I was a student in Moscow when the Miracle on Ice took place.
The stats were all on the Soviet’s side. They had the more professional operation. They were more seasoned and organized. Statistically, the Soviets had at least an 87% likelihood of winning.
But we had motivation.
I didn’t see it live, but I heard about it pretty quickly. I didn’t believe it at first. It was impossible to believe.
The Soviets I met were very respectful and courteous over their loss. They congratulated me on how well our “youth” had done.
Jimmy Carter was president. We were in a deep malaise. The Soviets had just invaded Afghanistan. Our diplomats were held hostage. The view from the 14th floor on Ulitza Volgina was dim.
I’ll never forget the feeling of that victory. It’s the feeling I want to have Tuesday tonight.
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It can be done, but everyone with any semblance of concern for America has to get their vote done.
It is time.
Football works too…
“This is your time.”
“Play your game.”…..Herb Brooks, Lake Placid, 1980
It is November 6, 2012…follow the advice! USA…USA
Special Report with Brett Baier and some other features on Fox News this evening almost seemed to have an air of resignation.
The fact of the matter is that none of us really know the most important thing: turnout.
There are numerous objective reasons to believe that the president will not be re-elected, starting with post-war stats about re-election and: unemployment, general Gallup favorable vs. unfavorable, Democrat vs. Republican enthusiasm.
Other items are crowd sizes, endorsements flipping, donations, the relative silence of certain commentators and certain celebrities, where the candidates are spending and campaigning, the Redskins’s last home game. Early voting seems to support Romney, if ballot types and ballot locations mean anything.
Some are Barone, Barnes, Rove, and Rasmussen.
Anecdotal evidence about yard signs. [I drove 100 miles to Cincinnati from a seminar in Louisville last week because I had crossed Ohio in the past but never seen Cincinnati, Washington Roebling’s bridge, and wanted to count bumper stickers and signs. Also wanted to see the stadiums, U Cin, UAHC, etc. Would have reported to you, but there was nothing to report. Except for a few radio ads, you would hardly, and I mean hardly, have known that there was an election going on. Ditto trick or treaters and it being Halloween night].
Then, there are polls (and the weighting problems), the dwindling number of undecideds, the stock market, inflation/interest rates, gas prices, and the distracting and confounding variable of hurricane Sandy and its aftermath.
One thing seems pretty clear: Barring the highly unusual or “irregular” it does not appear that Nancy Pelosi will be Speaker of the House for a while.
Also, 2008 turnout.
There is hardly any reason to believe that the “net gain” for Obama in each of these categories of voters will be a strong this time as it was in 2008:
College students
Older voters
African Americans
Catholics
Military (but ballots destroyed in plane crash)
Independents
Then again, Intrade, IEM and RCP do not look favorable at all for Romney. Of course, two points: One, those three are explicitly or implicitly based upon poll results that are confounded by volatile turnout in 2006, 2008 and 2010. Two, those markets, though accurate in the past, are so thinly traded that one well-heeled junkie or even a small group of junkies of only modest personal surplus could trade those markets (even if just amongst themselves). Still, would be a lot more encouraging if IEM and Intrade were the inverse of what each is reporting so far.
You left out one category: “Democrats.”
My admittedly anectdotal experience suggests that the number of people who self-identify as “Democrats” has changed over the last two elections cycles. This administration does not live up to the ideals of the Democratic Party, and the Republican Party has offered two competent, credible, acceptable candidates.
My thanks to the Republican Party.
Valerie: Agreed.
Romney and Ryan are both very competent.
Romney faces a little drag/resistance because of two factors that a huge swath of the electorate cannot quite pin down: religious convictions and political convictions.
Interestingly, there was not an anti-Mormon thrust in this campaign. I can recall Newsweek, twenty-five years ago, running what could have almost been called an expose on Mormonism that featured grain stockpiling and the “secrecy” of seeing the insides of temples. That may have included, but subsequent articles have definitely included, stuff about genealogy projects. Of course, Mormonism is actually a huge factor in quite a few jurisdictions.
Have been watching Ryan for years. Very earnest. Very promising. And, reminiscent of a president who was well-liked by independents: Ronald Reagan.
As for polling techniques: Who knows? My line of work involves statistical and anecdotal evidence of real estate values that is down in both quality and quantity since the meltdown.
Caller ID?
Time of Day?
Cell Phones?
VOIP?
Volatile turnout patterns in 2006, 2008, and 2010. Must be hell being a pollster about now.
There wasn’t much anti-Mormonism because it blew up in the faces of those who tried it. Evangelicals and Catholics may have issues with Mormon theology but see Mormons as natural allies in fighting the secular left’s war to take religion out of the public square.
I remember this well- Mike Aruzione, et. al. What a lift we all felt- it was a Cinderella moment.
Our country has always been about improbable moments when ordinary citizens overcame incredible odds.
Rasmussen released his party affiliation for October today. He found it was R+6%. NO polls are using this as a base assumption. All polls have been using AT LEAST D+2% or higher.
Even Rasmussen in his head to head polling is using a D+4% and finding Romney ahead by 1 today with him winning independents by 13%. If the electorate is R+6, this election will have Romney winning by TEN PERCENT!!!!
For the definitive book on the events leading up to Reagan victory, read Craig Shirley’s 700+ page work, “Rendezvous with Destiny.”
http://www.amazon.com/RENDEZVOUS-WITH-DESTINY-Campaign-Changed/dp/1935191934/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1352175338&sr=8-2&keywords=craig+shirley
If Obama wins, read “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich:”
http://www.amazon.com/Rise-Fall-Third-Reich-History/dp/1451651686/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1352175422&sr=1-1&keywords=the+rise+and+fall+of+the+third+reich
I think I’ve seen one national-level political ad here in MS. I believe it was a generic Obama ad. We might as well not exist for all the attention we haven’t had.
As for the Miracle, I saw it on tape replay like most everyone else.
In either event, read “Hillary Is A Sloppy Drunk:”
http://thefinereport.com/2012/09/hillary-clinton-contrivance/
Capitol Hill!
Obama has not had many Democrats asking him to appear with them in their Senate and House campaigns.
[Then again, maybe Romney has not either, even for a non-incumbent].
Without any prediction offered or even implied about the outcome of the presidential election, here’s a question:
Paul Ryan:
Very personable. Reminiscent of Ronald Reagan. Lots of future promise. Been following him for years.
Why has Ryan been virtually invisible the past few weeks? Could it be because of Mourdock and Akin?
Where was national coordination?
Does this seem like a presidential election that not only has less joint president/congressional and president/gubernatorial joint appearances than many in the past, but also has less coordination by the national parties?
Granted, it is understandable why the DNC might want to reel in Debbie Wasserman Schultz after “the public” got to know her a bit better in the spin sessions after each national convention and that Priebus is not exactly Paul Ryan, but didn’t it seem like Steele, Dean, McAuliffe, Mehlman, Gillespie, Barbour, Rendell, Brown and Romer had a bit more presence in past presidential elections?
Maybe it has to do with the changing campaign finance landscape. It might also have to do with how well past national party chairpersons were perceived as helping or harming various campaigns, be they national, state, or local.
Ryan has hardly been invisible. He’s kept a full schedule on his own and joined Romney for a couple of the bigger rallies.
He doesn’t get any media coverage, but then again neither does Biden. I guess we lose on that score! But when Romney had to move the GMU gym to accommodate at least 10,000 the other day, Biden had a rally in Rushville and drew 800. Marco Rubio is drawing more than that on his own, and he’s just a Senator.
Ryan sure wasn;t invisible in Minnesota on Sunday. An estimated 10,000 people showed up in and around a huge hangar at the international airport just to hear him talk. No A list warm up act, no ready to order crowd of state and county employees.
There are many entrenched domestic and foreign interests which do not care for American or human interests, really. Special interests which denigrate individual dignity and devalue human life. Whose policies engender progressive (i.e. cultural) corruption. They will promise instant gratification and present emotional appeals to manipulate perception through exploitation of differentials and gradients. The election of Romney will mark the beginning, not the end of the process.
As the old saying goes, “If the Lord is willing and the creek doesn’t rise,” I’ll be voting tomorrow. And, I’ll be thinking about:
A news story reports that if every person under the age of 18 was required to contribute to pay off the government’s debt it would take $218,676 each. This is a 53% increase from when obama took office.
There’s a young girl. Let’s call her Sally. Sally’s mother brought me a small bag containing cookies her daughter had baked. Sally had quite carefully printed a Thanksgiving greeting, who the cookies were from, and my name. Such a nice gesture from a sweet young girl.
What awaits her? She doesn’t know it, but she’s going to be facing extreme circumstances unless all adults of voting age wake up and vote for a man who has demonstrated problem solving skills, Mitt Romney. We no longer have the luxury of more time. What there was has been expended with minimal results.
Simply, I’m going to heed the Professor’s call and “vote like [our] country [depends] on it. Even more, I’m going to make it very personal. I’m going to vote like Sally’s life depends on it. That is, if the Lord is willing and the creek doesn’t rise.
Obama is urging his supporters to “stay calm” if bad news comes early. He must expect exits to go against him after cannibalizing his most dependable voters for early voting, or maybe to lose some states “unexpectedly” right after the polls close.
Brooks kept his team away from the press because he didn’t want them demoralized by the narrative of the unbeatable Russian juggernaut. He also wanted to keep his own strategy of sending a superbly conditioned, well coordinated team as secret as possible.
The political press has been so busy cheer leading for Obama they have very little idea what is happening out there in the boonies. They think the Tea Party is dead. They are clueless about the historic level of political activity going on among regular church goers -both Catholics and evangelicals. They think blacks are still as enthused as they were in 2008. The ignore the growing crowds for Romney and the lackluster crowds for Obama as if these aren’t measures of potential turnout.
The Russians were expecting the same US team they had shellacked at the garden just before the Olympics. What they got was a better conditioned team hot for revenge. The media really seems to want to make this campaign fit the 2008 narrative. I see the media as the Russians. Obama, a fairly mediocre politician without his media vanguard is akin to the Finnish team. We need to beat him to get the big prize but it’s the media that needs to be completely humiliated if we are to set the nation back on the right track.
BTW, I got to hear the game live over Canadian radio. Most exciting sports event in my life.
Looking at the big picture, almost everything I see leans in Romney’s direction. Never in my lifetime has there been a clearer choice and a fully qualified ticket to lead us out of this morass.
I predict that it will be defined before midnight central time…
I’m thinking more into the wee hours. However, wouldn’t it be grand if it was called for Romney abour 8:15pm EST?
I live in Northern Virginia and there is a lot of energy for both Obama and Romney. I think there are more Obama signs than Romney signs but there are plenty of homes without any signs at all. I know the pro-lifers here are all for Romney because they have talked about it.
Consider this. Anyone heard anything about a huge party in Grant Park tomorrow night? That little shindig in 2008 took weeks to plan what with all the permits, security, plans for shutting down streets and the need to build special temporary outdoor stages plus protection for statues and plantings.
So, Gentle Jack and I are burning the midnight. I’m flipping through the channels. There’s Rachel Maddow and a screen behind her states “Tell Me How This Ends”.
I thought she must want to talk about obama. I’d rather we talk about Mitt and “How This Begins”!
Any reports about the voting in N.H.?
“Vote like your country depended on it.”
Like??
Vote because your country depends on it.
Let’s win one for the Gipper…and for our kids and grandkids and for Miss Liberty.
Each vote is a puck shot into the opponent’s goal.
(and the Redskins lost!)
November 6, 2012. God is watching. There was another election in my lifetime that, at the time, was the most important election of my lifetime. November 4, 1980. God was watching then, also.
Yes, I know God knows and sees all things, before they happen. In 1976, God determined it was not yet Ronald Reagan’s time. I was so very disappointed by the loss of the nomination to Gerald Ford. Because it was our plan, had Reagan been nominated and won in 1976, things in our country might be so much different. No, God had his plan for America. During the Carter administration, those of us that are inclined to began to pray for our country.
In 1980, our prayers were answered and the world changed during and after the Reagan years. Divine intervention and solid leadership.
In 2008, again I was disappointed. This time, Mitt Romney, was defeated in the primaries and John McCain was nominated. But God was watching. We, Republicans were soundly defeated in 2008 and in came Barack Obama. Again, this was our plan, not God’s. This was not Mitt’s time.
Again, those of us that are inclined to began, or continued to pray earnestly for our country. And on the eve of the 2012 election, we are still praying, afraid that we might be one day away from America becoming a nation that no longer will lead in anything, and the light on the hill will dim.
In the most important election in my lifetime, today, November 6, 2012, God is watching. I don’t believe in coincidences. My faith leads me to the confidence that God’s got this, and we should just vote, pray, and let Him do His will. Today is Mitt Romney’s day. It’s his time. It’s also Americas’s day, and in 20 and more years, we will look back at today, as I frequently do with 1980, and remember God was watching another significant day in American history. And He will continue to watch the United States of America.
Beautifully put. I think that 2008 WAS actually Obama’s time. Perhaps America needed that sharp wake-up call to realize what she’s been sliding slowly towards for 99 years.
No more! We’re awake now and thanks (I guess?) Mr. Obama!
It has been a TOUGH four years, but I believe today will be the first step in RESTORING America to what she was created to be.
GO MITT. This Iowan will proudly vote for you in a few hours. And, as always – especially fervently these past several months, I will PRAY.
Thank you for starting my day with my friend Mike Eurzione. I grew up wth him, to this day we call him America’s guest. He is the American dream, and he broke from the brain dead people in his state and endorsed Romney due to his work turning the Olympics around. He grew up in a triple decker with two of his aunts families as well as his own. Must have been fifty kids living in that house. Tonight will be a celebration as big as the one on Bowdin Street in Winthrop MA that Sunday morning so many years ago. I look forward to it, now go vote.
There are reports of the New Black Panthers showing up in different precincts in Philly again, while court-appointed poll watchers have been removed. Information at the Blaze and Townhall Mag.
Developing: New Black Panthers Show Up at Polling Place Again — Pics and Vid
Well, that’s just great. After posting here daily for a year I found out on election day that Professor J is very likely a Soviet mole. Geez, you think you know a guy….
Nope. You’re looking in the wrong direction. Look more towards D.C. There’s a house there. It’s painted white. Something about the guy who lives there, temporarily, is not who he seems to be. Wouldn’t be all that big of a deal, except the guy is involved in some quite serious stuff that effects us all. Look there. He just might be . . .