Talking about Sick Rick, that's the November contest, since Mr. Man on Dog quit, after polls said he'd lose his home state of Pennsylvania big-time to the Romneybot. So in the fall, we have the Romneybot vs. the Obamanator. What a contest. I'm gonna have such a hard time deciding who to vote for... will I vote for the soulless robot from planet Sociopath? Hmm.
It will be so appropriate getting robo-calls from the Romneybot campaign this fall...
- Badtux the "So long, Ricky!" Penguin
They've declared Mitt Romney the winner in Michigan despite the fact that Rick Santorum picked up just as many delegates as the Romneybot did. Think about that -- the Romneybot was created and lived its childhood in Michigan, yet familiarity truly *did* breed contempt, Michigan voters gave Romney a slight plurality (3%!!!) but he didn't even manage to break the 50% barrier.
In other words, in Michigan more than half of the Republican voters won't vote for Romney. Even in Arizona, where Romney was the clear winner, more than half of the Republican voters didn't vote for Romney. In fact, Romney has *never* broken the 50% mark.
Unless the Romneybot's handlers can dig up better programmers to implement the "charisma", "likability", and "personality" subroutines in its programming, the chances of The Romney winning in November are similar to the chances of The Romney winning American Idol. It could happen, but only if President Obama got caught in bed with a dead girl or a live boy. Just sayin' ;).
-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin
Bonus music. There was some piano on it, but I decided it didn't add anything to the guitar and Irish whistle and took it off. I experimented with drums (synth drums, not real ones, not interested in being evicted!) also and came to similar conclusion.
This was done with Presonus Studio One on my Macbook Pro, with a Presonus Firebox interface, Squier Duo-Sonic guitar thru a Roland Microcube set to 'Brit Combo' with reverb turned to max, and a Waltons "C" Irish whistle. The vocals and whistle are thru an Audix OM2 microphone hooked to the Firebox thru a Behringer Xenyx1202FX mixer because otherwise I can't get sufficient volume out of a dynamic mike hooked direct to the Firebox.
There's a couple of minor glitches in the guitar and a couple of minor glitches in the whistle but you have to be paying close attention to notice them so I'm reasonably pleased. I could have done a bit of editing work in the Presonus editor and maybe a few toots and notes to do fill-ins at the glitchy spots and cleared that up but frankly don't care enough, it's not as if I make my living doing music after all.
Why Presonus Studio One: Of all the DAW software I've tried, it's the one with the most reasonable workflow. I've owned Logic for years, but I fired up Logic the other day after having not used it for a year or so and could not make head nor tails of it despite once knowing how to use it. If Apple had any sense they'd fire the entire Logic software development team, purchase Presonus, and re-brand Studio One as an Apple product... it's the most Apple-ish of the DAW software that I've used, as vs. Logic which makes sense only if you're a German techno geek (which describes the German team that wrote it).
-- Badtux the Musician Penguin
EBM notes that Iceland's government serves the people, while our government serves the banks. I point out that Iceland's entire population is smaller than the typical mid-size city, and it's easy to have a government responsive to the people when your population is so small. At which point the obvious question becomes, "if the population of the USA has grown so large that it's impossible for the government to be responsive to the people, is it time to break up the USA?"
In 1861 Abraham Lincoln looked at Benjamin Franklin's statement from 1776 -- "we must all hang together or we shall most assuredly all hang separately" -- and pronounced it still operative. The European powers were in the process of divvying up most of the world between them. The United States had vast resources but also comprised a vast area that was sparsely populated. The example of India would have especially been on Lincoln's mind. The British Empire had just assumed direct control over India in 1858 in the wake of a rebellion against the East India Company and had never had a significant number of soldiers on the ground. Instead the British had conquered India via a divide-and-conquer strategy where the various princedoms were pitted against each other and the majority of "British" troops were actually Indian troops under the command of British commanders. Britain had, in effect, conquered India almost for free, using primarily Indians to do the job. All of which was possible because India had not been a unified country at the time that the British arrived on the scene and thus the various nation-states that comprised India were easily set against each other and the loser often enough preferred giving up their sovereignty to the British rather than accepting subjugation by their hated rival across the river.
What would happen to the United States if the South were allowed to go its own way? Lincoln saw the former United States breaking up into dozens of smaller nations if this were allowed to happen, because both the rump USA and the CSA had their own divisions within their ranks -- Texas, for example, had once been an independent nation and had enough differences with the rest of the CSA that even during the war it effectively operated as an independent country. Utah, for another example, would have happily seceded and become the nation of Deseret if allowed to do so, the Utah territory had its own unique religion and culture that were in some respect alien to that of the USA. And what then? Well... the British were to the north. The French were to the south, setting up Emperor Maximilian as their proxy in Mexico. One or the other was sure to try the India strategy against a fragmented United States. And the chances of it being successful were far too great for a patriotic citizen of the United States to countenance.
Thus the American Civil War, on the surface a war to subjugate the South, but on a larger level a war to prevent the United States from undergoing the fate of India -- forcibly de-industrialized, looted, used solely for its resources, with any independence of any rump states being only nominal. But that was 1861. What about today? What would happen if the USA spun apart into multiple nations today?
First, there are no longer any colonial powers. Colonialism died with the collapse of the French empire in the aftermath of WW2, as first Indochina then North Africa escaped their grasp, or if you wish to be pedantic, with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, though the Soviets weren't particularly a colonial power (their rule over eastern Europe was more about creating a buffer zone against a renewal of Western militarism, i.e. creating more defensive depth, than about conquest). Secondly, globalism means that economies can continue to be integrated even if the nations that comprise the economies retain their independence. In short, there is little chance of conquest being an issue.
The bigger problem would be dealing with current federal programs like Social Security. Even that could be dealt with -- when Czechoslovakia broke up into the Czech Republica and Slovakia, they simply divided the assets of the state pension funds by population. This probably was unfair to the Czechs, who were generally more affluent than the Slovaks and thus probably had contributed a larger percentage of the funds, but they felt it was well worth it to get rid of their backwards rednecks to the east. The military would also be an issue. But the dissolution of the Soviet Union shows how that can be done too.
In short, what was once an unthinkable idea is quite thinkable today, if you're thinking outside the box. The USA today is one nation united only out of habit, not any real reason, and the various regions don't seem to like each other a whole lot. Why not just let regions secede? As a Californian, a resident of a state that sends far more to the Feds than we'll ever get back, it seems almost a non-brainer.
-- Badtux the Thinking-outside-the-box Penguin
Is tears.
Just sayin'.
Didn't watch, listen to, or read the State of the Union address or its response. If I want bullshit, I'll head up to one of the local ranches and frolick in their barn.
Instead, I cooked corn tortillas and had Mexican-spicy beans, jalapenos, and salad. Penance for the sinful cookies, I suppose, since all of this was basically no-fat and fairly low in calories. As for the cookies, I took them to work and they didn't last 15 minutes. Like piranhas, I tell ya!
-- Badtux the "What smells?" Penguin
Tiny Kim apparently has the support of the security services, which has now sent a number of senior Party officials tiptoeing through the tulips. Seems Tiny Kim ain't as dim as he might have seemed from his early appearances and isn't going to be tiptoeing through the tulips himself anytime soon -- or turnips either, given the abysmal yield of North Korean agriculture over the past couple of decades.
Gratuitous video of new North Korean dictator:
In other news, Newt the Gingrinch appears to think he's running for President of North Korea, what with basically proposing to take judges who rule in ways he don't like out behind the barn and shoot'em in the head or somethin'. The sad part is that there's a large contingent of Americans who break out in giant shit-eatin' grins at the very thought, who have no problem with the notion of living under a North Korean style dictatorship, as long as it's *their* dictator.
Who are the 1% and what do they do for a living? Hint: It ain't work in the way you and I think of work.
Regulations are not a huge jobs killer. Like, duh. If there's demand for my product I don't give a shit about what regulations I have to comply with, I'm gonna hire folks to produce more product.
50% of Americans are too poor to pay Federal income taxes, but they still pay plenty of other taxes, starting with the 15% payroll tax that the 1% (who don't work for a living, they "invest" for a living and don't earn income, they earn "capital gains") don't pay.
The wealth gap, graphically. It ain't a pretty picture.
Why haven't any of these Wall Street fraudsters gone to prison yet, again? Oh wait, because they're "job creators" in some alternate universe where unicorns are pink and cotton candy grows on trees. Alrighty, then!
-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin
So Herman Cain fell out of favor because he loves him some white meat (and dark meat too, but white meat was what offended the teabagger faithful), which meant that Newt the Reptile became the Republican frontrunner for the Not-Mitt-Romney position. Except, err, Newt the Reptile, aside from being cold-blooded and slimy and in general having a, err, likeability, problem, turns out to have taken over $1.5M from the exact same Freddie Mac he blasts as being "corrupt", then had the audacity to lie about it.
So now disappointed teabaggers need another candidate. This candidate should be personable, and should have a fine knowledge of geography (another one of Herman Cain's downfallings). This person should have experience in the limelight and experience dealing with a hostile press. Furthermore, this person should be looking for a *short time* gig, since the Not-Mitt-Romney job only lasts a few weeks before a press corps with the attention span of a hummingbird moves on to the next Not-Mitt-Romney. Oh yeah, and intelligence. Should have intelligence on roughly the same level as the Teabagger base.
Searching for this new Presidential candidate was hard work, but I think I finally found the perfect candidate to run against Mitt Romney for the Republican Presidential nomination:
Oh wait, while Caitlin Upton is certainly personable and is as smart as the Republican base -- yes, smart, S-M-R-T smart! -- she's only 22 years old and thus doesn't meet the Constitutional age requirement. Oh well!
-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin
Mao Zedong was a major grade-A monster, but one thing he knew was guerrilla warfare. He *won*, in case you don't recall. So here's one of his dictums: "When guerrillas engage a stronger enemy, they withdraw when he advances; harass him when he stops; strike him when he is weary; pursue him when he withdraws."
In other words, when faced with a stronger enemy, *LEAVE*. Let the coppers stand around a deserted square wondering what to do. Then when the police go home -- which they will -- *show up somewhere else*, doing something unexpected. The point of the guerilla is to confuse and bewilder and exhaust the opponent by never presenting a fixed target for the opponent to concentrate upon, *not* to hold ground against an opponent armed with superior weapons -- and the 1% can afford to buy a *lot* of weapons (and the police forces to wield them), given that they own more assets than the bottom 90% *combined*. We have the Internet now. We have dark forums where flash crowds can be near-instantly marshaled to show up at random points. We can have the 1% exhausting their limited manpower resources scrambling frantically all over the place trying to suppress flash mobs and deal with instant protests outside of banks, political offices, and Wall Street establishments. The G is about *movement*, and in that respect Occupy's camps were the wrong idea entirely.
Okay, so that's tactics. The other thing Mao focused on was the strategic long view. What is the objective? Mao's objective was to overthrow the Nationalist government and install a Communist dictatorship with him as its head. But what are the objectives of the Occupy movement?
One thing I'll point out is that the American people are basically conservative. They aren't going to embrace a Communist revolution anytime soon. Note that I say "basically conservative" in the old sense of the word, not in the "rabid right wing radicals" sense of the word. True conservatives don't want wholesale change, what they want are changes around the edges to make the system work better. So what are some conservative goals?
I don't think you'll find many of the bottom 99% who would argue with the above, other than perhaps the crazed Republican core, who repeat the 1%'s cant as if it were holy scripture because they worship the wealthy as their gods. But there's not much that can be done about religious zealots of that sort other than interfere with their ability to make new converts to their religion. But if you start with conservative goals -- jail the thieves, regulate, tax, break up the too-big-to-fail banks -- the zealots will look like exactly what they are: crazed zealots in thrall to their high priests of the 1%, to be ignored by all sensible people.
-- Badtux the Sensible Penguin
It will be read and acted on by White House staffers if we obtain sufficient signatures. Please, this is a very important issue, and if you truly care about your nation, you should sign it ASAP.
-- Badtux the Tongue-in-beak Penguin
Let's face facts: #OccupyWallStreet isn't going to accomplish anything unless somehow the movement starts costing our lizard people overlords money. LOTS of money. Because money is all that our lizard people overlords from planet Sociopath care about. Not ethics. Not morality. Not fairness. Not human decency (remember, they're LIZARD people, they view humanity as PREY, not as fellow travelers through the brief flash of time we call "life"). Money. That's it.
This is what has bothered me about protest chic for quite some time. Protests are flashy and reporters love them. But let’s not forget that what took down segregation was not morality, was not protests, but, rather, that it was bad for business (same reason the Vietnam War ended). Mega-corporations only care about one color — green — that’s it, and being told they had to leave 20%+ of their profit on the floor in the South because of legally or socially enforced segregation forcing them to turn away black patrons had always chapped their ass in the post-WW2 period. The purpose of the Civil Rights marches and such was primarily to give them cover to do the right thing (for their profits).
And yes, MLK Jr. understood this. Economics was something he used both as a carrot and a stick when he was talking with elites. Remember that the whole point of getting Rosa Parks thrown in jail was to give the black community a rallying point for a strike against the bus companies that enforced segregation, it was never about being arrested as an end in and of itself, the way it is with today’s protest chic street theater.
Similarly, Mubarak got kicked out by the military not because the military agreed with the protesters, but because of a general strike — the entire economy was basically shut down for weeks, costing the military (which owns a lot of the Egyptian economy) a lot of money. The protests were important in rallying support for the general strike, but in and of themselves were just theater.
So anyhow, do Americans have the balls to shut down their economy to get rid of these cold-blooded lizard people from planet Sociopath who are in charge right now? I’m not seeing it. Things just aren’t bad enough for that yet. You’d have to see 1933 levels of misery that forced FDR to do his “New Deal” or be overthrown in a Communist revolution.Though if the Austerians continue their nonsense, that might well happen, and quick, either peacefully or by violent revolution… unfortunately, revolutions are won by the organized. And what’s organized in America is the religious right. You’d think that the lizard people would realize that the religious right with all their “thou shalt not”‘s is bad for profits too, but our modern-day lizard people seem to be a bit stupider than their 1950′s/1960′s counterparts. Too much inbreeding, I guess, since over 50% of them inherited their wealth and are thus the offspring of other lizard people…
- Badtux the Practical Penguin
The GOP punditry, having fallen out of love with Governor Goodhair after discovering that Rick Perry is dumber than a box of rocks and doesn't clean up well for the general public (as vs. Texans, who are a breed apart as they are all too apt to insist), is on the lookout for a new candidate. They've approached Governor Chris Christie (R-Asshole) and Christie gave them the New Jersey Salute, which looks an awful lot like the New York City Salute, except with more vigor (let us just say that if you deprived Christie of the middle finger on his right hand, you'd immediately halve his vocabulary :). Christie might be an asshole, bully, and just general right-wing self-entitled jerk, but he ain't a moron and he ain't crazy -- he don't want nothing to do with the current goat rodeo that is the GOP presidential race.
So who's the next person who's going to jump into the GOP race? Some pundits mutter about the Wasilla Grifter, but Sarah Dumb and Tall ain't *that* dumb either -- running for Preznit would interfere with her grifting. But never fear, Fixer over at Alternate Brain has come up with the perfect Republican candidate for President. He's over the hill, washed up, has a fan base of millions of grey haired wanna-be rebels, is crazier than a box full of cats in a carwash, and so dumb he'd probably drown in that carwash 'cause he'd forget to roll up his windows. That perfect candidate is, of course...
Of course.
-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin
The sad reality of life is that not all good ideas end up easily implemented, and sometimes ideas you thought were good turn out to be not so good once they reach the light of day. The sad reality is that over 90% of companies started to produce something innovative here in the Silicon Valley fail. That's just how it works, not every idea works out. Even when ideas do work out, it may not be possible to sell the result for enough money to keep you in business -- I have, alas, worked for several companies that had great products but couldn't figure out how to make enough money from them to cover costs thus went out of business.
In the case of Solyndra, they thought they had an innovative way to increase the amount of energy obtained from solar panels. They found a bunch of backers, created product, and sold thousands of their solar modules. Unfortunately two things happened that utterly destroyed their business model: 1) New silicon wafer foundries came online, making flat solar panels ridiculously cheap even when built in America (and most solar panels sold here in America *are* built here in America, for the same reason that most cars sold here in America are built here -- because they're bulky and fragile and breakage on the long overseas voyage would kill you thus it's not cost-effective to ship them from overseas), and 2) scientists figured out ways to make silicon solar panels produce almost as much power as Solyndra's more expensive copper-gallium panels, thus eliminating most of their power advantage. Solyndra tried making their product cheaper and couldn't, the technology they used is inherently labor intensive to produce (unlike silicon wafers, the production of which is largely automated). So in the end, they had a good idea, but it didn't work out in practice, like so many other ideas, and they went out of business.
Just a normal business failure, in other words. Well, except for the fact that the loans they used to build their factory and buy their equipment were government-guaranteed loans, just like the mortgages of many millions of Americans. Solyndra applied for these "green energy" loans during the Bush Administration, and they were awarded early in the Obama administration, long before Obama had any of his appointees in place at the Department of Energy. Which means, of course, that it's all Obama's fault, and the government shouldn't be in the business of encouraging renewable energy anyhow, even though the vast majority of these "green energy" loans have performed well and Obama didn't have anything to do with the "green energy" program, that was a Bush-era program.
All of which is just utter nonsense. This nation's government has been involved in fostering critical industries since its beginning, when the Federalist government of George Washington imposed tariffs on British cloth in order to encourage the development of an American textile industry. And given that we have reached peak oil and will be transitioning to a mostly-electric infrastructure in the future, we need all the energy sources we can get -- and solar is one of the more cost-effective ones in the southern half of the country where solar panel output corresponds with daytime peak usage of electricity. So not every potential technology we look at turns out to be viable. So what. Thomas Edison made dozens of tries at a viable light bulb before he got one that worked, and the "green energy" program has a much better track record than that, indeed, has a much better track record than any private venture fund in the Silicon Valley. Using it as a political football is just playing chicken with the future of the nation, and regardless of your political affiliation should be viewed as utter nonsense.
-- Badtux the Technology Penguin
One of the things the right wing likes to do is false equivalences. This ties into the so-called media's propensity to report on "both sides" of a story even when there isn't another side. If the Flat Earth Society held a press conference, our lame-stream media would dutifully report "the Flat Earth Society today presented scientific proof that the Earth was flat. Other opinions differ." Err, except it's not an opinion, the Earth is *round*. Or at least sorta ovaloid.
So anyhow, a lot of us have pointed out that the Teabaggers and their poster child, Michelle Bachmann, are, to put it bluntly, batshit crazy. I mean, what else can you say about people who go around ranting "keep your government hands off my Medicare"?! So the teabaggers fire back and say that calling them crazy is exactly the same as calling Barrack Obama a nigger.
Uh, excuse me? Err... yes, Barrack *is* black. And that matters... why? In the meantime, the fact that Michelle Bachmann is nuttier than a bag of peanuts does matter. Saying that President Obama has curly hair is focusing on something irrelevant to his ability to perform the duties of the Presidency. Saying that Michelle Bachmann has crazy ideas utterly divorced from reality is focusing on something very relevant indeed to her ability to perform the duties of the Presidency. To say that calling attention to the color of the President's skin is exactly the same as calling attention to Michelle Bachmann's tenuous connection with reality is like comparing the fact that Charles Manson is a murderous creep to the fact that President Obama has big ears. The former fact -- that Charlie is a deranged lunatic who wants to kill people -- is quite important in making a decision about what his proper fate should be. The size of the President's ears... uhm, what does that got to do with anything?
Yet the Republican Party commissars keep spitting out these false equivalencies, and the lamestream media dutifully reports "Democrats claim that Michelle Bachmann is crazy, while Republicans point out that Obama has dark skin" as if those are equivalent statements. They're not. One statement directly addresses Bachmann's fitness for office. The other is irrelevant to anybody except racists and bigots. And you'd think that people would quit falling for these false equivalencies, but, alas, 50% of all people are below average, and average ain't so smart nowadays...
-- Badtux the Equivocal Penguin
So the kabuki theater in Washington is over, and, as usual, we're screwed. Not as screwed as we could have been -- the majority of the screwing isn't going to happen until after Obama is re-elected (and yes, he just insured he's going to be re-elected -- keep reading) -- but we're screwed.
Another blogger mentioned that the Senate is "irrelevant" right now because of the Teabagger majority in the House. But really, the whole kabuki theatre is irrelevant. The grifters are running the show now, and puppeting the pols who pretend to govern while the grifters run wild. The only reason one of the grifters doesn’t pronounce himself as emperor is because the illusion of democracy keeps the proles happy. But the end result is what the grifters want it to be -- easy money for them, hard times for the rest of us. Because they own the politicians, including the President. They own them lock, stock, and million-dollar contract barrel.
Thing is, the majority of Americans actually *believe* the scam, and keep voting for the same puppets over and over again -- every single one of the bastards actually got elected, usually by a large majority. And if you tell them that they’re being scammed, it’s just like trying to deal with any other victim of a con — they insist “no no, maybe those *others* are corrupt, but this nice young man couldn’t *possibly* be, you must be mistaken.”
They say the hardest thing about prosecuting cons is getting the victim of the con job to testify against the con-man… and that’s for ordinary con-men, ones who don’t have their own media outlets proudly pumping the con. But this con has heavy media behind it pumping the con. To repeat a favorite(?) phrase of one of my fellow bloggers: WASF.
- Badtux the Waddling Penguin
The above was basically the unofficial campaign slogan when Edwin Edwards (D-Crowley) was running against David Duke (R-KKK) for Governor of Louisiana. Edwards, a notoriously crooked former governor, won his 5th term of office as governor in a blowout. Edwards was only recently released from Club Fed, in case you're wondering.
I guess what I'm saying is that sometimes the ideal is the enemy of the good. What brings this to mind is this editorial cartoon:
I may think the President coddles criminals too much. But he is at least an intelligent adult. The same cannot be said about the Republicans (though I must admit neither Romney nor Huntsman is crazy -- but they do not have a snowball's chance in hell of being the Republican nominee either).
Come November 2012, vote for the crook. It's important.
-- Badtux the Pragmatist Penguin
One thing that amuses me about old-school liberals is their focus on "community organizing". Community organizing can improve things in a local community, but has proven useless at winning elections in the modern era. The main problem is that, aside from small local elections, public opinion today is controlled from the top down -- by television and radio. People largely think and believe what they hear on the TV and radio. The old days of people gathering by the watercooler to discuss politics and other things are no longer operative, I have not heard politics discussed in the workplace in 15 years because ever since the "Reagan Revolution", politics became too volatile a subject for the workplace. And most people go home and park their fat spreading asses in front of a television set and that's where they get their world view.
The only way to change public discourse today in a way that affects elections is is top down. That's reality. Television and radio have simply proven too powerful at influencing opinions and consuming time that could be used to think for bottom-up strategies to change the overall public discourse in any meaningful way. If liberals are really serious about changing America, they need to figure out some way to handle that problem, because the traditional bottom-up liberal tactics might have worked prior to the invention of radio and television, but in today's era, they are as futile as going into business making buggy whips.
-- Badtux the Stumped Penguin
So Mike "The Huckster" Huckleberry decides not to run for President. Now, the polls showed that Huckabee had a problem. Nevermind that he is further to the right than Ronald Reagan and is an ordained Baptist minister. He simply wasn't batshit crazy mean enough. Huckabee noted himself that Ronald Reagan couldn't be nominated by today's Republican Party, and someone who was right wing as hell but actually believed some of that Christian stuff in the New Testament... well. Everybody knows that Jesus feller was a no-good lazy hippie, yo!
So Huckabee's out 'cause he ain't crazy mean and spiteful enough to be nominated for President. And now Donald Trump is out. My guess: The Donald got worried that folks might start asking about his hair's birth certificate, and whether his hair has been neutered or not. Do we want an unneutered ferret running around the White House, spraying ferret musk all over the place? I think not! But seriously, Trump was never really running for President anyhow. It was all part of the act "Get myself in the news for a few news cycles" that Trump loves to play in order to keep his "brand" in the limelight. And once it became clear that Trump is a mean misogynous racist (and Trump's denials of such were hilariously misogynous and racist all by themselves), the majority of people were done with Trump. Americans tend to be racist as hell, but they don't want to think of themselves as being racist, 'cause being racist nowadays is just bad manners, yo.
So now we got crazies and a slimy newt running for President on the Republican ticket. Obama better be thanking the heavens right now, 'cause this is the only thing that can get him re-elected after a first term as a waffling wimp who gives in to banksters and doesn't stand up for ordinary Americans... in the end, Obama is like the IDF: Lucky in his enemies. You'll notice that once the IDF came up against a competent enemy (Hezbollah in southern Lebanon), they got their ass handed to them (and don't give me that crap about how they somehow "won", if you invade someone and end up scampering for home within six weeks, you *lost*). Luckily for Obama, looking at the assortment of losers, crazies, and non-persons that the Republicans are running, they look an awful more like Egyptians and Syrians to Obama's IDF... a.k.a., toast.
And so are the rest of us, for that matter. The Republican Party is the party of "If only I had a heart" and "If only I had a brain". Obama's Democratic Party is more the party of, "If only I had a spine." They oughtta rename themselves The Invertebrate Party and be done with it.
-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin
Wisconsin discovers 7,000 votes for GOP candidate. Said votes had apparently been "accidentally" left on a county recorder's personal computer, and "accidentally" discovered during the canvassing process.
Hmm... I seem to recall another election where something of the sort happened... Box 13, anybody?. I guess the question is whether the registration book was signed in alphabetical order in the same handwriting, or they got several different people to sign it when they schlupped Box 13 up to Wisconsin ;).
-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin
So assorted firebaggers and all-around curmudgeons are upset that our two party system means that any vote not for Obama is a vote for an insane Republican. It appears that their anger is with arithmetic. Any first-past-the-goal electoral system with a strong executive elected by popular vote (well, close enough in the case of the USA) will naturally devolve into a two-party system over time via simple arithmetic — if it takes 50%+1 votes to absolutely *guarantee* that your candidate becomes President, clearly the only way to guarantee that is a coalition of what would be multiple smaller parties in a parliamentary system into one big party that can obtain 50%+1 votes. So you can blame our founding fathers, who wanted to make George Washington our King but George Washington didn’t want to be king so they got him to grudgingly accede to being an elected President for four years at a stretch, for the current situation. If not for that desire for an imperial Presidency with George Washington as President, we likely would have a parliamentary democracy like most Western democracies and not be in this situation (though parliamentary democracies do tend to devolve to two major parties and a few smaller ones over time, unless proportional representation is instituted, which causes its *own* problems).
Regarding Obama, I didn’t want him to be the Democratic nominee in the first place because he was clearly the most conservative of the Democrats in the race and the last thing America needed was eight more years of conservative rule in a time of economic hardship. But look. Teddy Kennedy thought primarying Jimmy Carter would be a good idea in 1980. If he didn’t win the nomination, at least he could force Carter leftward. Well, that turned out well — Teddy ended up helping elect Ronald Reagan and helped bring in thirty years of disastrous Republican rule of America. Carter wasn’t a particularly good President, and neither is Obama, but still. Huckleberry the Christian Taliban? T-paw? Michelle Bachman? Caribou Barbie? A man who wears magic undies? You *really* think one of that gang of clowns, goons, cretins, and all around creepy people would make a better President than Obama?
This is turning out to be another one of those McCain-Obama elections where I held my nose and voted for the sane conservative vs. the insane radical lunatic moron (and senile sidekick). I’m certainly not sending any cash Obama’s way. But I’m not insane, and I’m *not* going to vote for one of the insane clown posse that is the Republican Party — and the math says that any vote that’s not for Obama is effectively a vote for the Republican candidate. Firebaggers may rail about the laws of arithmetic, but they are what they are, pi is the infinite series starting at 3.1415 regardless of how much they wish it were something clean and simple like “3″.
- Badtux the Mathematics Penguin
