Okay, probably everyone on Moveon’s mailing list (and I think that’s everyone) has gotten one of these emails (I got three) with a customized video, but what the heck, I’ll pass it on anyway. I thought it was pretty funny, but then, I’m still half asleep.
Seriously, though, if I’d voted it would have been a tie, and the Republicans would have stolen it in the courts.
These should be the best of times for a political blogger, but lately, and oddly, it seems that there is not all that much to write about. We are in the middle of what may be the most important election since 1860. The fate of constitutional government may very well hang in the balance. Yet the news cycle beast, which apparently requires fresh food every day, is dominated by coverage of the latest McCain talking points, or the latest Palin stupidity. The talking points, such as the current “socialism” meme, are becoming so absurd that I would be insulting the intelligence of anyone who cares to read this to discuss or debunk it. It debunks itself. The Palin stuff is funny, but even that is getting tiresome. I mean, there are bloggers out there actually taking the time to point out that Palin’s latest string of words about “preconditions” confuses “preconditions” with “preparations”. As Horatio might say, “There needs no blogger, come from the tubes of the internet, To tell us this”.
So, at least for me, despite the vast implications of this election, at the moment there seems to be little to write about, or at any rate, little that I can bestir myself to write about. Adding to the problem is my heritage. I was born both a Red Sox fan and a Democrat, always expecting the worst and usually getting it. At this point in the election cycle I instinctively curl myself into a mental fetal position. It’s not a position conducive to a lot of incisive thinking, or, for that matter, non-incisive thinking. Many of you, I’m sure, know the feeling. Every piece of bad news drives me toward depression; every piece of good news convinces me that I’m being set up. I’m just waiting for Lucy to snatch the football, yet again. Not the best mental attitude for an amateur pundit.
Ah well, tomorrow’s another day. Meanwhile, amuse yourself with the latest McCain freudian slip.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QnE-YJ—GI[/youtube]
This would be embarrassing, if it was not so satisfying. Yesterday, I opined that the Sarah Palin wardrobe story would sink from sight. Apparently, I was wrong, as I am reliably informed that it dominated the morning talk shows, at least. That means, if I understand the rules of cable news at all, that it will continue to dominate the entire day, unless something truly major diverts the herd.
It’s always good to be wrong about things like this. Life is full of ironies. John McCain hit on the magic formula for getting the press in the tank. It worked for years. He made the strategic decision that he could abandon past practice (e.g., easy “access”, faux maverickness, fawning attention to the press, etc.) and keep them on his side while simultaneously running what has perhaps been the dirtiest campaign in American history. When he has needed their loving attention most, the press has now gone all journalistic on him. Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.
If this doesn’t play in your browser, you can view it here.
We never heard the end of John Edward’s haircuts, though he paid for them himself. We never heard the beginning of John McCain’s shoes, though they tend toward the pricey. So don’t be surprise if both these stories are deposited in the memory hole:
The Republican National Committee appears to have spent more than $150,000 to clothe and accessorize vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin and her family since her surprise pick by John McCain in late August.
According to financial disclosure records, the accessorizing began in early September and included bills from Saks Fifth Avenue in St. Louis and New York for a combined $49,425.74.
The records also document a couple of big-time shopping trips to Neiman Marcus in Minneapolis, including one $75,062.63 spree in early September.
As the folks at Americablog point out, she spent more on clothes in a month than the average family spends in 80 years.
Or how about this:
Gov. Sarah Palin charged the state for her children to travel with her, including to events where they were not invited, and later amended expense reports to specify that they were on official business.
The charges included costs for hotel and commercial flights for three daughters to join Palin to watch their father in a snowmobile race, and a trip to New York, where the governor attended a five-hour conference and stayed with 17-year-old Bristol for five days and four nights in a luxury hotel.
In all, Palin has charged the state $21,012 for her three daughters’ 64 one-way and 12 round-trip commercial flights since she took office in December 2006. In some other cases, she has charged the state for hotel rooms for the girls.
Alaska law does not specifically address expenses for a governor’s children. The law allows for payment of expenses for anyone conducting official state business.
As governor, Palin justified having the state pay for the travel of her daughters — Bristol, 17; Willow, 14; and Piper, 7 — by noting on travel forms that the girls had been invited to attend or participate in events on the governor’s schedule.
But some organizers of these events said they were surprised when the Palin children showed up uninvited, or said they agreed to a request by the governor to allow the children to attend.
Several other organizers said the children merely accompanied their mother and did not participate. The trips enabled Palin, whose main state office is in the capital of Juneau, to spend more time with her children.
…
State Finance Director Kim Garnero told The Associated Press she has not reviewed the Palins’ travel expense forms, so she could not say whether the daughters’ travel with their mother would meet the definition of official business.
Quick answer for the Finance Director: the answer is that bringing your kids along is not official business. The story goes on to say that when the Alaska press started asking questions:
Palin ordered changes to previously filed expense reports for her daughters’ travel.
In the amended reports, Palin added phrases such as “First Family attending” and “First Family invited” to explain the girls’ attendance.
It’s alright when Republicans do it.
You have to take your hats off to the early Florida voters:
The second day of early voting was marked with hours-long lines in South Florida as voters — some with books to read, umbrellas to shade themselves from the sun and water bottles — waited for their chance to cast their ballots.
At some polling sites, wait times reached four hours. Lines stretched around buildings.
Hooray for the voters. But this raises the question: why are the lines so long? Why can’t the state of Florida provide enough voting booths and enough voting locations to accommodate the demand. The punditocracy constantly criticizes low American voter turnout, but the fact is that we don’t spend the money we should to make voting easy. There’s a lot of people out there who can’t spare four hours to vote.
I will venture a prediction that this problem will not be unique to Florida. There’s no early voting in Connecticut. Four years ago at least one of the polling places in Groton had lines more than an hour long. Poll workers are well meaning geriatrics who work at a molasses pace. They work from 5:00 AM to 10:00 PM and are paid peanuts. By the end of the day they’re wiped out. Every voter has to pass through the bottleneck created by the fact that there is only one voting list, from which each voter’s name must be scratched. The process could be streamlined if we had more voting machines and there were more check in tables. That could be done by splitting voters alphabetically and routing them to the appropriate check in table. This would mean, of course, attracting more and better poll checkers, which means paying a reasonable amount of money to them.
There will be high turnout this year, even in this deep blue state. There’s no question in my mind that some people will turn away because of long waits.
Once again I venture to comment on an economics issue. Beware.
In today’s Times we learn that Henry Paulson will be using some of our money (well, lots of our money) to facilitate bank mergers. (U.S. Is Said to Be Urging New Mergers in Banking) While I understand that some banks are in bad shape, I can’t help but doubt that creating ever larger, and ever fewer banks is the way to go. I know that this is an attractive thing to folks like Paulson, who love capitalism as long as they can monopolize it, but what’s in it for us.
Our present crisis was caused in great part by the fact that mortgage lending was in the hands of fewer and bigger players. It is extremely doubtful that we would have had this mad lending spree were we back in the days of many small banks that knew their communities and actually had an interest in making sure that loans they made were repaid. Were we still in such an environment there would be fewer institutions that were “too big to fail” and this crisis may not have grown so big so fast.
If the end result of all this is even fewer, yet ever larger, institutions, what happens when the inevitable happens: the Republicans return to power, they abandon or ignore regulations, and Wall Street goes wild again? If we only have a few banks, a failure of any one will be monumentally significant. Aren’t we setting ourselves up for an even bigger hit in the future?
Finally, giant institutions tend to acquire inordinate political power. it’s not like banks have had a really tough time making their voices heard, but if there are only a few of them, just as there were only a few investment banks (now there’s almost none) then each of those institutions will wield enormous political power. It hardly needs saying that such power will not be wielded in the public interest.
The Times article raises a number of questions. For instance, it states:
Providing capital to help facilitate a merger, officials say, is also a way to track how the capital is used. Some analysts have questioned how much control the government can exert over its investment, when it is injected into banks in return for nonvoting preferred shares
Talk about a false choice. It’s probably true that forcing a specific action gives you more control than simply buying nonvoting stock, but that’s a choice we didn’t have to make. Nothing is stopping Paulson from taking voting shares, except his own desire to shower money on his old friends.
I’m still groggy from staying up last night to watch the Sox go down in flames. A valiant effort, but it was not to be. However, it’s an ill wind that blows no good. Has the Rays lost, Obama might not have benefitted so much from having six of the Rays standing with him in Tampa this morning. Obama already has Massachusetts, the heart of the anti-American belt, in the bag, so a Red Sox victory would have done him no good.
I’m a Sox fan of the old school. It’s less important that the Red Sox win than that the Yankees lose. Which they did. So we can rest easy. If the Ray’s victory turns out a few Florida votes for Obama, so much the better.
As to the Series, I’m a Phillies fan, just like Obama.
Apocryphal: “1. Of questionable authorship or authenticity. 2. Erroneous; fictitious: “
Recently my wife told me a story that she had read at a Kos diary. It was a weird kind of story, since it engendered a sort of perverted hope. Here it is:
So a canvasser goes to a woman’s door in Washington, Pennsylvania. Knocks. Woman answers. Knocker asks who she’s planning to vote for. She isn’t sure, has to ask her husband who she’s voting for. Husband is off in another room watching some game. Canvasser hears him yell back, “We’re votin’ for the n***er!”
Woman turns back to canvasser, and says brightly and matter of factly: “We’re voting for the n***er.”
In a weird sort of way, this story signifies a bit of progress. Sure they’re bigots, but even bigotry can be cast aside in a crisis, which is a bit of a step up.
Then I read this story at Americablog:
A friend was telling me about calling people in Northern Fla. to ask how they’re voting.
One woman had to ask her husband (first tipoff, ask her husband?)… the response was “We’re voting for the ni***r”
That kinda says something about the repugnican ticket. These people still refer to Obama as ‘the ni***r’, but they’re going to vote for him anyway.
It is, of course, always possible that these events happened in both Pennsylvania and Florida. It’s a big country after all. Personallly, I’m now inclined to think that this story, which I myself have spread since I first heard it, must be categorized as an urban legend, though we’re all free to believe (at least until November 4th) that it exemplifies an underlying reality.
Obama lawn signs have been flying out of headquarters as fast as we can get them. We scheduled an event today to give out the signs we expected to arrive on Friday, along with any other Obama paraphernalia anyone wanted. The signs did arrive, but by 2:00 today, when the event started, the signs were mostly gone. Nonetheless, we had a good time, ingesting sugar and watching the talking heads on MSNBC obsess about Colin Powell. This is how I spent my day, along with doing my treasurer duties, since a report is due soon. Therefore, no thinking, and no blogging, though some, I suppose, would say I often blog without thinking.
In lieu thereof, some pictures of folks at headquarters mugging with Obama. I’ve inserted these pictures as a “gallery”. Click on a thumbnail once to see the full picture (they seem to get arbitrarily cropped) and again to see it even larger.
