Where is Americans Elect chairman, founder and primary funder Peter Ackerman? Giving speeches on the Arab Spring and otherwise staying out of sight.

Where is Americans Elect CEO Kahlil Byrd? Jumping ship to StudentsFirst, an advocacy organization promoting public school privatization that just like Americans Elect has been primarily funded by ultrarich private capital players, including (no surprise) Americans Elect player Michael Bloomberg. Bloomberg employee and mouthpiece Douglas Schoen is now busy promoting Kahlil Byrd and StudentsFirst.

Where is Americans Elect’s former Secretary and legal adviser, Dan Winslow? Trying to run for a U.S. Senate nomination in the Republican party. He’s also busy defending his work with Americans Elect, with many questions coming from Massachusetts Republicans who wonder why he would work for an effort to elect someone other than a Republican in the 2012 presidential contest. Dan Winslow’s new answer is that he was a Romney supporter through the entire presidential campaign season, and that (in reporter Schira Schoenberg’s paraphrase) “the online nominating process was not meant to hurt Romney, but could have provided Romney with an alternative path to the ballot should Republicans have chosen another candidate.” According to this account, Winslow saw Americans Elect as a backup for Mitt Romney.

Someone’s got it backwards. Can you hear the actual conversation at Romney headquarters?

“He wants to be deployed.”
“No. No.”
“I know, but look, he gave 7 figures, and you know what he’ll do if we ignore him.”
“OK, OK, OK. Crap. OK. We could send him to, like Mississippi or something.”
“Right. Here’s the phone. He’s on line 2.”

(Source | Source)

That one’s simple. Can you do one better? Write up your best Election 2012 palindrome.

Yesterday’s Tom Reed screed came in the local Pennysaver, a non-news newspaper that advertises local businesses and organizations. The ad, from the Seneca County Republicans, promoted not just Tom Reed, but Mitt Romney and vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan as well.

The first message in the ad is that voting Republican is the way to “protect your personal freedoms”. That’s an odd message, given that both Tom Reed and Paul Ryan have repeatedly voted to attack Americans’ personal freedoms. Both Reed and Ryan voted to approve the National Defense Authorization Act that gave the President of the United States the power to imprison American citizens without trial or criminal charge. Both Reed and Ryan voted to extend the Patriot Act’s unconstitutional spying powers, without reform, and both support the similar extension of the FISA Amendments Act, which has created a massive electronic surveillance network that gathers’ Americans’ private communications on a regular basis. Mitt Romney supports these anti-freedom policies as well, though he has never held any national office which would have given him the opportunity to take real action on such issues.

The message in this little Pennysaver ad that really tickles me, however, has to do with taxes. The ad complains that Seneca County has the 9th highest property taxes of any county in the nation.

The thing is that electing Tom Reed, Paul Ryan and Mitt Romney won’t help with that particular problem. Congress and the White House don’t set property taxes.

The Seneca County Republicans might as well have complained that Seneca County has a terrible highway superintendent. Voting Row B at the top of the Republican ticket won’t do a darned thing to affect such local issues.

On Twitter last night, the following was the breakdown of people declaring that one candidate for president was “wiping the floor” with another candidate:

A full 88.1% of Twitter users posting with the phrase “wiping the floor with” said Barack Obama was wiping the floor with Mitt Romney. Only 11.9% said Mitt Romney was wiping the floor with Barack Obama.

There were two other participants in presidential debate proceedings last night. In a video series sponsored by Democracy Now! (see the proceedings here), Green presidential candidate Jill Stein and Independent presidential candidate Rocky Anderson were invited to answer on air the same questions Barack Obama and Mitt Romney were asked. Apparently few were watching and even fewer were reacting. 0% — none at all — said Jill Stein was wiping the floor with anyone. 0% said Rocky Anderson was wiping the floor with anyone.

I don’t like to say it, because Jill Stein‘s candidacy is the one I most agree with, but the candidates outside the Democratic and Republican parties are not attracting significant attention. What’s on the air when people turn on their cable television is what people pay attention to — and that’s just two candidates, Mitt Romney and Barack Obama. Within those two, Barack Obama appears to be dominating the “debate,” but as J. Clifford has pointed out, the range of opinion in that debate is far narrower than the range of opinion of the American people.

If you’d like to expand the attention given to third-party candidates, spread the word about an event happening tonight. On October 23 at 9 pm Eastern Time, the Free and Equal Elections Foundation is holding a presidential debate to which it has invited the top 6 presidential contenders: Rocky Anderson, Virgil Goode, Gary Johnson, Barack Obama, Mitt Romney and Jill Stein. Larry King will moderate. Will Barack Obama and Mitt Romney accept the invitation? That remains to be seen. But you are invited as well — day by day more media outlets are committing to broadcast the debate. You can watch it streaming live for free at Ora TV.

Barack Obama just pledged that his budget won’t reduce high military spending, but will maintain it.

There are alternatives to Romney. Two of them are debating from a remote location tonight.

Democracy Now is allowing Americans to hear Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein and Justice Party candidate Rocky Anderson join Mitt Romney and Barack Obama in tonight’s 2012 campaign foreign policy presidential debate.

The candidate were just asked to speak to the proper role of the United States in the world.

From Jill Stein’s response:

“This a military which is now six times the size of the next biggest spender… This is a military budget that has doubled in size since the 2000… Yet we are not twice as secure… We could cut that military budget in half and still be many times larger than the next biggest spender.”

“We need to say no to this expanding war for oil, this attack on working people in America.”

From Rocky Anderson’s response:

“Our role in the world is to abide by our other sacred treaty obligations.”

“The most important issue in terms of the long term impacts… is the climate crisis, and our nation… continues to abdicate its highest responsibility to provide international leadership on the climate crisis.”

Barack Obama says he’s willing to start a war with Iran over issues related to the processing of materials generated in nuclear power plants. Mitt Romney says the same thing.

Barack Obama has promoted the idea that presidents of the United States have the right to start wars without the consent of Congress. Mitt Romney likes that idea too.

Barack Obama has increased the military budget over and over again. Mitt Romney supports increases in the military budget too.

Barack Obama supports the creation of more free trade agreements like NAFTA, despite their role in sending American jobs overseas. Mitt Romney has the same position.

Really, what’s the point of a foreign policy debate between Obama and Romney?

We could add to this list.

Both Mitt Romney and Barack Obama support indefinite detention of people abducted by the United States government, with no provision for trial and no provision for full habeas corpus rights.

Both Mitt Romney and Barack Obama support the expanded use of military drones to bomb villages in countries where we haven’t declared war, action that regularly kills peaceable men, women and children.

If Mitt Romney and Barack Obama agree on these major points of policy, what can you expect out of tonight’s foreign policy debate other than quibbles over symbolic issues and efforts to provoke gaffes? Why bother to watch the debate?

Here’s one reason to bother: tonight there’s an expanded debate beyond these two candidates, one you most likely haven’t heard about. At 9:00 pm Eastern Time, when Barack Obama and Mitt Romney start their two-person debate, Democracy Now! will start streaming an augmented debate that adds two more presidential candidates — Jill Stein and Rocky Anderson (who interestingly traded endorsements of and from Mitt Romney a decade ago). Every time Mitt Romney and Barack Obama have finished answering a debate question, Democracy Now! will pause the video of that debate and give Stein and Anderson each an opportunity to answer the question as well.

To find a real breadth of foreign policy possibilities, don’t just watch the official debate tonight. Watch the expanded and inclusive debate, streamed live at Democracy Now!.

Who does Mitt Romney ally himself with? Someone who thinks that the idea of religious coexistence is deeply offensive:

As I was driving up here today, I saw that bumper sticker that absolutely incenses me. It’s not the Obama bumper sticker. But it’s the bumper sticker that says, ‘CoExist,’ and it has all the little religious symbols on it. And the reason why I get upset, and every time I see one of those bumper stickers, I look at the person inside that is driving. Because that person represents something that would give away our country. Would give away who we are, our rights and freedoms and liberties because they are afraid to stand up and confront that which is the antithesis, anathema of who we are.

Allen West’s declaration of opposition to coexistence between religions is a matter of public record. Mitt Romney stands with, shakes hands with, and allies with Allen West.

Don’t say you weren’t warned.

“Romney is wiping the floor with Obama.”

Variants of these statements were being posted all over the microblogging platform Twitter during the second presidential debate of October 16. To assess the overall pattern of such statements, I’ve scraped all tweets containing the text “wiping the floor with” from Twitter during tonight’s debate. Here’s what I found:

Of Twitter users using the phrase “wiping the floor with” during the debate, 72.2% indicated that Barack Obama was wiping the floor with Mitt Romney; only 27.8% indicated that Romney was wiping the floor with Obama.

The following is a network graph (generated through social media engine NodeXL) of the tweets making up that set. Each Twitter account is a dot in this image, and an arrow heads from one account to another when a communication between accounts using the phrase “wiping the floor with” occurs:

Most people who Tweeted sentiments about “wiping the floor” during the debate just posted their thoughts, not sharing them with other accounts. With one exception, those conversing agreed with one another. The one exception consisted of some strong disagreement with a Twitter post claiming “Romney is wiping the floor with Obama.” Respondents wrote back, not hiding their scorn: “You are mentally ill”…”U must be watching a different debate..he’s not!”…”u smokin crack while ur watchin the debate”…”you sound crazy cuz”…”This guy smh”…”What??? You gotta b watchin the wrong shyt”…”You’re using reverse psychology right? O.o”…”Alternate Universe debate?”