What??!??

Is the woman really this friggin stupid? Has she ever actaully read the constitution? She might consider boning up on it between now and 2012.

And now, the end is near...

96 hours. At least that's what they are saying on the news. Hope springs eternal for the McCain camp as some polls tighten but looking at the electoral map it's a huge uphill task. To repeat, if Obama wins in PA forget it. McCain would have to win all the toss ups and NH just to pull out a tie. We could see a close popular vote and an electoral landslide.

I watched the Obama Infomercial the other night and was very impressed. Obviously it was a slick production but what he said and who he was talking to was hugely important. I believe he connected with the middle class, he showed how he was like them. Difference is something the McCain campaign has been trying to hammer home in the last couple of weeks. They can deny, deny, deny but the proof is in the pudding. People carrying monkey dolls with Obama stickers on them, Joe the Idiot saying Obama wants to destroy Israel, and on and on. One site I frequent referred to the paid spot as an 'Afromercial'
and then had the gall to wonder why someone might think such a comment was racist. Gee I don't know...because it is?

150k for clothes?

How much should we really care about this?
Ultimately it doesn't really matter that much that Palin has spent (or had spent on her behalf) 150k on clothing for the race. A candidate has to look good. This is really much ado about nothing, but so are the complaints that the kerfuffle is somehow sexist. Was it sexist when the GOP seized on the fact that John Edwards spent $400.00 on a haircut? No. It was just stupid.

The only reasons any of this matters is because the GOP has spent much of this campaign trying to make Sarah Palin into Jane Sixpack and they've tried to paint Obama as an elitist. Guess what folks, anyone running for president is elite. Heck, they'd better be.

12 days

and it will all be over. It's looking more and more like Obama will win this thing, what's been truly disturbing though has been the racial tenor of the campaign in the last week or so. People showing up at McCain/Palin rallies with monkey dolls with Obama stickers on them...republican groups using mailings with Obama's image alongside fried chicken and watermelon...disgusting, but at least those instances have been fairly limited.

The more and more I look at the polls the more I am beginning to think we are in line for an electoral landslide. As it stands all Obama has to do is hold onto what are considered states that are "Leaning" towards him and he'll easily top 300 electoral votes and maybe get over 320. GOBAMA!

The final weeks...

It's been quite some time since I have posted on this blog. For some reason today I took a look at my last post, funny how I was pretty well spot on. Shortly after that I recall talking to friends about the potential of an Obama/Biden ticket. I voted for Biden back in '88 in the NH primary and even through some of his issues over the years I've always been very impressed with Joe. He's a good guy and about as bright as they come in regards to foreign policy.

The race appears to be tightening a bit with the latest polls showing Obama with a slight 5% lead. While that isn't great news after being up nearly 9 a week and a half ago, I'm not super worried yet. The key to this thing is the battle ground states. Obama looks to be holding all the blue states and has some leads in big swing states. McCain looks like he needs to flip a state and I don't see that happening. While we might see a 5-7% win I expect the electoral spread will be much greater.

Long time no post...Iowa!

Wow, big night on both sides. While anyone finishing behind will tell you it's early and it's only one state, the results last night do tell a story. Obama finishing in first going away is BIG! He has become the candidate of hope and change in the democratic party and democrats are nothing if not romantics about their politics. I think this big win will grow into a win in NH and that will lead to a string of victories and the nomination. It's not inevitable, just my feeling. Let's break down the rest of the field on the Dem side:

Hillary- She can say what ever she wants, but finishing third has to hurt. She needs a win in NH. If she loses she won't go away, but it makes the task harder. I can't see her winning in SC but I can see some victories for her in several of the Feb 5th states, but without a win going into those states she will be fighting against a candidate with huge momentum.

Edwards- He ran a good campaign in Iowa, the problem is he's been running it since 2004. Finishing a distant 2nd has got to hurt. He has very little money and isn't likely to finish better than third..if he finishes in third by double digits to Hillary than he should just call it a day and hope for a life as party chairman or something.

Richardson-...he's done, but he could play spoiler in NH. I don't think it's likely, but if he can somehow finish ahead of Edwards he will have effectively killed the Senators hopes and likely will end that campaign. What would that mean to the rest of the race? I think it would be then end for Hillary. I think that most of Edwards supporters would be far more likely to support Obama than Sen. Clinton.

How about the republicans? Well, I don't see Huckabee winning the nomination, but his victory is significant. The fact that McCain didn't run helped him in the sense that Iowan voters were looking for someone other than Romney to vote for and they found him. Unfortunately for the former Governor of Arkansas, NH voters aren't likely to run to a socially conservative, evangelical Christian at the polls. Fully expect Romney to lose to McCain...I think it could be a big loss too. NH is often full of surprises. What are their futures?

Huckabee- Great win in Iowa...NH is a lost cause, he likely finishes 4th behind McCain, Romney, Thompson and maybe even Paul. If he hopes to rebound he'll need a strong finish in SC (2nd). It's possible, after all it is a state with deep religious roots. He'd be better off spending the next 5 days using his victory in Iowa to raise money and leave NH alone.

Romney- I honestly can't see him winning in NH...he likely would have lost a gubernatorial race in MA had he run for another term. He really only won previously because the dems had really weak candidates. He's a flim-flam artist of the highest degree. He's too slick and not very likable, not the kind of candidate NH voters like.

McCain- A win in NH will do his campaign wonders. He is the current comeback kid and I can see him riding a NH wave all the way to the nomination. The GOP isn't about change, it's about status quo and let's face it, any party that would nominate Bob Dole truly believes in taking turns.

Thompson- On many right wing blogs he's referred to as the guy dems fear most...really? Fred Thompson? The guy who looks like a broken in LL Bean boot? They are right about one thing, he has the best conservative bonfides of anyone running, but the problem is he doesn't seem to really want the job...he's running because he's qualified...ok, great...technically I'm qualified, but I don't want the job. If you don't want it you shouldn't be running. How does he get the nod? He'll need to win in SC. He's not running hard in NH (big mistake, had he campaigned hard there he could have snagged 2nd place), so a big finish in the south and in some of the feb 5th states is vital. If he finishes behind Paul in NH he should euthanize his campaign.

If I had to pick now I'd guess a general election of Obama v. McCain but the is the hardest race to call in recent memory.

Rove investigated?

This bears some watching. Hopefully the investigation will turn up the kind of things we all know have been going on, ie WH involvement in the NH phone jamming scandal, and all of the "lost" emails in the US Attorney scandal. We'll see.

Guns on campus...yeah, that's a good idea.

I'm no freaky gun control nut. I grew up in NH and have a number of hunters on my mother's side. In fact we had a couple of rifles in the house as a kid, no big deal. I support bans on automatic weapons and assault rifles as well as certain types of ammunition. I also support as rigorous a waiting period/background check as we could come up with. Would any of this have stopped a horribly disturbed young man from killing 32 on the campus of Virgina Tech in Blacksburg, VA? Not likely. What would have stopped him? I can't pretend to know, but one thing is for sure, the thought of our young people going to school armed is not one that inspires a great deal of confidence in me. I was listening to D&C again this morning and Callahan was proposing the idea that if one of these kids in the building Cho was shooting up had been armed it might have all ended differently. That may be so, but one thing I know is that if students were allowed to posses firearms on college campuses they would be a far different place. I've been a college professor before, I can imagine the possibility of an upset student griping with me over his grade and potentially brandishing a gun in an effort to get me to change my mind. I can also imagine groups of drunken young men getting into altercations with each other (as happens every weekend on every campus in the country) and these instances ending in gun violence. Is that what we need? Do we need to turn the quads of our college campuses into the streets of the Old West? I feel horrible about what happened to the community of VT, I can't pretend to understand what they are going through but how on earth is allowing students to have guns on campus going to make this better? Maybe what we should be focusing on is how was it that this wildly disturbed young man was still on campus? He'd been reported for stalking a couple of times, had teachers request his removal from their classes because they were scared of his writings and, let's face it regardless of what you think about what he wrote, he had no apparent skill as a writer. How was it that he was in decent academic standing as a senior English Major when he wrote like a jr. high schooler? As a society we have shown less and less respect for the judgement of our teachers over the years, it shows in this case. If a students removal is requested by one of his prof's should the administration take that VERY seriously and consider removing the student from school? I realize the rights of the individual are important, but aren't they outweighed by the rights of the majority? We have a right to be safe on our campuses, that doesn't mean you expel every kid who wears black or writes dark poetry but isn't it clear that the case of this young man went well beyond that?

Fox News High School Fair and Balanced: We Censor We Decide

Ok so this story is starting to get a little play nationally. I must say I do find it interesting for a host of reasons not the least of which is the inconsistency of the administration. Wouldn't it have been wise for the principal to deal with this at the front end as opposed to waiting until he received some pressure for what his students were doing? I mean we all know that's what happened right? He figured no one was going to care what a bunch of theater geeks were doing until people got wind of it and the right wing thought police figured it needed to be stopped. I love how he claims he stopped it because it wasn't politically balanced and lacked context... ok wait... instead of stopping the production you take a chance and use it as a teaching opportunity. Had he thought it through maybe he could have worked with the students and the director and set up panel discussions and debates surrounding the event? Clearly he chose the easy way out. I hope his students will remember this about him as they make choices in their lives.

I also found a certain amount of humor in the fact that he was concerned about political balance but the last production they did in the fall was Arthur Miller's The Crucible. Does anyone else smell a whiff of irony? Maybe this guy needs a vocab quiz on the word "Allegory"

Oh Newt...

Figures doesn't it? Years after leading a witch hunt that cost the American tax payer 60 million dollars Newt Gingrich (the GOP's moral compass) has admitted that he had an affair while the investigation into Clinton's extra-curriculars were going on. I find it hilarious that the guy leading the right wing charge in the 90's has been married 3 times. Once to his high school geometry teacher (who he later started divorce proceedings on while she was recovering from cancer in the hospital) and later to a congressional aide 20 years younger than he. While we're at it, look at the leading candidate for the GOP, Rudy Guiliani...how many times has this guy been married? The last divorce was very public and very messy (having his mistress live in the mayor's residence? yuk.) and in part led to the estrangement of his son.

Listen, I don't really care that much about what you do in your life from a relationship standpoint. Relationships are hard. But don't come to me from the moral high ground. Life is a struggle for us all. Marriage is a challenge to everyone, but shouldn't everyone have the right to accept that challenge? How can Newt say gay marriage is wrong? It's not like his straight marriages have a great track record. Guiliani used to be pro-gay rights, now that he's running for the GOP nomination it appears that he is changing his tune? Why? is it to protect the children Rudy? Maybe you should have thought of that before you publicly humiliated your spouse by having your girlfriend live in your home at the same time.

Does anyone really care about this?

And if they do, why? Check out this story from the Baltimore Sun
So his Great-great-great-great-grandfather and his great-great-great-great-great-grandmother on his mother's side owned slaves...is there any relevane to life in 2007 to any of this? Just so you know I feel the same way about stories about Mitt Romney's grandfather being a polygamist. I mean we're talking about people long dead relatives. Here's the thing, do you think of we elect Romney he's going to legalize Polygamy? Is Obama going to legalize slavery? At least if they're going to waste their time digging into the past can they do it relative to the candidate and not some relative who's pushing up daisies?

Rebuke Bush NOLA

I saw this posted at Spocko's Brain and other bloggers are being asked to post it so here it is:

Mr. President: Katrina Survivors Do Not Welcome You, We Rebuke You!

We live in a devastated city and you are a big part of the reason why it sill sits in ruins. Your administration has abandoned our children by savaging their public schools. Your administration has tortured our working class people by refusing to reopen the city’s public housing developments. And your administration is fully complicit in placing our uninsured in harms way by ruthlessly pursuing the privatization of local public healthcare in the aftermath of Katrina. And, finally your administration is guilty of sending our sons and daughters of to war for oil and empire just when we need them most to help us rebuild our community.

Mr. President, we, Katrina Survivors all, do not welcome you to our city, we rebuke you!

Sponsored by Survivors Village, United Front For Affordable Housing.

(504) 587-0080

If you have a blog please consider posting this today.

Al Gore Energy Whore?

Well maybe, maybe not. In a story conveniently released immediately following Gore's oscar win for An Inconvenient Truth the Tennessee Center For Policy Research
has come forth with the assertion that Gore's 10,000 sq/ft home in Nashville, TN consumes nearly 20x the national average and significantly more than the average Nashville home. Gore's consumption last year was something like 191,000 KW/Hrs to 15,600 KW/Hrs for the average Nashville home, that is at least according to the TCPR which claims to be an independant think tank though it has strong ties to the right wing. It's founder/President Drew Johnson cut his teeth at The American Enterprise Institute and notorious conservative think tank out of Washington, DC. He has also worked for right wing media outlets like The Wall Street Journal and The National Review in addition to being seen often on Fox News.

Here's the thing, even if we accept those numbers as fact (the Nashville utility claims no request for information was ever submitted)
, what do they really mean? Gore's 10,000 sq/ft. home used more energy than the avg. Nashville household...ok, here's a question; just how big is the average Nashville how? Well according to this story the average single family home sold in Middle Tennessee is about 2,000 sq/ft. about 1/5th the size of Gore's home. Of course that's only single family homes, this does not include the 33% of Nashville residents who rent apartments, condos, trailers, etc which we all no are generally smaller than single family homes. Now even taking this into account Gore's home uses considerably more energy than the average Nashville home per sq/ft so why not say this in their attack on Gore? Well maybe it has to do with the nature of what Gore's home is used for? Gore and his wife both run their home offices out of the home, that in and of itself could account for a sizeable increase in energy usage.

Regardless, Gore puchases Carbon Offsets and invests in renewable energy research so while he may not live the perfect green life, he is doing a lot to try to improve the world around him.

Oops, Deval

So just a few weeks in office and Deval Patrick has already had to apologize for a couple of missteps. First he upgraded the Governor's car from a Ford Crown Vic to a Cadillac. Now there were apparently some legit reasons for the change but the cost was several hundred dollars more per month than what was paid for his Republican predecessors car. Additionally Patrick had his office redecorated and this too was quite expensive. In both cases Patrick apologized and paid for each expenditure out of pocket. He needs to be aware that people will be keeping an eye on him.

Neo-Con Humor

The Half Hour News Hour is coming, how pathetic is this thing? A blatant attempt to rip off The Daily Show, but lacking any talent or humor. Perfect.

Callahan v. Patrick

Let it be known that Gerry Callahan hates Gov. Deval Patrick with a passion that knows no bounds. This morning he and Dennis were moaning about Patrick taking helicopters at taxpayer expense to events across the state. The claim seemed to be that he felt anointed and could do no wrong. At one point Callahan sarcastically accused Patrick of using a chopper to go rent Big Mama's House 2 at the video store. I don't know about you, but this smacks of thinly veiled racism. Here's the thing, if it gets him to events statewide and allows him to be more efficient in his job I say more power to him.

Dixie Chicks

So congrats to the Dixie Chicks on 5 Grammys. I can't honestly say I've heard but one song off the album as I'm not a big country listener. I have a couple of Loretta Lynn albums and Elvis Costello has taken a couple of turns at recording country music but most of it's a bit too twangy for me and honestly the modern stuff seems to lack depth.

They have been, and continue to get a lot of flack for including political commentary in their work "shut up and sing" I think is the refrain. Since when has art and politics/religion been separate? Commentary has always been a part of art, that's part of what draws us to it. Peisistratus an early tyrant (not the same meaning we currently assign to it) of Ancient Greece commissioned the first Tragedy to sing his praises to the people and so it begins...today that continues whether it be in a hymn praising Christ or in a song by the Dixie Chicks or Pink or Bob Dylan or Neil Young. If you don't like the message, fine don't listen. I'm an Atheist but I still find great beauty in religious music, especially when it is sung by a true believer with a great deal of passion.

Music that doesn't come from a place of passion and belief can hardly be called art.

Go forth and multiply

So I was doing my morning news scan and came across this story, in a word? Hilarious. Seriously. I doubt the initiative will make the ballot but it is a nice little poke at the right on the whole "Gay Marriage" issue. I've never understood the arguments against gay marriage, I mean what is "traditional" marriage? It wasn't that long ago that it was legal/encouraged to marry multiple wives (and it still is in some cultures) or to marry young (13/14yo) girls or to have arranged marriages (again, they still exist). How do these things fit in the the social conservatives definition of "Traditional" marriage? I mean I know Rick Santorum believes it will lead to marrying dogs but let's face it, there's a reason why Rick is looking for a job right now.

The big problem with this whole thing is not that people are against gay marriage, but that they seem so hot to pass a constitutional amendment banning it. I mean do we want another 3/5th's compromise on our record? Do we want to be that embarrassed by our own actions 50 or 60 years from now? Let's face it, if we had put Black civil rights up for a vote 40 years ago, how do you think they would have fared? How about 20 years ago? Or even today in some places. You can not legislate civil rights at the ballot box, it is perfectly appropriate for the judicial system to put it's mark on this issue just as they did in Brown v. Board of Education. I will say this, I am proud to live in the only state in the union to have legal gay marriage.

Nothing Political

Sorry, I had a busy weekend and didn't have a whole lot of time for reading the paper/watching the new magazines etc. We'll get back to it soon.

BTW, that was a brutal performance by Rex Grossman last night, no? Ugh.

Last night was tough, I didn't have a dog in the fight after my Pats lost. I was kinda hoping the team busses would crash into each other.

Mooninite Hoax???

I have to throw my .02¢ in on this whole Aqua Teen Hunger Force hoax thing. First, it was clearly an error on someones part, but the question is who's? As more info comes out it seems miscommunication is the key here. The two poor shlubs that got arrested are enjoying their moment in the spotlight. Hopefully when all is said and done they'll be released and not charged. It seems as if the judge for the case has his doubts about the City of Boston being able to make it's case. There just doesn't seem to be intent. Turner Broadcasting had to be fully aware of what was going on by 1 or 2 o'clock, yet they didn't contact city officials until 5pm, that's a problem. The thing is as more info comes out it sounds like Turner may have had permission from the municipality so it may have been a lack of communication between certain city offices and law enforcement. It is somewhat shocking that an entire city can be shut down by a bunch of battery powered Lite Brite's. Of course it can't have helped that the news stations kept referring to them as "Mysterious Packages" and "Possible Bombs".