While I don’t like to count the chickens before they hatch, the Romney campaign’s level of desperation and flopsweat is telling.

Headline #1: Romney, Business Allies Finish With Strong Argument: Vote With Us, Or You’re Fired.

Romney himself urged conservative business leaders this June to “make it very clear to your employees what you believe is in the best interest of your enterprise and therefore their job and their future in the upcoming elections.”

Before the Supreme Court’s 5-4 Citizens United decision, it would have been illegal for a boss to tell an employee that “their job and their future” was on the ballot on Election Day. But the court now considers such electoral pressure an expression of free speech.

“Nothing illegal about you talking to your employees about what you believe is best for the business, because I think that will figure into their election decision, their voting decision,” Romney told the business owners associated with the National Federation of Independent Business, a political organization closely aligned to the Republican Party.

This bullying tactic by the GOP and its backers is nothing new. The horror of Citizens United and “corporations are people” result is what makes this brazen act grotesque. But again, it’s because this party simply cannot run on its ideas — and believes it cannot win on them. Gaming the system is all they have left.

Headline #2: Romney Campaign, Karl Rove Framing Hurricane Sandy For Possible Election Day Defeat.

So, if Mittens goes down to defeat on Tuesday, here’s the pre-fab excuse for the bellyflop – not because the GOP candidate is a compulsive (and easy to prove) liar with has no feasible, realistic plan to offer the country as an alternative to the guy already in the big chair.

Romney’s allies also began to point prematurely at the timing of Sandy. Republican strategist Karl Rove called the storm the “October Surprise” and argued it had been disadvantageous toward Romney in an interview with The Washington Post on Friday.

“If you hadn’t had the storm, there would have been more of a chance for the [Mitt] Romney campaign to talk about the deficit, the debt, the economy,” Rove said. “There was a stutter in the campaign. When you have attention drawn away to somewhere else, to something else, it is not to his [Romney's] advantage.”

…Putting all campaigning aside, Christie repeatedly commended Obama’s outreach and support in a rare show of bipartisanship — the kind the president has been promising to pursue if he wins a second term. Earlier on Saturday, Politico reported that the Romney campaign was frustrated by Christie’s recent show of affection for Obama, another sign that they felt their candidate had been placed in a losing position on account of the storm.

One can only imagine the cursing and swearing at the mere sight or mention of Christie in GOP quarters this week — “frustration” has to be an understatement. I was waiting for Fox News to declare that the NJ governor had been replaced by a pod person.

What I refuse to believe is that the GOP, Rove and the right-wing talking heads will simply blame the storm — they will want someone’s head for losing an election they thought they had in the bag.

But they still have funny business at the polls in key states to hold out hope for.

Three generations of Merle & Barbara Smith-Mosel’s family gather in the family home in Federal Way to talk about how much they want Rachel and her partner Sandy to be able to marry.

Today Washington United for Marriage, the broad coalition working to defend the state’s bipartisan marriage law and approve Referendum 74, released this new ad validating the multi-generational support statewide for the freedom to marry and approving Referendum 74.

Merle: We have three generations gathered here together.

Barbara: We’re so proud of Rachel and Sandy.

Merle: They’re terrific parents.

Rachel: I learned the importance of marriage from my mom and dad.

Barbara: Marriage is too precious not to share.

Merle: It’s not about politics, it’s about family.

Rachel: It’s about how we treat one another.

Barbara: I’d really like to see Rachel and Sandy be able to marry.

Rachel: Marriage matters to all our family.

Have you seen this ad, or one like it?

Eugene Delgaudio, president of the anti-LGBT organization Public Advocate of the United States claims in a fundraising email I received this morning that:

In order to combat the aggressive tactics of the Homosexual Lobby, Public Advocate’s Battleground Action Initiative is running millions of pro-family ads in ten different states.

Our ads have already been seen more than 5 Million times — and I am confident we can get more than 10 Million views before it’s through.

The email subject line reads “See the Ads the Homosexual Lobby fears”. You can read the entire email below the fold and view all of the ads he’s supposedly running here.

But I haven’t seen these ads anywhere. There’s not even a mention of the “Battleground Action Initiative” on the Public Advocate website. If I hadn’t been receiving Mr. Delgaudio’s “Battleground” fundraising emails for the past month, I would have no idea that he was running an ad campaign.

Certainly I have found no indication that Mr. Delgaudio or Public Advocate are registered with Washington’s Public Disclosure Commission or Maine’s Ethics Commission.

Mr. Delgaudio never responded to an email I sent last week asking him where his ads were running.

Where is the almost $46,000 reportedly raised so far going?

Smells suspicious.

Last week I asked, Who is Eugene Delgaudio Lying to, His Donors or Washington Voters? Now I wonder whether that question shouldn’t be expanded to Maine, Maryland and Minnesota.

As I have previously noted, Public Advocate of the United States reported $1,071,623 in total revenue on its 2010 tax form, the most recent available. That same year Public Advocate of the United States paid $158,682 to “independent contractor” Eugene Delgaudio & Associates. The addresses for Public Advocate of the United States and Eugene Delgaudio & Associates are one in the same. Public Advocate of the United States paid Mr. Delgaudio an annual “management” fee totaling over $427,000 for the years 2005 through 2009.

Here’s the fundraising email I received this morning from Mr. Delgaudio: