phamos

I'm super stoked that John Paul Stevens is going to be the one to swear in Biden. But then please, can we get the poor man his long-deserved nap??? The old liberal is sleepy, people!

OK, so I went over to Real Clear Politics and made my own map of electoral predictions.



The pastel ones are a mix of states that I'm hoping might make the night slightly more interesting -- I think McCain will pull out North Carolina and Georgia in the end (10 hour lines in Atlanta??), but might get surprised by Montana and North Dakota. I also think that Obama's ground game will make the difference in Missouri and Indiana, and that Charlie Crist's bruised ego at not being chosen as McCain's VP will make the difference in Florida similar to how Jeb being governor made the difference in 2000. In a state as crazy as Florida, you need to have the state apparatus on your side, and Crist has no intention of going out on a limb for McCain right about now. Thanks for the extended voting hours, Charlie!! But I think Ohio and Pennsylvania will go Obama in the end, Nevada's looking like a lock based on early voting numbers, and the registration nightmares I thought we'd see coming out of Colorado and Virginia don't appear to have materialized, so I think he's got those wrapped up, too. So, as much as I'm totally panic-stricken, in my heart I think we're in good shape.

Some other thoughts on various other races? I think Saxby Chambliss is going to eat it in Georgia, and good fucking riddance. I think Mitch McConnell might make it through in Kentucky by the skin of his teeth, and it might honestly be partly from backlash to some nasty ads coming down from one of the unions. Good to know that no one party has a monopoly on ugly homophobia. I think Franken's going to lose in Minnesota in a squeaker. I've never thought Franken was a good candidate -- I think it was incredibly egotistical of him to think he would be able to win with all of the baggage he carries. I think he's a relatively funny guy, and I agree with him on most issues, but 15 years of sitting in 30 Rock coked out of your skull riffing on jokes about rape...that doesn't necessarily translate to rural Minnesota voters. If it's a very good day, we'll see Darcy Burner come out ahead in Washington, El Tinklenwhozitz kick Michelle Bachmann's botoxed ass in Minnesota, and Gary Trauner win the shit out of Cheney's old seat in Wyoming. None of them are a sure thing, but man, that would be pretty awesome. And John Murtha's probably going to lose in Pennsylvania, which I'm not particularly sad about. Ted Stevens SHOULD lose Alaska, but you never know -- that place is crazysauce. Kay Hagen's gonna beat Liddy Dole. Jeanne Shaheen is gonna beat mini-Sununu. I'm thinking at least one of the two Diaz-whatever brothers in Florida will lose. And if Prop 8 passes in California, I'm going to have a fucking fit.

A vote for McCain is apparently a vote for a cold war with Spain now. Huzzah!

OK, a poll:

[Poll #1262427]

Vote now!

Did you know that Thomas Eagleton, George McGovern's running mate who was torpedoed after his history of shock treatments was discovered after a practically nonexistent vetting process (imagine!), had a Scientologist niece who tried to extort him by spreading false rumors that he was bisexual? Now you do!

Best part about listening to CNN's convention coverage on XM Radio? Trying not to swerve off the road laughing when you hear a woman in the crowd screech out, "I LOOOOVE YOUUUUU ANDERSONNNNNNN!" Lady, he's too busy drooling over Barack to pay you any attention. (To be fair, so was everyone else on the CNN news team, even those that don't live in Chelsea.)

I would really like it if people would just stop talking about the damn New Yorker cover. Yes, it may be tasteless and/or destructive, but there are SO MANY MORE important things that we need to be focusing on. As in, every single one of John McCain's policy positions is either objectionable or nonsensical. When liberals fuel the fire of a non-issue like the New Yorker idiocy, it's just goading on cable news morons who would much rather talk about salacious stuff like cartoon Obama flag burning than substantive things like McCain's theory of "magic economics" where we can balance the budget by slashing taxes, spending more on defense, and getting rid of like $2 in earmarks. TA-DAH! But, you know, that would be vaguely complicated to talk about and might require multisyllabic words, so pundits would obviously rather grunt about terrorist fist jabs. DO NOT ENCOURAGE THEM. WE DO NOT NEED 10 SEPARATE BLOG ENTRIES ON HUFFINGTON POST WITHIN 2 HOURS ON THE NEW YORKER COVER.

That is my public service announcement for the day. Now back to iPhones.

FISA: Give me a friggin' break, Barack. If this is meant to be a political pander, it's a dumb one, like when liberals waffle on abortion rights even when the majority of Americans believe abortion should be safe and legal with few caveats. The independents you're trying to pick off in the general either don't know enough about the FISA situation to give a shit, or they're libertarians who are rightly horrified by expanded Executive branch power in the abstract and spying in particular. And then you manage to piss off your base. Trying to paint this bill as some kind of "compromise" is ludicrous, even beyond your token opposition to the retroactive immunity part. The few tiny impediments to rampant invasion of privacy stuck in there are so easily overcomes as to be practically made of, like, filo dough or balsa wood or fucking feathers. Basically, what your endorsement of the bill is basically saying is, "Well, if I'm president, you'll be able to trust me not to abuse this power." Which I PERSONALLY do trust you to stick to, but the principle you're running on here is deeply offensive to a country that's been watching our president run our liberty into the ground. Trust your judgment over the principles of the constitution? Pass. I expected much more from a damn Con Law professor. OK, I'm done yelling now. Let's move on to the Supreme Court.

2nd Amendment Decision: I actually don't see his stance here as much of a flip flop, because he hasn't subscribed to the originalist/"militia" stance in the past like many lefties (including myself, to a certain degree) do. And Scalia did end up having to grudgingly acknowledge that gun control programs are not themselves inherently unconstitutional, just that the DC ban in particular is. So, I'm OK with Obama's approval here, even if I personally come down more on the John Paul Stevens (god bless that man)/bobbies with night sticks side.

Child Rapist Death Penalty: Obama siding with the minority on this one doesn't surprise me, even from someone who has been so passionate in Illinois about protesting the inequities of our death penalty system. Again, like with gun control, Obama has consistently taken a more pragmatic stance, saying that the way the death penalty is currently implemented is egregiously unfair but not actually coming out against the act itself. And I understand where he, and others, are coming from. Dammit, if I were going to give the death penalty to any one group of people, it would certainly be child rapists above and beyond probably all others. (I mean, have you heard the particulars of this case? Oh my lord, it is so heinous. I may have been more horrified reading about that rape than reading the story of the Czech kid who was ritually cannibalized.) But I am 100% against the death penalty, legally and morally. The government has zero right and should have zero power to make decisions of life and death, even beyond the structural inequalities and inefficiencies of the policy itself as currently implemented. But Obama is consistent here, and I certainly emotionally get where he's coming from.

Oh, and Barack, stop stomping on all of Scarlett Johansson's hopes and dreams, or we may have to send you over to Jezebel's "Crap Email from a Dude" territory.

Oh my god, Barack and Michelle bumping fists was the CUTEST FUCKING THING I'VE EVER SEEN.

( EDITED TO ADD PHOTO EVIDENCE OF SAID UNBELIEVABLE CUTENESS )

Holy shit, who put DC FOLLIES on iTunes?? The Sid and Marty Kroft "Land of Confusion" Reagan puppet show? I half thought I dreamed that show. Seriously, until I was about 16, the entirety of my understanding of the Reagan administration was composed of nuggets I'd gleaned from Doonesbury, DC Follies, and my grandmother shouting at the TV screen at dinner. I'll be good and just download one episode...at least for now.

Earlier this year, I was doing a really good job at posting regularly about two topics near and dear to my heart -- politics and Lost. Since I became gainfully employed, this regularity dropped off. And now I feel like I should post about both of those subjects, but I don't know if I can. If I don't post about Lost immediately after viewing it, I kinda lose the intensity of my reactions. (Although my reaction this week can pretty much be summed up as "Ick, you two suck. DON'T CARE.") And the election has broken my brain. Everyone knows my feelings about the national news media at this point. But the blogs, though certainly not as bad as the MSM, have been falling into some unfortunate patterns that I'm not enjoying. Namely, the INCESSANT emphasis on polls. I swear to god, every day I have about 15 posts in my RSS reader about various different presidential polls. And they ALL SAY DIFFERENT THINGS and NONE OF THEM ARE RELIABLE OR MEAN ANYTHING, and yet EVERY DAY, it's all "oh, Obama's been affected by the Wright scandal" and then 12 hours later "Hey, Rasmussen says he's bounced back from the Wright scandal!" and I'm seriously like, WHO CARES?? Jesus, people, I understood it before Pennsylvania because there was a 6 week break and they needed to fill time, but this week has honestly been the worst week yet. You can't wait a damn week and just SEE HOW PEOPLE ACTUALLY VOTE? Polls of white people, polls of black people, polls of old people, polls of young people, polls of people with syphilis, polls of people with pet iguanas...and every polling outfit says something different from the rest, and the numbers change wildly from day to day. This reflects nothing. It's useless, and annoying, and I'm seriously about to track down the guy who writes for TPM Election Café and beat him about the head with my shoe.

Also, Hillary keeps saying things that absolutely infuriate me, and I don't actually enjoy being infuriated anymore. I used to, actually, a little bit -- something fun about righteous indignation. But now that this has dragged on for SO LONG, I'm exhausted by it. Like, there was a little brouhaha last week about Hillary on Bill O'Reilly saying, "Rich people...God bless us!" That was the quote that was everywhere. (And of course Wolfson put out a statement saying, "No, no, she said 'God BLESSED us' which A) no she didn't and B) how is that really any better?) I didn't really care too much about that part of the quote, but what actually got me pissed was what she said AFTER that, which was something along the lines of, "We deserve every penny of it." REALLY? You really think that all rich people deserve EVERY PENNY of that money? The guys who ran Bear Sterns into the ground -- they deserved their insane Christmas bonuses and immediately subsequent severance packages? You think Paris Hilton deserves every penny of the money she'll inherit because her grandfather built some hotels, or every penny of the surely exorbitant amount she earned for that Carl's Jr commercial where she writhed on a car sloppily eating a burger in wet lingerie that NEVER EVEN AIRED? And honestly, you think Bill O'Reilly deserves every penny of the millions he brings in every year spouting the same predictable bullshit day after day? All of these people surely deserve compensation for the work that they do. But I would contest the EVERY PENNY concept. I mean, seriously, Isaiah Thomas does NOT deserve the amount of money the Knicks have thrown his way over the past few years.

She also had that fun quote about how people need to decide if they are "are they with us or against us in standing up to the oil companies" with regards to that idiotic gas tax holiday. I rambled about that a little bit over at mtbandit's journal, and I'm gonna copypasta that over here real quick:

Honestly, I doubt this proposed tax holiday would leave consumers with any extra money in their pocket at all. As many people have pointed out, gas prices are pretty inelastic, because we're so dependent on oil that we're pretty much willing to pay any price. The gas companies know this. They'd pocket the money and not drop the wholesale price at all. We wouldn't even get our $40, and, like you said, the prices would then rise dramatically after labor day. Blech.

There's an article on Salon today that's all "But Obama voted for a gas tax holiday in Illinois!" that really pissed me off. The gas tax in Illinois was COMPLETELY different. The tax that they suspended was essentially a sales tax, tacked on at the consumer end, hence an actual difference in price at the pump. The tax Clinton/McCain are talking about is an excise tax at the production end on the oil companies. Not the same thing, especially given that I doubt the windfall tax she's talking about enacting to cover the difference would even get past Congress. So it's just a break for the oil companies. This is why her line about, "Are you with those of us who stand against the oil companies, or against us?" totally enraged me. She's driving me crazy.

So, now I feel much better that I've gotten a little bit of rant out of my system. I can end my lunch break with the knowledge that I've tossed my two cents into the vast well of the interslice, shouting into the void as so many of us do.