Joe Must Go

Allowing Senator Lieberman to remain in the caucus if he were to step down from his committee chairs was a generous offer that he should have been glad to receive. That he would turn around to see if the Republicans could provide a better deal is unacceptable. He has played both sides against the middle for far too long, it's time for him to go.

Opting For the First Clause in "Trick or Treat"

You know, I grew up in Grosse Pointe so let me just say that this woman is both disgustingly average and just plain disgusting.

Hooray For Democracy!

We're going to shatter some voting records today. Who knows, maybe even more than half the country will vote!

That'd be amazing.

Still kinda sad but amazing all the same.

The Plural of Data

There's such a thing as too much GOTV

In the past days, from the Obama campaign, I've gotten a half dozen phone calls - some live, some recorded, several pieces of mail, a few pamphlets hung on the doorknob. And at least one in-person visit from a someone out canvasing. That's as I was heading out the door to drop in at the local campaign office and do some canvasing myself, by the way. And it's all on top of the daily deluge of e-mails from the campaign, including the one that directed me exactly to my polling place.

I'd have to say the get out the vote effort is working.

Then Again, Maybe Not

Senator Obama's ailing grandmother has finally passed away.



I never met the woman but if you can tell about a person from the children they've raised, something tells me I would have liked to.

Maybe He Is The Chosen One

I don't know about anywhere else but around here, at least, tomorrow is supposed to be an unseasonably nice day. Warm and sunny and more than a little better than the dreary, bleary day full of rain that we suffered through today for standing a few hours in line to vote.

I've heard some pundits and commentators say that good weather along the East might not actually be a good thing - Obama's already got such a big lead thanks to early voting and the less people who vote tomorrow the less chance there is of an upset. But, if you ask me, there can only be good things that come from having as many people vote as possible.

Tomorrow, I think, we're going to see the waters roll back and an energized electorate rise from the depths. It's going to be a sunny day but that won't be the only beautiful thing to see.

Morning Sickness

Whenever someone tells me that MSNBC has become unabashedly liberal. I have one answer: Joe Fucking Scarborough.



Seriously, two primetime hours of a left-of-center viewpoint does not make you a den of liberal inequity.

They Have Only Themselves To Blame

Well, there goes the Big Three. Looks like we're going to be down to just GM and Ford for major American automakers before long. The feds have refused to step in and help GM with their buyout so, one way or another, Chrysler is going under soon.

I don't really blame the feds, though, because while this is likely going to mean the loss of tens of thousands of jobs in an economy that can't really afford it, that's exactly what would have happened if the two giants had merged anyway. Better to steer clear and own no part of the mess.

Random Thought From Today

This used to be a beautiful city, once.

Random Election Thoughts

It's not just that Obama's up in the polls - and, he is - it's that he's up in the right areas. The presidential election is only tangentially about the popular vote, instead, it's decided by the electoral college (Thanks, founding fathers! Or, wait, actually they had a convoluted mess that only vaguely resembled our current system. Why do we do it this way again?). And that means it's a state by state battle to get the requisite number of points.

Obama might eke out a win in the popular vote. If the polls are true then he's up something like 7 points nationally which means, depending on the margin of error and the course of the race over the next few hours, we could be in for a 10 point blow-out or a 2~3 point squeaker. Not even if McCain were to make up that distance and close that increasingly impressive gap (Obama's had bigger leads but not when it mattered. Now, it matters. And each percentage point gets harder and harder to move. So what would have been a paltry margin over the summer has turned into a commanding lead. Hell, a lot of people have already voted and if their votes followed the national tally then Obama's already cruising to victory.) he'd still lose.

Because while Obama's up large but not large enough he's up massively in enough battleground states that he should pull ahead. Even if he loses Ohio. Even if he drops Pennsylvania. And maybe even if he misses Florida, too (Not getting one of those big states is fine. Two is possible. Three is when the race starts to heat up but still not completely impossible.). And, 6the thing is, if the election were held today instead of merely in a few days, Obama wouldn't lose those states, McCain would.

At this point, it's not about whether Obama wins but about how much. And how he can use the slings and slurs of the past month which have branded him so out of the mainstream to, instead, turn around and paint those who stood against him as the real ones who have no clue about the American public's opinion.

Random Election Thoughts

John McCain wants to spread the wealth around too. It's just that he wants to shovel it onto the richest top percent of this country and leave the rest of us to beg and scrap for the crumbs. That's, after all, not the Republican rhetoric but the actual results of their policies as far as I can see. But that's not really what this is about. All taxation involves some amount of wealth redistribution, even a flat tax takes money from the public and channels it into programs to stimulate and provide, and as crazy as the right is I don't think they're ready to get rid of taxation just yet. No, McCain talks about spreading the wealth and socialism because, like so much out of conservative mouths, it's a double-sided message. Plain words that have coded meaning. And, in this case, what's he's saying is not that Obama's going to take your wealth. But that's he's going to turn around and give it to the darkies. It's disgusting, it's despicable, and it's a shame that this is how our national discourse is - of course, since we're also a nation where even just knowing an Arab is a forbidden thing, I guess I shouldn't be surprised. What I can be is ashamed. And what I will do is head to the polls this Tuesday and do my best to vote this line of thought and the people who support it out of office. If I could vote them out of the country I would but, you know, I guess I'm not a real American because I don't think there's some sort of litmus test for citizenship. To the contrary, I think living in this country and living up to its ideas means that you think people can believe whatever they want, no matter how crazy it is.

Why Not to Vote For McCain

Because you don't like starting needless wars in order to feel good about yourself.

A Random Thought

You don't want to make it too easy to vote. Because, then, more people would do it and democracy might break out.

Conservatism Has Never Failed

It's merely only never been tried.

It's Not All About Lending Practices

The idea that Fanny and Freddie are behind the current economic mess is a vicious mischaracterization. A coded way for the conservatives to scream, "It were the darkies what done it!" I'm sure many books and treatises will be written on the subject in many days but, if you ask me, it might have been the mortgage sector where the crisis first unfurled, but it was really the overleveraging of banks that toppled everything over - because it built an unstable platform, a waiting disaster just waiting for any one of its supporting pillars to get nudged.

Yet, the idea that it was lending practices that destroyed our economy is a comforting one for conservatives. Because believing in that lie means they don't have to own up to the realization that their governing philosophy of tax less and deregulate more has been so discredited.

John McCain Vants To Suck Your Blud!

Look out Obama!


Turn around! Turn around! He's going to get you!

Nothing To See Here! Move Along!

For the love of money...

Can they just shut off the stock tickers or something? The focus on the Dow's precipitous decline as the symbol for the continuing economic meltdown has gotten beyond annoying. Today had its largest drop in twenty years. But the Dow Jones Industrial Average doesn't matter. The Stock Market is just a vestigial limb, a parasite attached to the real economic indicators. But those tickers make a nice visual so they get plastered all over the news.

To see how the economy is doing you have to pay attention to things like the credit market or like retail sales which...

Oh.

I think it's time I started working on my flintknapping techniques.

Ockham's Paste Eater

A most thoughtful argument which has never been yada yada yada:

“If Obama were a white Democratic nominee named Barry O'Malley, the GOP would be going after him twice as hard. But many liberals would still caterwaul about fomenting hatred and racism, because that's what they always do.”

Maybe liberals are always complaining about fermenting hatred and racism because that's what you always do?

A God Is As Big As His Followers

Artie Conrad's god must be tiny indeed.



Praying to "Hindu". Good Lord.

NFL Blogging: Who'd Have Thunk It?

Reliable sources inform me that the Lions are actually winning. When asked what controlled substances they were using, sources informed me that they were completely serious and the Lions may well have the lead in a game. This rare and mythical event obviously requires further investigation.

...and as soon as I turn the game on, the Vikings score and Detroit's offense reverts back to form. Lovely.