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Friday, December 05, 2008
Some people are tired of the Red state/Blue state debate
But I'm not one of them. I could have made a pretty good guess about the rankings in the latest national health assessment just based on voting patterns. As it turns out 8 of the 10 healthiest states voted Democratic this year while 9 out of the 10 least healthy states voted Republican. What does it all mean? Beats me, but if we ever do get a national health insurance program it will be one more case of the progressive Blue states having to carry all those proudly backwards Red states.
Labels: health care, politics
0 comments
Monday, November 10, 2008
Electoral bias
While Obama managed a much bigger win in the electoral college than he did in the popular vote, the Republicans still have a built in advantage due to their popularity in sparsely populated states, like the one where I grew up.
All states get a number of electors proportional to their number of representatives in congress along with another two each for their two senators. This means that the "empty" states get a bigger bonus, percentage wise, from those extra two.
For example, my old home state of SD has 800,000 people and 3 electoral votes while my current state of Minnesota has 5.2 million people and 10 electoral votes. That's one electoral vote for every 267,000 people in SD but only one for every 520,000 people in Minnesota. A SD vote counts almost exactly double what a MN vote does. (California gets only one vote for every 664,000 people.) If we have to keep the electoral college it would be far more equitable to drop those extra two votes per state and make the elector count more in line with a state's population. The current system is horribly unfair to folks in big states but it's also generally unfair to Democrats.
5 out of the 7 states with populations under 1,000,000 are traditionally Republican. Their outsized electoral clout is a small but real advantage to republican presidential candidates. John McCain won 32% of the electoral votes this year but if we were to take away the two votes that each state gets for its senators he would have only won 29%. That's not a huge amount but sometimes it's hugely important. If in 2000 the electoral votes had just been alloted in proportion to a state's population (i.e. if two electoral votes had been dropped from each state) Gore would have won, even without Florida, 226 to 211.
(The people who should really be pissed about the system are Californians. You have to add up the population of the 20 smallest states to get the number of people in California. Those 20 states get 91 electoral votes to California's 55.)
2 comments
Monday, March 03, 2008
Because I like Wesley Clark...
and hate John Hinderaker I have to rip off TBogg's post wholesale:
Power Line's John Hinderaker, most famous for this:
It must be very strange to be President Bush. A man of extraordinary vision and brilliance approaching to genius, he can't get anyone to notice. He is like a great painter or musician who is ahead of his time, and who unveils one masterpiece after another to a reception that, when not bored, is hostile.
...has this to say about Wesley Clark:
In my opinion, retired general Wes Clark is one of the least impressive people who have entered public life in recent years. He is, among other things, a partisan hack.
That would be this Wesley Clark:
General Wesley Kanne Clark, (born December 23, 1944) is a retired four-star general of the United States Army. Clark was valedictorian of his class at West Point, was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship to the University of Oxford where he obtained a degree in PPE (Philosophy, Politics & Economics), and later graduated from the Command and General Staff College with a master's degree in military science. He spent 34 years in the Army and the Department of Defense, receiving many military decorations, several honorary knighthoods, and a Presidential Medal of Freedom.
[...]
Clark was assigned a position in the 1st Infantry Division and flew to Vietnam on May 21, 1969 during the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. He worked as a staff officer, collecting data and helping in operations planning, and was awarded the Bronze Star for his work with the staff. Clark was then given command of A Company, 1st Battalion, 16th Infantry of the 1st Infantry Division in January 1970. In February, only one month into his command, he was shot four times by a Viet Cong soldier with an AK-47. The wounded Clark shouted orders to his men, who counterattacked and defeated the Viet Cong force. Clark had injuries to his right shoulder, right hand, right hip, and right leg, and was sent to Valley Forge Army Hospital in Phoenixville, Pennsylvania to recuperate. He was awarded the Silver Star for his actions during the encounter.[19]
In 1975, Clark was appointed a White House Fellow in the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) as a special assistant to its director, James Thomas Lynn. He was one of only 14 appointed out of 2,307 applicants.[24] Lynn also gave Clark a six-week assignment to assist John Marsh, then a counselor to the President. Clark was approached during his fellowship to help push for a memorial to the Vietnam War. He worked with the movement that ultimately helped lead to the creation of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. Clark took two commands with the 1st Armored Division based in Germany from August 1976 to February 1978, first over the 3rd Battalion 35th Armor and then the entire 3rd Brigade.[21] Clark's brigade commander while in the former position said Clark was "singularly outstanding, notably superb." Regarding his term as brigade commander, one of his battalion commanders called Clark the "most brilliant and gifted officer [he'd] ever known."[25] He was awarded the Meritorious Service Medal for his work with the division.
Not to be outdone, in 1976 George W. Bush was awarded a DUI.
Contrast and compare.
Yeah, first in his class at West Point (wasn't McCain something like 5th from the bottom at Annapolis?), wounded in Vietnam, four star general. Nothing impressive here, folks, move along. Many people see Clark as a likely VP for a Clinton ticket. I think he'd be an even better one for Obama. I think especially with McCain as the Republican candidate the Dems need to go with a military man. Plus he's from the south. If he could bring the Dems Virginia and his home state of Arkansas the race is over.
4 comments
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
Political wives in glass houses
For those not glued to the news today, Michelle Obama said something kind of dumb and the right wing jumped all over it. Par for the course. Then Cindy McCain takes a little shot at her as well. Guess I can't blame her for that. But it turns out, and this was all news to me, that maybe Cindy McCain shouldn't be putting herself too far into the limelight if the campaigns get nasty. I had no idea that she had supported a drug habit back in the 90s by stealing drugs from a non-profit relief agency she worked for and escaped jail time mainly by being the wife of a sitting US senator. (Read about it here.) I don't really think this is the sort of thing presidential campaigns should be about but I'm amazed that this isn't something that all that many people have heard about. Can you imagine if a Democratic candidate's spouse had that in their background? Fox wouldn't let a day go by without mentioning it. If the linked article can be believed the McCain camp actually managed to work the issue as a way to distract from the fact that Senator McCain was at the time knee deep in the Keating 5 savings and loan scandal. Now past corruption by a presidential candidate? There just might be a president for that being fair game in a campaign, tho.
Labels: John McCain, Obama, politics
0 comments
Monday, February 04, 2008
What to do tomorrow, what to do?
My caucus is tomorrow night and I have vacillated on this race for months. I was an Obama fan as soon as I heard him at the 2004 convention but eventually found myself leaning towards Hillary this year. But as the caucus date got closer I still was not really sure and finally decided I was going to go with Edwards since I was closer to him on the issues. And with the Minnesota caucus moved up I was going to finally, FINALLY, get to vote for my first choice for a change. I never got that chance with Gary Hart, Bob Kerry, Bruce Babbit or Wesley Clark, but this year... But of course, true to form, it was not to be. So the last few days I've been in a quandary. So I took the Jerjo approach and asked myself, what would the crew of the Starship Enterprise do? Dr. McCoy would definitely be an Obama man, while I'm sure Spock would be supporting Hillary. Kirk, I'm afraid to say, might be leaning towards McCain. Screw the Prime Directive! (Picard? I'm sure that wanker is going to support whoever the Tories run against Gordon Brown.)
So where does that leave me? I think I will likely support Obama tomorrow night. I'm a little worried about him, tho. He seems to be running to the right of Hillary and I fear the Republican slime machine (you know, the thing that convinced half the public that a three time purple heart winner was more of a coward than the man who went AWOL from the Texas Air National Guard) will eat him alive. I think Hillary would be a more effective president, get more accomplished, and be able to go toe to toe with the toughest bastards the Rs can throw at her. But I have spent my entire adult life supporting who I thought was the most capable and intelligent candidate only to see the Republicans win by running some amiable dunce. (Obama is by no means a dunce. You don't get to be Harvard Law Review Editor without being pretty darn bright. Hillary, however, is smarter still.) So maybe it's time to give charisma a try. And maybe slime doesn't stick to someone people (and importantly, the press) actually likes. We'll see.
(Oh, and the rest of the crew? Uhura speaks Swhahili so I'm sure she's in the Obama camp. Scotty was a Biden man, Chekov was too. Sulu supported Kucinich and Nurse Chapel strikes as a woman with a thing for Chris Dodd. Yoeman Rand I'm sorry to say lies awake at night fantasizing that Rudy Giuliani will take her up to his Ground Zero love nest and unbraid her hair. All the guys in red shirts don't get to caucus since they're stuck in Iraq. The M113 Creature (aka salt vampire) is not just supporting Fred Thompson, it IS Fred Thompson. The horta is of course all for Huckabee, gotta protect them silicon nod...er I mean, babies! I don't usually bother myself with thoughts about TNG but I'm sure Wesley Crusher is out stumping for Mitt Romney.)
6 comments
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
Mittt Romney, quota queen?
In the CSM today:
asked Mr. Romney whether he would consider including qualified Americans of the Islamic faith in his cabinet as advisers on national security matters, given his position that "jihadism" is the principal foreign policy threat facing America today. He answered, "…based on the numbers of American Muslims [as a percentage] in our population, I cannot see that a cabinet position would be justified. But of course, I would imagine that Muslims could serve at lower levels of my administration."What percentage of the population is Mormon? I guess we won't be seeing any of them in his cabinet either. Of course at 10% I'm expecting a couple atheists in there, though.
(Now I used quota "queen" just for the alliteration, not to imply that Romney is gay. But you know my rule, until you learn otherwise, assume all right wingers are in the closet. And c'mon, as the only guy in the primary still on his first wife? Totally gay.)
Labels: homosexuality, politics, religion
1 comments
Sunday, October 28, 2007
Voting and income
Apparently a bunch of right wing commentators have lately been pushing the line that rich people vote Democrat. This is no doubt a part of their project to project their chosen image of liberals being some sort of distant elite whereas Republicans are friends of the common man. Not surprisingly it's a load of crap as these graphs, provided by some folks at Columbia University show. The results are for the 2004 presidential election and show how the electoral map would have looked if only voters in three different income segments had voted.
It's easy to see why Republicans try to suppress the votes of low income citizens. Republican policies tend to favor the rich. Democratic policies, not so much. And people generally vote accordingly. None of this should come as a surprise to anyone in the reality based community but as George Orwell said, "We have now sunk to a depth where the restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men."
Labels: economics, income, politics, voting
3 comments
Sunday, October 21, 2007
Maybe the big name schools aren't doing such a great job after all
The new governor of Louisiana:
The ascendancy of the Brown- and Oxford-educated Mr. Jindal, ... His social-conservative message — teaching “intelligent design” as an alternative to evolution in public schools...While the state that gave us David Duke is no doubt just fine with him I'm guessing Brown and Oxford are a little embarrassed today.
He takes over what is now the nation’s poorest, most uneducated...state.Guess that explains it.
Mr. Jindal has promised to focus resources on the state’s ports, roads and research universitiesI hope they report back to him what they find out about intelligent design. 4 comments
Saturday, September 01, 2007
More outrage at the DFL booth!
Long time readers know I'm as liberal as they come but I am afraid that this time Michael Brodkorb is right, the DFL has gone too far. I was back at the Fair today and the level of vitriol directed at Norm Coleman and his family is shameful. These sorts of disgusting personal attacks give all of us on the left a bad name. I don't blame MDE commenters for calling us assholes. Below is but a sample of the filth posted today.
Friday, August 31, 2007
Yelling at "The Patriot" at the fair
I was at the State Fair today when I heard some worked up guy on the stage at the Patriot Radio booth bitching about the DFL and the Franken campaign. I walked down front to hear just what his beef was and it turns out he had his shorts all in a knot because those heartless liberals had insulted Norm's son. This was just wrong and evil and uncalled for he said. Attacking a candidate's child was just the kind of thing Democrats do in a campaign. So I yelled out, hopefully loud enough to be heard on the broadcast, "You mean like Rush calling Chelsea Clinton the white house dog?" (For the record she was 12 at the time, Norm's son is in his 20s.) He claimed he didn't approve of that either but I'd love to see some evidence that anyone on the right took Rush to task at the time. He then told me that the DFL had up a sign that said Norm was ugly and his son was a jerk. That did seem a bit coarse (at least by liberal standards if not by right wing radio's) so I told him I'd check it out. It wasn't until they went to commercial, I believe it was for tinfoil hats or ED medication or something, that I found out the spittle spewer was Michael Brodkorb, a former Republican party hack who runs the MDE blog.
I'd been by the Franken booth earlier and seen nothing of the sort so I headed to the DFL booth and get this. You know what he was whining about? The DFL booth had a big board next to a stack of post-it notes with a sign asking people to list their reasons to vote against Norm next year. There were hundreds of them stuck up there and tho I didn't see the one in question I have no doubt that is the source. [Checking out the MDE web site later that was indeed the case.] These guys kill me. Bitching about some guy who scribbles on a post-it at the fair is even dumber than claiming that comments on blogs somehow represent the stance of the Democratic party. I take that back, it's not dumb, because these guys know it is crap but say it anyway knowing that people not paying close enough attention will think it's true. No doubt there are scores of Patriot Radio listeners today who think the DFL has actually attacked Norm's son, so mission accomplished for Brodkorb. But this is par for the course for Republicans. Dishonesty is about the only effective tool they have.
And just so you know what crocodile tears Brodkorb is shedding, his radio station says that liberalism is a mental disorder (I saw the shirt) and he himself said "Democrats are assholes. Juvenile, hateful assholes." Hey, it's right there in the comments on his blog, isn't it? That must be his official position.
But even leaving all that aside, I have to ask (about the right wing minions, if not the strategists) when did the Republicans, the tough guy daddy party, become such a bunch of whiners?
Other Fair notes
If booth traffic was any indication (granted it's hardly scientific) the future is not good for the Republicans. While there were a number of people at the Franken booth picking up pins and such we passed the Coleman booth twice and both times there was no one there other than the staffers. Not a single person. The same was true of the DFL vs. the Republican booth. There were quite a few at the DFL booth and people seemed pretty energized but at the Rep booth there were a few staffers and only two people visiting. In fairness I was by the Rep later in the early evening when I think there are fewer people in that area of the fairgrounds in general. When I went by I couldn't resist stopping and asking if they had a men's room. I don't think the middle aged guy working the table got it even when I expressed disappointment because I had been hoping to hook up with someone. I suggest that everyone who goes to the fair the next few days stop in and ask about the men's room. If enough people do it they might eventually catch on that they're being mocked. (I have to admit it's not as funny a gag as when a friend of mine went to the Rudy Bostwich flavored milk booth the year of his rematch against Wellstone and asked for sour grape flavor.)
Also when you're out there stop in to the horticulture building (where they have the giant pumpkins and such) and look for the seed art, a wall covered with pictures made from various seeds. Some of them are pretty amazing in their own right but I was pleasantly surprised to see that several of them (about 4 or 5) were political slams of Bush and company. Cheney being the root of all evil was good but the cleverest one was a take off on the Looney Toons with Bush as Yosemite Sam saying "mission accomplished" while Foghorn Leghorn, Tweety ("I thought I saw a hypotwit") and others comment. I wish I had brought my camera so I could post a few of them. Seed art is an even better predictor than booth attendance so it looks like we'll clean up in 2008.
Labels: Al Franken, MDE, politics, State Fair
1 comments
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
The last acceptable prejudice
This doesn't bode well for all the godless liberals out there running for office:
Whether they attend religious services or not, 91 percent of Americans say they believe in God, according to a poll conducted this spring by Princeton Survey Research Associates for Newsweek. Voters say they would not vote for an atheist. Sixty-two percent of respondents in the Newsweek poll said they would not vote for an atheist as did 78 percent of Republicans and 60 percent of Democrats. Independents were more open to the idea, with 45 percent saying they would not vote for someone who did not believe in God.Democrats have elected Catholics, Jews, gays, and Muslims, but atheists are still off limits I guess. 3 comments
Wednesday, June 20, 2007
Another three-way race?
NY City mayor Michael Bloomberg, a lifelong Democrat who became a Republican to run for mayor (if I recall, mainly because he felt he couldn't win the Democratic primary) has now dumped the GOP label and declared himself "unaffiliated" which of course leads some to think he is eyeing a presidential run. The linked article quotes some people speculating that his entry into the race would help Republicans and others saying it would help Democrats. Who's right? Hell if I know, but it sure makes things a lot more complicated. The best quote I've heard (prior to the announcement) wondered what it would mean to have a "sane Ross Perot" in the race. My gut reaction is to think he would hurt Democrats partly because I am always a pessimist about these things and partly because it seems to me the states where he would play best are ones that Democrats would traditionally win. And of all the Democrats I think it is worst news for Hillary since I think in a general election she will get more "hold your nose" votes than say Obama or Edwards, and would be likely to lose more of them to Bloomberg.
Of course it is far from clear that he is running. He might be doing it just because he isn't really a Republican (which is sort of true) or to keep himself in the limelight and thus retain a little more pull in the last years of his time as mayor. He might even be setting himself to run for a different office. If Hillary is elected president there's a NY senate seat to fill (tho Bloomberg seems much more of an executive type than a legislator) or maybe even as a VP for the Democrats. But that, too, seems unlikely as I doubt he cares much to be the number two guy in anything. And of course he could never be Hillary's VP anyway since members of the Electoral College can't vote for a Pres and a VP who are both from their home state. Really. It's buried in there in Article II somewhere.
Labels: politics
3 comments
Friday, June 08, 2007
Campaign coverage as theater criticism
I would like Paul Krugman's column today for no other reason than he uses a term I have been using to describe political coverage for a decade, "theater criticism." I've applied that to political reporting of all types, not just campaigns, most often in yelling at my TV after Bush state of the union addresses. "God damn it! Don't tell me how well he did or didn't deliver his speech, tell me if it was true or not!" I'll reprint a bunch of it here since many people don't have access to the NYT's "premium content." And because, as usual, he is absolutely, positively right on the money.
2 commentsIn Tuesday’s Republican presidential debate, Mitt Romney completely misrepresented how we ended up in Iraq. Later, Mike Huckabee mistakenly claimed that it was Ronald Reagan’s birthday.
Guess which remark The Washington Post identified as the “gaffe of the night”?
Folks, this is serious. If early campaign reporting is any guide, the bad media habits that helped install the worst president ever in the White House haven’t changed a bit.
You may not remember the presidential debate of Oct. 3, 2000, or how it was covered, but you should. It was one of the worst moments in an election marked by news media failure as serious, in its way, as the later failure to question Bush administration claims about Iraq.
Throughout that debate, George W. Bush made blatantly misleading statements, including some outright lies — for example, when he declared of his tax cut that “the vast majority of the help goes to the people at the bottom end of the economic ladder.” That should have told us, right then and there, that he was not a man to be trusted.
But few news reports pointed out the lie. Instead, many news analysts chose to critique the candidates’ acting skills. Al Gore was declared the loser because he sighed and rolled his eyes — failing to conceal his justified disgust at Mr. Bush’s dishonesty. And that’s how Mr. Bush got within chad-and-butterfly range of the presidency.
Now fast forward to last Tuesday. Asked whether we should have invaded Iraq, Mr. Romney said that war could only have been avoided if Saddam “had opened up his country to I.A.E.A. inspectors, and they’d come in and they’d found that there were no weapons of mass destruction.” He dismissed this as an “unreasonable hypothetical.”
Except that Saddam did, in fact, allow inspectors in. Remember Hans Blix? When those inspectors failed to find nonexistent W.M.D., Mr. Bush ordered them out so that he could invade. Mr. Romney’s remark should have been the central story in news reports about Tuesday’s debate. But it wasn’t.
There wasn’t anything comparable to Mr. Romney’s rewritten history in the Democratic debate two days earlier, which was altogether on a higher plane. Still, someone should have called Hillary Clinton on her declaration that on health care, “we’re all talking pretty much about the same things.” While the other two leading candidates have come out with plans for universal (John Edwards) or near-universal (Barack Obama) health coverage, Mrs. Clinton has so far evaded the issue. But again, this went unmentioned in most reports.
By the way, one reason I want health care specifics from Mrs. Clinton is that she’s received large contributions from the pharmaceutical and insurance industries. Will that deter her from taking those industries on?
Back to the debate coverage: as far as I can tell, no major news organization did any fact-checking of either debate. And post-debate analyses tended to be horse-race stuff mingled with theater criticism: assessments not of what the candidates said, but of how they “came across.”
Saturday, June 02, 2007
A president named Fred?
Lance Manion (is that a 70s TV tough guy name or what?) has a great piece on why Fred Thompson should not be taken seriously as a presidential candidate:
The Mo Dowd Approved knock on Hillary is she is ambitious. She shouldn't be President because she wants to be President. Don't they all?
Well, sure. But Hillary wants it too much. How can we tell she wants it too much? Why, she's actually worked hard all her adult life to be qualified and competent to do the job.
By that standard, if working for the job is a sign you don't deserve it, then not working at all for it must be proof that you should have it and therefore Fred Thompson is the candidate, of either party, who has most earned the job by doing nothing to earn it.
Since he left the Senate, after a single term, Thompson has half-assedly pursued a second-rate acting career and diligently piled up big bucks as a lobbyist.
Ah, but while all the other candidates were busy working at being United States Senators or mayor of the most important city in the nation, or at serving as governors of out of the way backwaters like Massachusetts and New Mexico, Arkansas and Wisconsin, or at founding and running their own organizations for political and economic change, Fred Thompson was doing the more important work of building an image as a movie tough guy.
And image is all ye know on earth and all ye need to know when you walk into the voting booth, at least as far as the beautiful minds of our elite Press Corps are concerned.
Fred Thompson is a tough guy, declares Newsweek's Howard Fineman, as if being a tough guy was the qualification for President of the United States as opposed to the leader of a street gang. How do we know he's tough? Why, says Time's Mark Helperin, we know Thompson's tough because he's played so many tough guys well on TV and in the movies.
This is what it takes to be President, according to one of the most influential journalists in America: The ability to be passively accepted in a part someone else has written for you, someone else has directed your performance in, someone else has dressed you for, someone else has photographed to make you look like what you're playing, and someone else has edited to make sure only the very best of what you said and did makes it onto the screen, proves you are what you appeared to be and that then qualifies you to be President of the United States.
The rest of the post that continues along the lines of "why the political media sucks" is well worth reading, too.
Labels: Fred Thompson, media, politics
6 comments
