Hope you all are having a good Thursday.  Clear and cool so far today.  We don't have any errands today so I can get a few things done outside.  It is clearly time to get the marigolds pulled.  They are looking very sad.  The mums haven't bloomed yet.  I wish they would.  I should start getting our shed cleaned up and reorganized.  But I don't think I have to hurry.  The current weather forecast shows a string of clear and cool days ahead.  Good weather for that kind of thing.  I think I saw a couple of spicy peppers that are ready to pick--I'll check them out a bit later.

I saw an intriguing headline on NBC.com today.  I wasn't going to link but--what the heck?  Read it if you want.  What is intriguing, you ask?  The notion that Romney cites one of his policies as proof of his 'empathy' but he has spent a good bit of time this election season repudiating that same policy.  I am talking about the health care plan he enacted in Maine.  If that health care law proves his empathy what does his repudiation say?  Perhaps that he had that emotion surgically removed.

Every time I think our totally dysfunctional political system can't sink any lower I find a new example that shows the politicians can always find a new, lower level of partisan behavior.  I agree, Lois.  It seems that dirty tricks are the only strategy Repthuglicans really have this year.  They have no ideas that generate a wide voter appeal.  So their only option when their traditional strategy of fear mongering  doesn't provide enough of an edge to win is to prevent their opponents' partisans from voting by any means possible.

Talk about politics getting rough, this happened about two counties away from us.  I found the story by way of this Crooks & Liars piece.  I guess a final conclusion about whether the window of the Mobile, Alabama Democratic Headquarters was shot out or failed for some other obscure reason isn't yet in but--my skepticism antennae are quivering.

In a follow-up to a bit I posted a couple of days ago on that 'voter registration' worker in colorado, I found this piece.  Evidently, selectively registering only Republicans isn't illegal--but what about misrepresenting yourself as an employee of the County Clerk's office?  And that story is only the tip of a very smelly iceberg.