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This morning, my Bush-can-do-no-wrong father-in-law, the one who never allows his TV to leave Faux News EVER and listens to right-wing hate radio whenever he gets in the car, started trying to bait me into talking about the Governor's race. I, of course, didn't bite (I decided that after 2004, when I would allow him to bait me into political arguments and it ended up causing a huge rift within the family, that I would never again participate in a political "discussion" with him for the good of everyone involved). But his final comment on the situation was something to the effect that he just hoped there wouldn't be any allegations of vote-stealing, and said something about, "I don't know why they're pushing this early, absentee voting. It's just another way somebody with computer skills can change the results." I wanted to tell him he was wrong, that absentee voting actually leaves a verifiable paper trail, and that it was the computerized Diebold machines here in Ohio that can be (and have been) tampered with, but I decided to just let it drop.
But now that you've brought it up, it occurred to me that the vast, vast, VAST majority of his political opinions (or the things he brings up to me and/or my wife) are things he happened to hear on TV or the radio recently (as a general rule, if he brings up a "fact," it's because he heard it that very day). It makes me wonder if the right-wing screamers are now planting the seeds of doubt in their lapdog listeners, and this is their new talking point. They're probably all set to say, "All the polls since February showed HUGE Republican victories, and yet the returns show Democrats winning most of these races. It's CLEAR that they STOLE THIS ELECTION!!! So rise up, people!!! Grab your guns and your bibles!!!"
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