as our president, we will have no one to blame but ourselves.

Read the rest here.

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Happy Halloween

 

Happy Halloween!

Trump, Hillary, Cubs, Indians

Indians are up 3-1 in the World Series. 

cartoon credit: The Cagle Post

Go Tribe!

Track your ballot! Make sure your vote counts.

art credit: NewsNowDC.com

If you have already mailed in your ballot, here’s another precaution you can take. I just found this on Gateway Pundit:

From a Trump supporter:

I am a single, Republican mother of two younger kids in small town Illinois. Within my friends, I keep seeing and hearing of all these examples of voter fraud going on right now with Trump supporters.

Three well-respected people within the same household in my town who mailed in their ballots in favor of Trump went online to make sure their votes were counted – only to find they were not going to be counted because the signatures on the ballot didn’t match those on their letter. They would have never seen this if they hadn’t gone online to verify!

How many others who have no thought to follow up on their vote are having the same thing happen to them?

Track your ballot and verify. Here’s the track-my-ballot link at the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections.

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Voting machine glitches, paper ballots, and early voting

  

art credit: CNN Money

Today, Drudge links to a report at Info Wars about voting machine “glitches” in Texas:

  

Chambers County Clerk Heather Hawthorne issued a press release Tuesday announcing electronic voting would be suspended until the glitches affecting voting machines could be corrected.

. . .

“Moving temporarily to paper ballots in such a situation is standard protocol,” Hawthorne reportedly told 12NewsNow.

On Wednesday, Hawthorne issued another press release claiming the machines had been fixed.

Interesting that this particular Board of Elections could, as a matter of “standard protocol,” switch almost immediately to paper ballots after a “glitch” was discovered. But in the comments below the report were several computer programmer types who said that any student who completed Computer Programming 101 could program a voting machine; my husband is a professional programmer specializing in large databases, and he concurs. It's not difficult. Any “glitch” was unlikely to be a careless programming error. More likely to be deliberate. And since the "glitch" was fixed almost immediately, it would appear to be a pretty simple "correction." 

Voting machine "glitches." Voting without valid i.d. Voting more than once. Early voting ballots counted before Election Day. The list of potential opportunities for voter fraud is a long one. 

What can be done to put a drag chain on potential voter fraud in your precinct? Over at the American Thinker blog, Crystal Hoadley recommends that voters who are planning to pull the lever for Trump vote “as close as possible to Election Day.” Read why here. 

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