I know we don’t believe in exit polls, but it’s amusing to see this one, posted on Beliefnet. Editor Steven Waldman headlines his report “Obama Winning Jews Overwhelmingly” and it’s true, 85%-13%. But I find it interesting that, even in this disastrous year, White Protestants, making up 43% of voters, went 34%-65% for McCain. And white Catholics, 18% of voters, also supported McCain 49%-51%. Don’t know if “white” includes Hispanics, as is often the case - “Non-whites” went 81%-17% for Obama.

For some reason, this reminds me of the moment in the movie The Good Shepherd when a mafia don asks the hero Edward Wilson (Matt Damon)

“We Italians have family. The Jews have tradition. What do you people have?”

Edwards replies:

“We have the United States of America. The rest of you are just visiting.”

Hmmm.

It’s tense race in Pennsylvania’s 11th Congressional District.

Barletta spokesman says returns could take a while | PolitickerPA
People waiting for the results of Pennsylvania’s most competitive Congressional race may need to a wait a bit, Shawn Kelly says.

Kelly, the campaign spokesman for Republican Hazleton Mayor Lou Barletta, said the combination of paper ballots in Lackawanna County and lines potentially stretching past the official poll-closing time could make for late returns.

“It could be a long night,” Kelly told PolitickerPA.com by phone.[More]

Paper ballots are fine, but they have to be counted.

No surprise that Obama knew all the time about his illegal alien deportation absconder aunt from Kenya now residing on taxpayer expense in Boston public housing. Governor Deval Patrick was in on the scam as well. Due to her illegal freeloading off the public dole, Zeituni Onyango had enough spare cash to (unlawfully) donate  $260 to Obama’s campaign.

Senior aides to Sen. Barack Obama and Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick were aware that Obama’s aunt, Zeituni Onyango, was living in the United States illegally and in a South Boston public-housing project, and were monitoring her at the request of senior Obama campaign officials, according to a current employee for Obama’s key political consulting firm, AKP&D Message and Media.

Back in early 2007, as Obama’s chief campaign strategist David Axelrod was organizing and planning the Obama campaign, he identified Obama’s unique family situation — a number of half-brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, some living overseas — as a potential problem, says an employee for Axelrod’s political consulting firm, and who has done work on the Obama campaign. “Given [Obama's] father’s family history here and in Africa, David wanted the campaign to know who was who, where they lived, and what they were doing. No surprises. We knew she was here illegally. We knew her income levels, but I don’t think anyone from the campaign had had contact with her.”

Instead, according to the source, Axelrod reached out to his former client, Patrick, who had retained Axelrod’s firm for his run for governor. Onyango was living in a state-funded housing project, “so Patrick’s people could just as easily keep track of things, and could do it without drawing a ton of attention,” says the AKP&D Message and Media employee, who requested anonymity as he hopes to get a job in an Obama administration should the candidate win. “If we had Obama people around, the media would probably have found her much sooner. She was in [Obama's] book, it wasn’t like she couldn’t be found.” Indeed, that is exactly how the London Times found her.

While the South Boston housing project is managed by the Boston Housing Authority, it is a state-funded facility, according to the BHA press office, and so it would not be uncommon for state housing officials to be on the grounds or in the area. “Patrick was the go-between, he’s trusted by David and Senator Obama,” says the aide.

In fact, Patrick spent most of the past two or three days stumping for Obama up and down the East Coast. His and Obama’s relationship goes back a couple of decades, and the two actually represented ACORN together in a civil suit back in 1993. Some Republican political operatives believe that Patrick and his political team have been cutouts for un-reported cash distributed to ACORN officials around the country for Democrat “get out the vote” projects.

Some Obama aides believe that Obama was briefed at least twice by Axelrod or campaign manager David Plouffe on the status of family members. “We tracked who was talking to the press, we kept in touch with some of these people,” says an Obama campaign media aide. “Anyone who thinks we didn’t doesn’t understand just how nervous we were about all of these people, particularly the members of [Obama's] father’s family. Axelrod had everything covered.” The aide said she was never present for such a briefing, but “we all knew the candidate’s family was being taken care of, to protect their privacy and try to contain any damage.”

The Obama campaign has denied knowing anything about Onyango’s illegal status or her poor financial situation. [Aunt Zeituni's Protectors, , American Spectator, November 3, 2008]

See also how the Times of Britain traced down the absconder aunt starting with references in Obama’s own book: How The Times followed a trail to find Barack Obama’s aunt. The MSM in America should have dug this up a year ago but has been too deep in the tank for BHO to do any investigative reporting.

Salena Vito writes about the possible absence of low-level bribes for uninterested voters in Pennsylvania.

Forty-Fourth Estate blog - Pittsburgh Tribune-Review

How will no ’street money’ play today?

Posted November 4, 2008 7 :30 AM

For the first time in any Pennsylvania general election, “street money” – the cash apparatus used mainly by the Democratic Party to reward its supporters on Election Day – is in danger of extinction.

“It’s a problem and a concern,” said Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, who distributed nearly $500,000 in his 2002 primary battle against fellow Democrat Bob Casey Jr., who lost that race but won a 2006 campaign for the U.S. Senate.

The Democratic Party in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia are two of the last party machines that expect cash from candidates for city council races on up to the presidency.

The cash is doled out by low-level party leaders to volunteers to get out votes. Those volunteers can reward reluctant voters with small amounts of cash or free lunches.

Longtime Pittsburgh pol and Duquesne law professor Joe Sabino Mistick explains that the practice of handing out cash in city neighborhoods is perfectly legal. “It is all done within the boundaries of the law. You basically have political operatives who are a little short on the loyalty but long on the mercenary that get the vote out.”

While the practice is traditionally conducted by state Democrats, longtime Republican strategist Ed Rollins bragged about using street money in the 1993 successful gubernatorial campaign of Christie Todd Whitman in New Jersey.[More]

I remember that. Although she doesn’t say so, what Ed Rollins said was that he gave “walking around” money to black ministers, to encourage them not to get out the vote in the inner city. Thanks to Time magazine’s decision to put all its archives online, you can read African-American columnist  Jack E. White being bitter about it here:Paid to Stay At Home?,Nov. 22, 1993. White wrote

“The controversy cast a powerful light on the unseemly tactics both parties have used to influence black voters in many elections. Payments of walking- around money — small amounts given to ministers and community leaders to encourage maximum turnout of black voters — are a staple for Democratic candidates and are legal under New Jersey law. But black party activists say privately that the money is often used to purchase endorsements. “You can buy black preachers by the dozen very cheaply,” says a black New Jersey Democrat, who admits participating in such schemes in earlier elections.”

Speaking of “bitter,” in rural Pennsylvania, where they’re clinging to Bibles and guns, street money doesn’t seem to be a problem.

Barack Obama has a growing fan base in India. They are very excited that Obama promised to make India his “top priority”.

One of the groups of admirers calls themselves the “Barack Obama Bangalore Fan Club”. They are a small group of activists who raised money for Obama’s campaign, made phone calls, and sent emails to people in the U.S. urging them to vote for Obama. They even staged rallies in Bangalore to show their support.[Campaign outsourcing: Bangalore techies root for Obama,  Economic Times Of India, November 3, 2008]

So why the enthusiasm for Obama?

One of the reasons they adore Obama so much is that he wants to raise the H-1B cap. In a recent interview with the Indo-Asian News Service Obama made two things very clear — he wants to give amnesty to illegal aliens and he feels that we need to import more foreign workers.

I will also increase the number of people we allow in the country legally to a level that unites families and meets the demand for jobs employers cannot fill.

That quote might sound like something Bush has said many times, but according to that news service it was straight out of the mouth of Barack Obama!

Bush, McCain, and Congress tried and failed to pass a Comprehensive Immigration Reform bill to give amnesty to illegal aliens and to hand out more H-1B visas. The failure of that bill, and the political cost that came with it doesn’t seem to deter Obama who seems ready to push for something similar:

I support comprehensive immigration reform that includes improving our visa programmes, including the H-1B programme, to attract some of the world’s most talented people to America.

The Bangalore Fan Club is not alone among Indians that are hoping Obama wins the election. In the town of Tirupur in Tamil Nadu the knitwear union workers chant “Om Obama”. Just FYI: “Om” is a Hindu word for veneration.

Still another group in India planned to present a statue of Hanuman, the revered Indian monkey god to Barack Obama. I wasn’t able to find out if Obama ever accepted the monkey god.

I’m going to join various people around the blogosphere to say that whoever you vote for, don’t allow exit polls to influence your decision on whether to vote. Those things are frequently wrong, and can be used by the media in an attempt to suppress voting.

Instapundit writes

JUST A REMINDER: Basically, nothing the TV talking-heads say before the polls close means anything. Remember the bogus Kerry-victory exit poll reports from 2004?

UPDATE: Apparently, though, some networks just can’t wait to call the election this time around. Hmm . . . .

The New York TImes story he’s linking to [Networks May Call Race Before Voting Is Complete ], features a quote from David Plotz of Slate who says “Our readers are not stupid, and we shouldn’t engage in a weird Kabuki drama that pretends McCain could win California and thus the presidency.We will call it when a sensible person–not a TV news anchor who has to engage in a silly pretense about West Coast voters–would call it.”

How did California, which produced Ronald Reagan, become a state that the GOP couldn’t possibly win? Immigration, that’s how.