Bloggers get feisty in the wait for election results
While Election Day involves a good deal of waiting for results, bloggers won't be kept silent until the polls close.
Partisan Web sites on the left and the right kept busy on Tuesday documenting and rebuffing allegations of intimidation tactics, saying one last goodbye to President Bush, and throwing mud at each other.
Stories of supposed Black Panthers watching over precincts in Philadelphia at Democrat Barack Obama's behest flooded right-leaning Web sites and blogs on Tuesday. Pundit Michelle Malkin has footage on her Web site from a University of Pennsylvania student approaching a precinct where two men are standing in front of the door holding clubs. They tell the filmer they are security. Malking refers to the men as a "Obama civilian security force."
HotAir.com, another rightwing site, notes that the incident was reported on Fox News.
"Bear in mind that Philadelphia is where 'street money' comes into play for Democratic GOTV efforts; this may not be a 'Black Panther' at all, but just an ordinary thug hired to look menacing enough to frighten off the weak-kneed," Ed Morrissey wrote on Hot Air.
The left-leaning site Talking Points Memo tried to subdue the story by checking in with the Obama campaign. A spokesperson for the campaign told Greg Sargent the men were not affiliated with Obama, and an Obama volunteer on site said the two men were not intimidating anyone.
Meanwhile, Sargent's colleague at TPM, Josh Marshall, showed a little more passion on the subject.
He called the story "another desperate Republican attempt to whip up racial hysteria to give them hope of winning the election."
With what's at stake in this election, it's easy to blow things out of proportion, seems to be the message from Comedy Central's Indecision 2008 liveblog, where Dennis DiClaudio takes his shot at the story about "that incident in Philadelphia in which black people were spotted allegedly being black at a polling place."
"We might need to call this a mis-election and go all the way back to the beginning and start all over again," DiClaudio says.
While the tension built around who the next president will be, Matthew Yglesias of the progressive group Think Progress took one last shot at President Bush.
"By any kind of absolute standard the man is an appalling moral leper," he wrote.
Other liberal bloggers took the opportunity to consider the state of the Republican party as a whole.
E.A. Hanks, in a piece titled, G.O.P. R.I.P.? on the Huffington Post, said the party risks finding itself in a "tar pit of irrevelency...somewhere between Neve Cambell's career and stacks of leftover 'Cool Runnings' VHS tapes."
Stephanie Condon is a staff writer for CNET News focused on the intersection of technology and politics. She is based in Washington, D.C. E-mail Stephanie. 
President Obama 08!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!