Well, here we are. After millennia of tawdry campaigning, nearly $2bn in campaign spending, record amounts of polling data and record amounts of completely unbiased and consistent analysis – the big day is just 3 days away. Sickly, I’ll miss the spectacle that it has created over recent months. I might be only among a handful of people watching intently of their own enthusiasm in this country – but be damned, I’ve let the fetish flourish. Many many late nights, and early mornings have been had, catching polls off the press, scandals widen and wane, pundits wail and yelp in pleasure and pain. The American media, each side with their selected colour of electron microscope has created a film of intense timeline. Dogs, hurricanes, chairs, smiles and soundbytes have all been magnified and ‘enhanced’. It’s all hit fever pitch now, and anything could still happen to effect the final outcome. A trip, a leak, a claim or a failure.

I’ll be set up with my own shituation room for Tuesday, and I’ll be liveblogging away from 6AM ET US time right up until we get to a conclusion. No-DOZ will be needed if the electoral college is tied.

Liveblogging begins – 6AM US ET / 9PM AEST / 10PM AEDT

Florida polls (1st batch) close – 7PM US ET / 10AM AEST / 11AM AEDT

Ohio polls close – 7.30PM US ET / 10.30AM AEST / 11.30 AEDT

Florida polls (2nd batch) close – 8PM US ET / 11AM AEST / 12PM AEDT

Wisconsin polls close –  9PM US ET / 12PM AEST / 1PM AEDT

Iowa & Nevada polls close – 10PM US ET / 1PM AEST / 2PM AEDT

The many good and bad things about this decision will quickly come into the fore as the US heads back into it’s business week on Monday evening. On the plus-side, he’s what Romney needs to reassure his base that he is indeed, conservative. Romney is noted time and time again to be a stark contract from 2002 Romney, who can be best summed up as a harsh centrist. Healthcare, abortion and economic record are points-of-note to name a few. Ryan pulls Romney back towards the Right-ish (fiscal consolidation with continued gluttonous government subsidies) side of the party, more affectionately known as the Tea Party Congress. They were swept into wins in the House and Congress on the back of great excitement – but they aren’t necessarily a show of the ‘average Joe’ changing opinion.

Ryan presided over the first concrete budget plan (concrete meaning, ‘on paper’) since Reagan. The Path to Prosperity is, to say the very least, a conservative wet-dream. Massive cuts to the greens on the fifth of the plate, while deferring judgement of the meat and mash that make up social and healthcare programs to the states in GST-like distribution. This is of course, forgetting the naan/garlic bread/whatever on the second plate that is defence spending. That doesn’t get touched with a ten-foot-pole, and will continue to grow with inflation at least. This plan does not poll well nationally, and I wouldn’t bet on it polling well in Ryan’s 700k person district in Wisconsin either, consider it makes drastic changes to Medicare – a big senior vote winner.

It’s going to be an interesting few months ahead. #ObamaBiden2012 vs. #RomneyRyan2012. Obama’s team have a big head start (9 points in conservative polling), and the fact that Romney has made a choice today to shore up the base, and not the undecided, is telling. However, the US electoral environment is volatile, and certainly the post-announcement commentary has been overwhelmingly stating that anything could happen between now and November. The undecided could be convinced that the ‘Romney-plan’ (a delicious hybrid) could be the only way to teeter back from economic oblivion. What’s looking more likely right now is that the undecided will continue to see the Tea Party budget as extreme, likely to cut growth in the medium term, and push wealth equality beyond all-time-lows.

Must-reads:

http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/11/a-risky-rationale-behind-romneys-choice-of-ryan/

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0812/79613.html?hp=r2

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0411/52929.html?hp=r5

Australia has 13.859mil Unique IP addresses (4/6)
Generates 0.4% of all attack traffic
Peak avg. Connection speed at 16.6Mbps
3.5% of addresses above 10Mbps while 27% are above 4Mbps

Beautiful graph showing the rapid growth in Mobile Data

Graph dividing up application usage of Mobile Data Usage

Blips in HTTP traffic served to Iran

Graph showing how badly the Telstra Mobile Data outage of Feb 23 2012 hit total inbound traffic