One of 200,000

There are probably 200,000 things about the so-called presidency that make me want to puke. One of them is having Republican assholes like Kellyanne explain that he's restoring traditional American values. Either they're stupid, or they think we are.

Correction: Republicans definitely think we're stupid.

Attendance Optional

Yesterday in Portland, Maine, a massive rally was held to show support for the so-called president (no, not Steve Bannon). Has anyone noticed that fatty's most devoted followers all look like lonely old white guys?

The White House announced the rally attendance at 750,000 but Fox News has issued a corrected figure of just under 1,000,000 enthusiastic Trumpkins. If you want to count 'em for yourself, click on the image to enlarge.

OMG

The neat thing about the whole idea of God is that everything can just be written off as "God's Will" or "God's Plan" and there's no need to think about hard stuff. Religion provides simple answers for simple minds.

Nuclear physics? Yeah, God invented that.

Take Juan and pass 'em along.

I'm always suspicious when a supposed liberal ends up on the Fox News payroll, which is why I'm not surprised that Juan Williams is mixed up in what is, at bare minimum, a serious violation of journalistic ethics. There was a time when I took Juan seriously, but that's over now.

Let's do it

What Republicans want me to believe: Left unencumbered by taxation and regulation, corporate America will ensure that everyone has a job that pays well with excellent benefits. Sounds good on paper.

God almighty

If God created everything on earth and cares for every living thing, it seems a little silly to imagine that he gives exceptional attention to conservative Republicans, or preferential treatment to residents of Texas. That's just guessing on my part, though.

Championship

About thirty years ago, when I cared deeply about the Dallas Cowboys and the Texas Aggies, I realized that for me, lucid thinking on matters related to football was usually overwhelmed by waves of irrational superstition. Although my interest in football has waned a little, I still haven't overcome the superstitious thought tendencies.

Tonight, the Alabama Crimson Tide play the Texas U longhorns for this year's version of the BCS championship. I like Alabama and can't stomach Texas U and their football program, so this one's a no-brainer. Roll, Tide, roll.

Here's where superstition comes in: If Alabama wins, it will be an omen that 2010 will be a pretty good year. If they win in a rout (two TDs or more), 2010 should be a fantastic year. Conversely, if the longhorns win, it will portend a year that stinks like shit. Check me on this; I'll bet I'm right.

Added 11:48 pm: Alabama 37-21 over Texas U. The whine from Austin should be audible in all parts of the state. "If McCoy isn't hurt early, the longhorns win by three TDs."

My answer to that: If Sam Bradford isn't hurt early, OU beats Texas U in October, and the longhorns aren't even in this game tonight. If, if, if....

Profits

Stephen Carter is a law professor at Yale and his Washington Post column was run in Saturday's local paper. The subject is profits and why they're good for the country.

Nearly every argument Carter makes is one that I agree with in theory, but somehow I'm not completely convinced that unrestrained profit-taking is always good for everybody in every situation. As a rule, I'm a believer in and advocate for the free-market capitalist system, particularly in the area of non-essential goods and services. I'm less enthusiastic about reliance on free market principles in providing what I consider essential goods and services.

For example, I consider cell phones a non-essential product. I don't own one, and don't feel an urgent need to buy one. I can imagine situations in which one would come in handy, but frankly I get tired of watching cell phone-related advertising on TV and listening to people yak on them in public places. When it comes to cell phones, let the free market reign. Let the manufacturers sell as many as possible for as high a price as the market will bear. Eventually, the costs of purchasing and operating a cell phone will be driven down, and I might decide to get one. That's what's generally happened with all the other high-tech toys of the 21st century, like flat panel plasma television sets, DVD players, and digital cameras.

Gasoline is a product that falls into a borderline area between essential and non-essential. When gas prices shot up to four dollars per gallon last year, I modified my driving habits to some extent and reduced my personal demand level. Unfortunately though, soaring gasoline prices had an impact on the costs of a lot of other goods, food for example, that were more essential than gasoline.

In January 2007, I was buying Exxon gasoline at the neighborhood station for two dollars per gallon. By January 2008, the per gallon price had increased to three dollars, and by July it had reached four dollars. That's a 100 percent increase in roughly 18 months, and I was one of those people Stephen Carter criticizes who chafed at news reports that oil companies were posting record-setting quarterly profits.

The free market generally works when it comes to essential goods like food and clothing. In America, there's no need for anyone with even a little cash to go naked or hungry. And we do a reasonably good job in the public sector of supplying food, clothing, and shelter to people who don't have any cash. Last night I watched the classic film The Grapes of Wrath on TCM. I'd never seen the movie, but I'd seen lots of pictures in books and old newsreels of the Okies, the Dust Bowl, and other images from the Great Depression. I was stunned by how accurately John Ford's movie captured those images; from a visual standpoint, seeing The Grapes of Wrath was like viewing a documentary. I thought as I watched that America has come a long way in 80 years in terms of caring for its poor folks.

Okay, so profits are a wonderful thing and enterprises that deal in non-essential goods and services should be encouraged to haul in as much profit as they can. The market system seems to be competitive enough that essential goods remain accessible to virtually everyone. I'm definitely in favor of my retirement system raking in huge returns on its investments, and I like the way market forces eventually make a variety of non-essential goods available to people in my income bracket.

For discussion's sake, I'll assume the dominant requirement of every private sector organization engaged in providing goods and services is to maximize profits, and that none of them are guided by altruistic motives. Never having worked in the private sector, I can't swear the assumption is accurate.

As I recall, an organization can increase profits by (a) raising the price of its product, or (b) reducing the cost of production, or (c) both. If the market for the product is highly competitive, jacking up the price isn't feasible. Lowering production costs by cutting back on quality might work in the short run, but probably not over the long haul. So what we typically see are organizations inflating profits by reducing the costs of labor involved in production. If highly profitable companies are expanding their labor forces and increasing employee benefits, as Carter suggests, that's one thing. If they're unloading workers and adding millions to the compensation packages of a few selected top executives, that's something else again.

There are people like Bill Gates who operate highly profitable businesses and use their wealth to do good things for mankind. I wish every organization whose central reason for existence was to make a profit would do good things with the profits it earned. Some do.

In modern American society, the essentials include food, clothing, shelter, security, education and transportation, all of which are broadly available under the system in place. The current debate concerns whether health care belongs on the list of essential goods and services or not. My opinion is that in a country that claims to represent the peak of civilized order, it does.

One of my philosophical beliefs is that an important purpose of any government should be to ensure that all people living under its authority have access to essential goods and services. No conservative believes that, which is the fundamental reason I'll never be a conservative. Preserving public access to essentials means the government has a responsibility to regulate some activities in the private sector, and provide certain essential services itself on a non-profit basis. On the other hand, conservatives oppose regulation and practically all public service activities. Their preference is the transfer of government services to private sector organizations that are (a) in it for profit, (b) willing to cut corners to increase profits, and (c) unregulated to the greatest possible extent. This kind of conservative thinking is how we wound up pissing away billions in a privatized war in Iraq, with 43 dollar cans of soda pop.

I don't know how the health care mess will ultimately be resolved. Like my bro in Houston, I have a feeling that three years from now, we'll be looking at pretty much the same thing we have now.

Saturday strange or stupid

Some things I would refuse to believe if I hadn't read them with my own two eyes:

According to a national poll, 64 percent of Republicans think Trig's mom should be the GOP nominee in 2012. A story in today's newspaper says firearm enthusiasts are hitting the stores in huge numbers to stock up on guns before Obama can take them off the market. And there are still thousands of people willing to pay good money to see the Texas Aggies play football.

Obama will have his hands full getting this country back on the right track, and it may be beyond the realm of possibility.

Will history be made or not ?

Today marks the first presidential election since I started the blog, and I just returned from doing my civic duty. This post will be my diary of Election Day 2008, and I'll add to it throughout the day until the networks call it for Barry or Speedbump later tonight.

This morning I was up about 6:20 am, early by my standards, and we were at the polling location about twenty minutes after it opened. As usual, people on their way to work were already voting but there were no lines and I was finished casting my ballot by 7:36 am. I voted for Barry, which was a purely symbolic gesture since Speedbump will get about 60 percent of the Texas popular vote and 100 percent of its Electoral College votes. I voted for any Repubs running unopposed and when the choice was between a Repub and a Libertarian. In that regard I'm technically bipartisan; in reality I'm rabidly anti-Republican. In most instances, my votes for Democrats occur because they're running against Republicans, rather than out of a particular desire to see a Dem in office. Even the best Republicans can't be relied upon to do the right thing, a case in point being Speedbump's selection of Spiro Igloo as his running mate - an act that permanently disqualified him as a presidential possibility as far as I'm concerned.

Added 12:24 pm: It's still too soon to start watching election coverage on MSNBC or CNN. Unlike rival Fox News, both of those channels try to adhere to antiquated standards of fairness and objectivity, meaning they'll be talking for hours about how the polls tightened at the end and how Speedbump has a pathway to victory. While both points may be correct, I don't want to waste time hearing them repeated all day.

Life could have been simple. Nine months ago, I hoped Ace would win the GOP nomination then make at least a lame attempt to regain some maverick status by running his general election campaign as a centrist. He'd win the White House, but the increased Dem majorities in congress would keep him on a tight leash until 2010, maybe longer.

The reality was that Ace got a strong challenge in the GOP primary and slipped into panic mode. He joined himself at the hip to W and the leaders of the conservative evangelunicals. When it came down to the nut-cuttin' Ace was too chickenshit to stand tall, and behaved like a whipped dog doing rollover tricks for his masters.

The Ace I'd hoped for would've picked Lieberman or Ridge as his running mate and told the evangelunicals to stuff it if they didn't like it. That Ace, the one standing tall for what he thought was right, would've been a guy I could live with for four years.

Added 3:58 pm: I've been reading about exit polls on some of the political blogs I check daily. In 2008, the word is that exit polls are unreliable and should be ignored. I wonder why they bother conducting exit polls at all if that's true.

Here's what I think - the exit polls in 2000 that showed Gore winning Florida were fine. The exit polls in 2004 that showed Kerry winning Ohio were fine. I believe that in both cases, the votes weren't counted the way they were cast. Because the media are lazy, it was easier to write that the polls were flawed instead of digging deeply to discover other possibilities. I'm no expert in the science of opinion polling, but that's what I choose to believe.

Added 6:09 pm: MSNBC is where I'll probably be spending most of my tube-watching hours tonight, thanks to Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow, who provide enough leftward tilt to the proceedings to keep my frustration levels under control. They've just called Kentucky for the Speedbump, who racked up a 70-30 lead with less than 10 percent counted. The tube is now off, and I'm at the laptop for an hour or so. We've reached the part of the show where we'll see a long, long line of states turning red and the Bumpster pulling into the EC lead. He should have enough strength in the deep south shitholes that none are too close to call.

Added 8:15 pm: MSNBC has announced that Barry will win Pennsylvania and New Hampshire, two of the building blocks in Speedbump's EC strategy. The pivotal states of Virginia, Ohio and Florida are all too close to call, and the polls are still open out west, where the Dems are counting on wins in New Mexico, Colorado, and Nevada. Shit, I was afraid this motherfucker was gonna be too close for comfort.

Added 11:46 pm: Shortly after I added the preceding note, the message board at DU was updated with the latest news: Ohio had fallen into place. This was the piece of the puzzle I was anxious about, since Ohio is one of those states that always goes with the winner of the election. Missouri is another. I've been asking myself how Speedbump could lose if he won Ohio and Missouri, although most scenarios I'd seen depicted just that reality. Anyway, I hightailed it back to the living room and turned on Fox News to see if I could confirm the report. FNC had the usual suspects on its panel: Brit Hume, Fred Barnes, and Greasy Bill Kristol, along with token moderate Juan Williams. A longer bunch of faces you'll never see. They were already talking about whether Obama would turn the country into a leftist dicatatorship, or maybe do something the current dickwad had not done, namely govern from the center.

With Pennsylvania and Ohio in the Blue column it looked like Ace was running out of choices and sure enough, MSNBC called it for Barry at 10:00 pm sharp. As things turned out, it looks like he picked up Florida, Virginia, Colorado, New Mexico and Nevada, meaning he accomplished something I couldn't imagine in my wildest fantasies - he broke the 300 EC vote barrier. I had him pegged at about 286 max if everything broke exactly right for him.

After a long wait, Ace came out and gave a moving and eloquent concession speech. I was reminded again of the 2000 version of John McCain, the guy I respected so much. If that guy had been running against Obama, I'm not sure how I'd have voted today. Unfortunately, he disappeared somewhere along the way, and some other creepy old guy stole his identity.

Obama followed up with his equally eloquent and moving victory speech. At some point tomorrow, after I've had a chance to look over all the final vote tallies and results of the congressional races, I'll probably write a few paragraphs about my expectations for the next four years. I was wrong about Obama - until a few hours ago, I was convinced he could never win a presidential election in this country in a million years. Maybe I was wrong about the country, too. At any rate, history was made after all.

Sunday before election day

Based on what I've been reading today, Barry is still ahead in the national polls by an average of roughly 6.0 points, and has leads of some kind in enough states to give him nearly 300 electoral votes. The commentariat on the Sunday morning talk shows were fairly consistently predicting he'll win in excess of 300 votes in the Electoral College, and the Dems will get to about 57-58 Senate seats and add to their House majority.

The polls that lean conservative show the race as being closer, with Obama still leading but not by as much. The GOP storyline is that the race is "tightening." There are enough conservative-leaning polls showing Obama's lead is just outside MOE to provide the cover the Republicans need for election fraud. I don't know how they'll steal it, but I know they'll try.

In my working years I had too much on my plate to spend inordinate amounts of time worrying about elections. That changed after I retired. I lived and breathed politics in 2000 and again in 2004, and both times I got physically ill watching the Republicans get away with murder. I'm confident they'll try election fraud again since it's worked before, but Obama's position as a clear leader and the general storyline of the last three weeks will make it more difficult to pull off.

This one goes out to Ace and Sarah

When I was nearly old enough to start first grade, I began listening to pop music on my little AM radio and quickly developed a weakness for romantic ballads that's stayed with me all the years since. In 1963 I was in high school and had a summer job working in the cottonfields, chopping weeds and assisting in breeding experiments. Another kid on the crew would usually have a transistor radio tuned to the local AM Top 40 station, and we'd listen to music while we slaved away in the afternoon heat.

One of my favorite songs that summer was Blue On Blue, sung by Bobby Vinton and co-written by Burt Bacharach. The chorus begins like this:

Blue on blue, heartache on heartache...
Blue on blue, now that we are through.

To this day, Blue On Blue is one of my favorite songs and it's one of the melodies I mentally hum to keep time when I'm out walking. As it played in my mind today, I thought that if the Electoral College map looks the same on November 5th as it does today, I may dedicate the song's chorus to Them Two Mavericks.

Speedbump was on Meet The Press today and told Tom Brokaw the election would be close and that he thought he'd win. Maybe, maybe not. He did say one thing I agree with - that it's going to be a long night.

I got really wrapped up in the 2000 election. I hated W's guts and never prayed for a political outcome harder than I prayed for him to lose to Al Gore. When the first network announced that Gore had won Florida, I remember getting a celebratory long distance call from my bro in Houston, but that elation didn't last long. I ended up sitting in front of the television until about 5:00 am, and finally called it a night. I went to bed with a heavy heart, and stayed depressed for weeks. In fact, in some ways I've never gotten over the sick feeling I had that night.

In 2004, I wasn't optimistic that Kerry could knock off W, but the exit polls that afternoon seemed to indicate he would. I spent the day tracking the action on the internet, but again ended that night with a sick feeling. When Kerry conceded the next day, I decided to adopt a give-a-shit attitude. I figured worrying about politics and the piss-ignorant American people was a total waste of time.

Now we're creeping up on still another presidential election, and in some ways I'm ambivalent about the outcome. One thing is for sure, though: it will be a long night on November 4th.

After working through various scenarios, I've concluded that Barry will max out at 286 Electoral College votes. Not saying he'll win that many, just that he won't win more. That means he'll need the West Coast Blues (California, Oregon, Washington) and their combined 73 votes to close the deal, assuming he can close it at all. Which means we'll be seeing some blue as the East Coast polls close, but we'll be watching a long stretch where the map starts turning red and Speedbump pulls into the lead: the Carolinas, West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee. Then the Dixie states like Alabama and Mississippi, then working west across the plains and the mountain states. Lots of red as shitholes like Nebraska, Kansas, Idaho, Wyoming and Utah fall into place.

Win or lose, I'm expecting a long night. But when it's all over, maybe it'll be time for Ace and Sarah to sing it:

Blue on blue, heartache on heartache...
Blue on blue, now that we are through.

Clarification, etymology, maps and fails

Last night I got an email from my bro in Houston questioning the assertion in the preceding post that Speedbump could win the Electoral College vote by holding Ohio and Florida and flipping Pennsylvania. When I first read about the Repub strategy to concede the popular vote and win it in the EC, I went to the various websites that feature interactive EC vote calculators and other toys and began playing around to see if the scenario was plausible. Lo and behold, I found that it was, provided that Speedbump also wins four states that are currently classified as tossups: Nevada, Indiana, North Carolina, and Missouri. In those states, Obama is ahead or behind within the margin of error, and all four have typically gone GOP in recent elections. In my mind, it was no stretch to award them to the Republicans again. Confusion, my bad.

Since 1968, Ohio and Missouri have voted for the ultimate winner in every single presidential election. These two states seem to be excellent predictors for election outcomes, and eventually the Dems need to figure out how to win at least one of them. As things stand today, Obama and Ace are neck-and-neck in both locations, and that's my single best reason for staying with my official position that Ace will win on November 4th.

A few weeks ago I subscribed to Slate Magazine's online daily newsletter. The other day, I read their article about the etymology of the word fail, currently used as a noun at virtually every blog I frequent. Fail (the noun) apparently originated in the world of arcade gaming, a world with which I'm totally unfamiliar but which is the breeding ground for many internet geeks. The term I frequently see is Epic Fail, the meaning of which is easy to discern: collapse of a high order of magnitude. The conventional wisdom is that Speedbump's campaign is an epic fail, but I can't shake my nagging concern that Obama's actually the one headed for epic fail.

A hot blog topic yesterday was the Associated Press national poll showing Obama with some ridiculously narrow lead, one point as I recall. This dragged his lead in all the poll averages way, way down and led to much glee at the rightwing blogs and much worried analysis at the liberal ones. AP, recently sympathetic to Speedbump, used "likely voter" variables that resulted in born-again evangelunicals being counted at a higher rate than they occur in nature. The conspiracy theorists on the left surmised that AP was administering a steroid injection to boost the spirits of Repub voters, hoping to prevent a "sitting-this-one-out" trend. The possible unintended consequence is that Dem voter alarm over reports that Ace is a hair's breadth from the White House may shake them out of the complacency that 10-point leads can generate.

Added 12:20 pm: From your lips to God's ear. Two new polls reported online this morning have Obama leading in Ohio by more than ten points. If Obama wins Ohio, it probably means he holds Pennsylvania and this bad boy gets put to bed early.

Am I dreaming things, or does it seem unusual that a campaign running on the slogan Country First is always comparing different parts of the country and finding some parts are more American (i.e., better) than others ?

Maybe we can drag it out 40 days, too...

We've reached the point in the election campaign that finds me online several hours at a time, checking all the websites like this one and this one and this one, too. I start trying to keep up with which states each candidate leads and by how much, and checking reds and blues. I began playing this game in 2004, the first presidential election for which I had home computer and internet access.

My bro in Houston pointed out the EC maps look favorable for Obama at the moment, and they do. Apparently, from what I'm reading, Speedbump's election strategy boils down to this: Hold Ohio and Florida and flip Pennsylvania. Lose the popular vote but win the Electoral College by about eight votes, 273-265. If memory serves, we've done that once already. An administration that already shapes up to be W. Part III might as well be ushered in with the same winning scenario as W's. Speedbump has already matched W's Cheney horrorshow by choosing Snowbunny. Give us more, more, more... all we need are some butterfly ballots and hanging chads. What would be really cool is if we can get the US Supreme Court into the act, too.