Quibbling Potatoes

PolitiFact Truth Index, Part 5: That Other PolitiFact Truth Index

2011-07-07T09:41:00.011-05:00

This week PolitiFact announced a new feature on their mobile phone app. They developed a chart of general truthiness against time so that trends could be seen more easily. In order to do this, they had to create some way of quantifying their own Truth-o-meter® ratings, so they assigned values to their ratings with positive numbers representing truths and negative numbers representing lies. Then they took the average of the last seven days and charted the results.

The feature is almost exactly like my PolitiFact Truth Index.

What did PolitiFact call this new feature? The PolitiFact Truth Index.

Coincidence? Who knows.

So now when you search for "politifact truth index" in Google, PolitiFact's site comes up first rather than mine. On the other hand, now that the PolitiFact Truth Index is actually a thing, maybe auxiliary search traffic to this site will increase.

Not that any of that actually matters.

There are differences between our methods, PolitiFact and me, but most of them are arcane, with one big exception: PolitiFact's PolitiFact Truth Index doesn't break it down by political party. This is probably in an attempt to avoid any overt semblance of partisanship, because otherwise PolitiFact would have to defend the reason why Democrats have a higher Truth Index value than Republicans, and then they get into the whole debate about selection bias versus actual lying, and then they lose their non-partisan aura which is essential to their reputation as a source for the mainstream media.

I obviously don't have any of those qualms. I just charts 'em as I sees 'em, and I see Republicans lying (although recently the numbers have been evening out, as shown below).

Other differences between the Quibbling Potatoes PolitiFact Truth Index and the PolitiFact PolitiFact Truth Index have more to do with the calculation of points. My points for the six categories of statements in descending truth order are as follows: 1, 1, 0, 0, -1, -1. PolitiFact's are essentially as follows: 1, 0.5, 0, -0.5, -1, -1.5. They also multiply the result by 100 because it just looks cooler that way. And their average is calculated by date that they analyzed the statement, not by the date that the statement was made. So even though PolitiFact claims to be tracking the "ups and downs of political discourse" with its Truth Index, they are really tracking the ups and downs of PolitiFact's choice of statements for the week. There are differences between those two methods as you can see by comparing the chart below to the one above.

PolitiFact's method is so similar to mine that it was really easy to calculate and make a chart based on one of the other methods of quantification that I tried which was based on a 5-4-3-2-1-0 point system. So the chart below represents what PolitiFact's PolitiFact Truth Index would be if they broke their numbers down by political party.

For the week ending July 1, 2011, Republicans had an Index value of -30.43 and Democrats had an Index value of -25.00.

PolitiFact's method makes everyone look a little worse, which is to be expected when three out of the six categories essentially are downgraded by half a point so that Pants-on-fire ratings are 50% worse on the bad side than True ratings are on the good side. But it still shows that, but for the week ending on May 20, 2011, Democrats have scored better than Republicans in every week I've looked at so far.

Michele Bachmann's No Flake, Unfortunately

2011-06-27T14:12:00.007-05:00

With merely 16 months to go before the general election in 2012, the field of Republican presidential candidates is coalescing into a smorgasbord of eight or nine hopefuls who will achieve outsized media attention for the next six months before six or seven of them will drop out of the race. One of the strongest candidates, at least according to a poll in Iowa, is Minnesota Representative Michele Bachmann. But despite the recent media praise and favorable poll numbers, Chris Wallace of Fox News asked her on his Sunday show if she was "a flake". The prelude to this question was that Bachmann had a well-known reputation for, let's say, stretching the truth into a fact-free porridge of inventive talking points. But my main issue is with the definition of the term "flake", and why an insane-yet-committed Republican would be thought of as a flake.

Bachmann took immediate issue with Chris Wallace's question, calling it "insulting" and later stating how serious she was. And, for once, I have no reason to mistrust Bachmann. The Republican Party has been splitting for the last two years between moderate conservatives and the more right-wing Tea Party conservatives. With the ascendance of the Tea Party, the power center of the Republican Party as a whole has continued to veer right. Ten years ago, someone who was known for speculation that the dollar would be replaced by a multinational currency, who speculated that the Carter administration may have been responsible for a swine flu outbreak, who spread paranoia about the U.S. census, and who was responsible for some of the most egregious lies about the health care system may not have been able to speak for the Republican Party. But the times, they are a-changin'.

But this is all beside the point. Isn't a "flake" someone who sometimes doesn't show up to events they are expected to be at? Given a choice between candidate A who is spending her first official day on the campaign trail in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina and made appearances on two national Sunday talk shows the day before her announcement; or candidate B, who is going to skip out on the Iowa caucuses and took a pass on the first real Republican debate: wouldn't candidate B look like the huge flake? How about candidate C who, despite being the assumed front-runner and who was the wealthiest candidate in 2008, will skip the Iowa straw poll in August because it is "an expensive proposition"?

But then, maybe I'm wrong in my interpretation of the term "flake". I was listening to NPR at lunch, and on Here and Now, Jay Newton-Small, congressional correspondant for Time Magazine, stated that Michele Bachmann was going to try to "get away from that bomb-throwing, that flakey type of reputation that she has." Wait, since when does bomb-throwing have anything to do with being a flake? The only connection that comes to my mind was H. Ross Perot in 1992, a bomb-thrower who later went on to quit his campaign despite pretty good poll numbers for a third-party candidate. And unfortunately, I think Michele Bachmann has more staying power than H. Ross Perot.

So now I'm confused. What does "flake" mean again? It's time I turned to that most esteemed and venerated source of terminology: Urban Dictionary. Aha! A flake is "an unreliable person; someone who agrees to do something, but never follows through." I thought so!

Chris Wallace later went on to apologize for his "flake" question for being too insulting. He did not, however, apologize for misinterpreting what a flake is. I'm still waiting, Mr. Wallace.

Oklahoma Democratic Party Chair Election - With Maps!

2011-05-20T16:47:00.005-05:00

It is a long time until we get to 2012. A long time before an electoral map junkie like me gets to wonk out about polls and predictions and electoral votes and whatnot. Fortunately for me, I was selected as a delegate to the Oklahoma Democratic Party's state convention last weekend at the Bricktown Hotel and Convention Center (conveniently located nowhere near Bricktown).

The contest for chair of the party provided that perfect combination of geography and politics that I so crave. Former state representative Wallace Collins (D-Norman) ended up winning the position, but it took three votes and approximately four hours to get him there. After the first vote, a problem with the credentials of the delegates was discovered, which caused a delay of a couple of hours and resulted in a huge amount of business for the hotel's bar. Then once everything was finally worked out and everyone was re-credentialed, a second vote was held, but by then two of the candidates had dropped out. After those votes were tallied, a final runoff was then held between Wallace Collins and Dana Orwig, a favorite of a constituency of delegates calling themselves True Blue Democrats. It was initially announced erroneously that the runoff would be between Collins and Mannix Barnes, a candidate with strong support from the southeastern Oklahoma region known as "Little Dixie", an area that traditionally leans Democratic in state politics.

I kept track of the vote tallies as each county official announced it for all three votes. Then I made my own electoral cartogram of the state with the size of each county roughly proportional to the number of delegates allotted to it. I say "roughly" because I couldn't find exactly how many delegates each county was allotted because of the presence of ex-officio delegates and party officials, so the size of the counties in my maps is determined by the largest of the following: the number of delegates allotted according to the formula in the Oklahoma Democratic Party's constitution (which involves number of votes in statewide elections), or the largest number of delegates to vote in any round of voting for the chair. There are plenty of holes in the map because not every delegate showed up to the convention, including whole counties like Mayes, Sequoyah and the entire panhandle region.

Anyways, here are the maps.

PolitiFact Truth Index, Part 4: Breakdown by Occupation

2011-05-13T14:35:00.009-05:00

PolitiFact came into existence prior to the 2008 presidential campaign. It's sole purpose back then was to serve as a check on the claims made by presidential candidates. After the election, PolitiFact changed focus. Now they fact-check policy statements made not only by politicians but also by journalists, rabble-rousers, and anyone whose statements catch the eyes and ears of PolitiFact's writers and editors. Despite branching out into statements made by people who cannot be thrown out of office, the overwhelming majority of claims analyzed still lies in the domain of politicians.

Most of these claims follow the trend that I have compiled here, here and here; that is, Republicans tend to lie more than Democrats do. Below is a chart showing the breakdown of the PolitiFact Truth Index by occupation of the speaker.

Maybe it's not surprising that PolitiFact, an organization of journalists, generally gives fellow journalists good marks (the term "journalist" is used loosely to incorporate not just reporters but also regular opinion columnists and the personalities of the cable news networks). Republican activists tend to lie more than other types of Republicans. And party boosters (basically any organization with "Democrat" or "Republican" in its name, or such an organization's spokesman), whose sole function is to get folks to elect Democrats or Republicans, seem to lie at a shockingly high rate independent of party affiliation.

The biggest surprise is in the category of advocacy group. Since advocacy groups are basically organizations composed of another category, activists, I expected their numbers would be similar. But they're not. Since March Democratic advocacy groups have mostly lied, while Republican advocacy groups have mostly made factual statements. I am interested in seeing if this number changes as we get closer and closer to the 2012 campaign.

As for politicians, PolitiFact grades Democrats a little bit higher than the overall average. The answer to why this is does not lie in the states. There is no real difference between the Truth Index grade for Democratic state legislators and Democrats overall. And the governor number is based on only a single statement; most of the PolitiFact states have Republican governors; my limited database has 35 Republican claims but only one Democratic claim. And an isolated Democratic claim carries very little weight.

The difference between Democratic politicians and Democrats as a whole lies in the numbers for the U.S. Senate. Of the 19 statements made by Democratic senators analyzed by PolitiFact in my database, only three were rated as something other than "true" or "mostly true". That doesn't sound right at all to me.

A large part of this has to do with PolitiFact Ohio's rating of things that Sherrod Brown says. Sherrod Brown is the second most frequently analyzed Democrat after Barack Obama, and the most frequently analyzed member of the U.S. Senate with six statements (2nd place: Rand Paul (4); 3rd place: tied, Saxby Chambliss (3) and Marco Rubio (3)). It's not like Sherrod Brown is one of the more important members of the U.S. Senate; he just happens to represent a state with a PolitiFact branch. Of those six statements, five were rated by PolitiFact Ohio (known to be friendly to Democrats), and all five were rated "true" or "mostly true". The sixth statement was rated by PolitiFact National as "barely true".

And how do the presidential candidates stack up to Barack Obama? Not great.

But on the whole, at least they're not as bad as Donald Trump (-0.60 on 10 statements).

Next: Whatever graphs I have left over!

PolitiFact Truth Index, Part 3: Breakdown by State. Selection Bias?

2011-05-06T16:32:00.009-05:00

My attempt with the PolitiFact Truth Index is to sort out some objective measure of the truthiness of statements made by politicians, journalists, activists and advocacy groups. I have shown that the statements made by Republicans tend to be rated false by PolitiFact and the statements made by Democrats tend to be rated true by PolitiFact. I have jumped to the conclusion that this is because Republicans lie more than Democrats do. But the whole process of rating statements on a six-point truth scale necessarily involves a selection bias, a subjective process that picks which statements to select for analysis and which to ignore.

There is a universe of statements out there composed of verifiable facts that are significant to some swath of Americans, newsworthy in some way, and likely to be repeated by others. PolitiFact sees its Truth-o-Meter™ as a somewhat-objective measure of this universe of statements, like dunking a test tube into a lake and analyzing the contents under a microscope back at the lab. This would be highly useful to settle political debates with scientific evidence about the relative truthiness of each party’s statements. But fact-checking isn’t like sampling a lake: each individual would probably have a different definition about what constitutes a newsworthy or significant statement. Even if one assumes that PolitiFact can objectively pass judgment on the truthiness of any given statement, it’s hard to make the case that their statements are fully representative of all political discourse. The lake could be as big as an ocean, and your test tube may not be a representative sample of the water in it.

This is a point made over and over again on the many sites that criticize PolitiFact, sites that are written mostly from a conservative perspective. One of the most thorough smackdowns of PolitiFact since the beginning of this year is the blog PolitiFact Bias whose writers have a beef not only with the selection bias, but also with the rating process, the final rating itself, and the selection of the “lie of the year”. In one post, blogger Bryan White tries to make an objective case for partisan bias (“bolstered by methods of science”) by compiling a list of errors in PolitiFact ratings going back to 2008 and pointing out that the overwhelming majority of them are unfavorable to Republicans or favorable to Democrats. But how does he determine which PolitiFact ratings are errors? He used his own (conservative-leaning) judgment, fraught with even more partisan bias than PolitiFact.

The fact is that it’s pretty easy to claim that PolitiFact has a partisan bias based on anecdotal evidence, but it’s pretty much impossible to prove such a claim unless PolitiFact and a bunch of other fact checking websites analyze a given control set of statements that we the public could use to determine who is more biased, who is more nitpicky, etc. (actually, this would be a great idea).

But until that happens, one can only compare PolitiFact with itself. Specifically with the affiliated state sites that are run by different newspaper editorial boards and may exhibit a degree of independence from the national PolitiFact site. I was interested in knowing which newspapers’ editors exhibited the most political bias towards or against one party or the other. So I averaged the PolitiFact Truth Index across each state by political party and came up with the following results.

PolitiFact Texas and PolitiFact Ohio both exhibited an average Truth Index value above one standard deviation for Democrats, while PolitiFact Wisconsin showed a negative value for its Democrats (the only state with more Democratic lies than truths since the end of February). It could mean that local and state Democratic politicians in Texas and Ohio really do tell the truth more often than their counterparts in other states, but it could also be a measure of partisan bias towards Democrats by the editorial board of the Cleveland Plain Dealer and the Austin American Statesman.

PolitiFact Georgia and PolitiFact Virginia both exhibited an average Truth Index value above one standard deviation for Republicans, (the only states where Republicans have made more true statements than false ones) while Oregon and Wisconsin’s averages are lower than one standard deviation. Again, this could mean that Georgia’s and Virginia’s Republicans are more honest than everywhere else in the nation. But it could also mean that the Atlanta Journal Constitution and the Richmond Times-Dispatch employ fact-checkers with a Republican bias.

I thought it was interesting that both Wisconsin’s Democratic statements and Republican statements averaged below one standard deviation compared to statements made by fellow Democrats and Republicans in other states. I think this is at least partially due to the heated rhetoric due to the labor fight in that state, and specifically to the local and judicial elections that followed. As I published in Part 2, statements about elections (workings of government) and personal attacks tend to be rated false across the board, no matter which party makes the statement.

How does the national version of PolitiFact rank against the states in terms of the Truth Index?

For Democrats, PolitiFact National averages very close to the state average. For Republicans, PolitiFact National scores much lower than the state average. Since the National branch of PolitiFact tends to analyze statements with a national policy scope more than the state branches do, one can look at this fact a couple of different ways. One is that Republicans with a national scope lie more often than their state and local counterparts do. Or, PolitiFact National has an anti-Republican partisan bias. Or perhaps it could be due to some other factor. Maybe Republican pants-on-fire ratings drive more traffic to the website through links on Facebook and liberal blogs, and PolitiFact’s editors could be motivated to sample more of these statements than other types.

The debate about PolitiFact won’t subside, but I do think that the website is a useful mythbusting tool even if it does have a selection bias.

Next: Politicians versus political commentators

Politifact Truth Index, Part 2: Breakdown by Subject

2011-05-03T09:17:00.010-05:00

Republicans lie. On average, more than Democrats. At least according to the statements analyzed by PolitiFact.com. But do they lie at a uniform rate across any given policy statement? Are there some subject matters where Democrats are more likely to stretch the truth than Republicans are? I had to find out.

I categorized each statement into a fairly broad policy subject based not only on the words of the statement, but also on the point that the statement is trying to make. If the politician is saying something about Medicare, for instance, the intent of the comment might be to urge hospitals to improve care (in which case the statement would be in the Health Care category), or the intent might be to reduce the cost to the government (in which case the statement would be placed in the Government Spending category).

My PolitiFact database breaks each statement down into one of twenty subjects. The distribution of these subjects is shown in the pie chart below.

Recently the biggest subject of discussion has been issues related to government spending as both sides have waged budget battles over the amount of federal money distributed to government programs. Similar subjects have also been popular such as debt/deficit, taxes and the economy. (If a statement refers to both taxes and spending, it is counted as a statement about the debt/deficit).

Labor issues are also popular subjects in this database due to the recent protests in Wisconsin (and also due to the fact that Wisconsin is one of the eight states where PolitiFact partners with a local newspaper for state and local fact-checking). Labor issues incorporate collective bargaining issues, statements made about the benefits of public employees, and statements made about unions.

Which types of statements are usually true across all parties? Government spending issues. Both Republicans and Democrats score highly in the PolitiFact Truth Index when it comes to issues relating to government spending, which is great because government spending issues are the largest category of statements. Politicians can be generally trusted when it comes to statements made about government spending.

Second Amendment issues also score highly across both parties, but only nine statements (five by Republicans, three by Democrats) have been recorded in my database. The dataset isn't high, so the numbers are subject to wild changes. Public safety issues (crime statistics mostly) also score highly, although there has only been one identifiably Republican statement made in regard to this subject. Most public safety statements are made by local police officers or other non-partisan figures.

Which types of statements are usually lies? Personal attacks or boasts are more often false than true no matter which party makes the claim. Personal attacks are most often made in the heat of campaigns and encompass claims about an opponent's background or some statement he or she made in the past. It is the category of all the birther claims, but also of the accusations that certain politicians said they wanted to get rid of Medicare or other government programs.

Statements about the workings of government are also usually lies across all parties. This category includes statements about elections, including polls, demography, gerrymandering, vote counting and allegations of fraud; and it also includes statements about congressional rules and bureaucracy. Don't trust a politician when he/she says something like a recent poll shows him/her statistically tied with Obama for the 2012 presidency.

Which types of statements show Republicans lying as Democrats tell the truth? Labor issues, taxes, Obamacare, social issues, and environmental issues. Democrats can point to these subjects as areas where Democrats are on the right side of the truth and Republicans are on the wrong side, usually.

Are there any subjects where Democrats lie as Republicans tell the truth? So far just one: transportation. And this cannot be relied on as there have only been two Republican and four Democratic statements made.

Here's the chart:

Here's the main point - Republicans do score better than Democrats in some sizeable subjects, namely government spending and education. But Democrats do better in almost everything else: the economy, labor issues, the workings of government, debt/deficit, taxes, personal attacks, Obamacare, social issues, energy issues, environmental issues, and health care issues. The difference is vast when it comes to social issues (abortion, gay rights), environmental issues, Obamacare and taxes. When it comes to these policy issues, one can not only not trust Republicans, but also one can usually trust Democrats.

Next: PolitiFact's state newspaper affiliates: are there biases?

The PolitiFact Truth Index

2011-04-29T16:25:00.009-05:00

In December, I published an analysis of all the statements analyzed by PolitiFact.com, the preeminent fact-checking website. I looked at all the statements rated by the PolitiFact national editorial team and found that Republicans lied a lot more than Democrats. I found that almost 70% of the statements rated by PolitiFact.com as "false" or "pants-on-fire" since the 2008 election came from Republicans.

But my interest in PolitiFact ratings didn't end there. I wondered if there were more lies now than there used to be. I wondered what subjects get lied about the most. I wondered if Senators lied more than members of the House of Representatives. I also wondered what the ratings were like for all the different state newspapers that PolitiFact partners with to see if there were any biases and to see if local Republicans seemed to lie as much as their national counterparts.

So I started a database. I recorded every statement analyzed by PolitiFact National and every statement analyzed by each of its eight partner state newspapers since the beginning of March. Then I looked at when the statement was made, what subject the statement was about, what occupation the statement-maker had, how the statement was delivered, and to what audience the statement was delivered, among other characteristics.

The information I have found is astounding.

First of all, in order to interpret the "truthiness" of each statement, I had to come up with a system that would convert the rankings into a numeric system. PolitiFact assigns one of six rankings to each of their statements: "True", "Mostly True", "Half True", "Barely True", "False", and "Pants on Fire". How they assign these rankings is detailed on their website. True and Mostly True statements are not misleading, Half True and Barely True statements occur when there is a nugget of truth inside some important omitted details, and False and Pants on Fire statements are straight up lies.

I tried a couple of different ways of counting up truth points, but the one that seems to reveal the most is a simple +1 / 0 / -1 system.

- True or Mostly True statements get +1
- False or Pants on Fire statements get -1
- Half True or Barely True statements get 0

With this system, if an individual or organization has a positive average, that means that individual or organization tells more truths than lies. Likewise, if there is a negative average, that means that an individual lies more than he/she/it/they tell the truth.

With that in mind, here is the latest graph showing the weekly breakdown of the statements by political party. The four-week average is less volatile than the weekly average, so I have included it as well.

As you can see, the trend of Democrats telling the truth more often than Republicans is still going strong. Check out the last numbers for this week. Of the last nine statements of Donald Trump's that are in this database, seven of them have been lies. With this week's birth certificate release and subsequent press conference, the Donald is driving the Republican numbers down.

This will be an ongoing project for me, and I hope to continue this project through the 2012 elections at the very least. I hope to update this graph every week.

Next: The political issues that get lied about the most.

Senator Brian Bingman = Admiral Ackbar

2011-04-01T09:18:00.006-05:00

The federal health care bill, lovingly referred to as Obamacare by most Republicans, stipulates that every state needs to set up a health insurance exchange where consumers can access information about cost and coverage of every insurance carrier in the state. It is a free-market idea, one that makes comparing different plans easier and expands consumer choice. But a fully functioning exchange would require some additional investment in information technology infrastructure, which is why the federal government is giving away millions of dollars worth of grants to the states to help them set their exchanges up.

Enter Senator Brian Bingman (R-Sapulpa), the president pro-tem of the Oklahoma Senate. He told reporters that a bill passed by the state House of Representatives that helps establish a state health insurance exchange would not be considered by the Senate. "We're concerned about actually falling into the trap ... of adopting the Obamacare, which is really what we're against," said the Senator, who last month released a joint statement with Governor Mary Fallin and House Speaker Kris Steele (Republicans all) saying he supported the federal grant. Steele and Fallin both still support getting free money from the federal government to better the lives of their fellow Oklahomans. And it's not like these people could ever be described as liberals.

"My hope is that the federal health care bill will either be ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court or that Congress might take up legislation to repeal it and replace it with other free-market health care reform initiatives," Fallin said. "But whether that happens or not, the federal health care bill is still the law of the land."

If Oklahoma fails to take action to establish its own health insurance exchange, Fallin warned the federal government will impose its own system on the state.

"I don't think it's helpful to the state of Oklahoma not to have a plan in place," Fallin said. "I also think it puts us on a dangerous path of the Obama administration being able to come in and force a federal exchange on our state."

So Fallin fears a trap just as much as Bingman does. She is just responding a little bit more proactively than he is.

Oklahomans passed a bill last November allowing Oklahoma to opt out of any federal health care law due to a fear of government intrusion (and therefore socialism). The Senate president pro-tem thinks that accepting money from the federal government would trap the state into accepting government intrusion (and therefore socialism). The Governor thinks that not creating an exchange would lead to government intrusion (and therefore socialism).

Our governor, our state leaders, and the majority of state voters are all a bunch of Admiral Ackbars, too blinded by right-wing dogma to see that the whole point of Obamacare is to offer choices to consumers to get us a step closer to universal health insurance coverage.

Lies, and the Lying Liars ...

2010-12-22T14:55:00.017-06:00

"Reality has a well-known liberal bias" - Stephen Colbert

So I was thinking about that recent study that found that watching Fox News makes you stupid, as the headlines put it. And it got me thinking about how it's a really insulting thing to say that those who watch Fox News are actually idiots. I mean, the study is actually about misinformation and the 2010 election (that's actually its title) and not just about Fox News viewers. Sure, 63% of everyday Fox News viewers thought that it was unclear where the president was born, but that might be because 64% of Republicans share the same view. Fox News may lie directly to their customers, but they may also just be broadcasting and repeating Republican lies.

So this got me thinking about Republican lies. I'm pretty sure there are a lot of them. Like, a whole lot. It seems like Republicans lie more often than do Democrats. But I recognize that I am a liberal and I am a Democrat, and so when I hear about statements made by conservative Republicans, I notice the lies more prominently than your average American. So I decided to go to politifact.com (the non-partisan fact-checking project of the St. Petersburg Times that won a Pulitzer Prize in 2009) and count up all the lies to see who lies more: Republicans or Democrats.

The editors of Politifact.com spend a lot of time sorting out controversial statements by how much truth they contain, always recognizing that, in politics, truth is never black-and-white. So they place statements into the following truth categories: "true", "mostly true", "half true", "barely true", "false", and "pants on fire."

Politifact.com has been around since the early stages of the 2008 presidential campaign, so that meant there were a lot of statements to count. I counted each statement made by a human or organization, and I did not count any chain emails or statements made by "bloggers". Journalists and pundits counted towards partisan totals only if it was clear which party they sympathized with (i.e. Rachel Maddow = Democrat, Glenn Beck = Republican). Joe Liebermann counted as a Democrat, even when he was bashing Obama; and Arlen Spector counted as a Democrat only if he made the statement after he switched parties. Bernie Sanders and Ralph Nader were put in the blue category: Bob Barr and the Cato Institute in the red.

There is surprising parity in the number of statements analyzed by Politifact.com. Politifact.com has chosen an almost equal number of Democratic and Republican statements over the years.

But of those statements, Republicans have told more lies than Democrats. And more Democratic statements have been rated "true" and "mostly true" than Republican statements.

A statement made by a Democrat is most likely going to be in the "true" category (25%). A statement made by a Republican is most likely going to be in the "false" category (23%).

A true or mostly true statement is more likely to come from a Democrat than a Republican by a margin of 54% to 44%.

And throughout Barack Obama's presidency and all the policy debates about health care, the stimulus and everything else, the margin has been fairly consistent: 54% for Democrats to 46% for Republicans.

However, a "false" or "pants-on-fire" statement is much more likely to come from a Republican source than a Democratic source.

And the margin has only increased during Obama's tenure as president. Nearly 7 out of 10 lies categorized by Politifact.com have been Republican lies. Think back to the policy debates during this time. The health care debate (death panels), the stimulus package (no jobs created), all the tax policy stuff (tax hikes); of all the lies that were produced during this time, almost 70% of them came from Republicans.

When one isolates the worst, most egregious lies, the "pants-on-fire" lies, one finds that the liars are overwhelmingly Republican.

And 87% of the worst, foulest, stankiest lies of the past two years originate from members of the Republican Party.

My Letter to the Senators: An Exercise in Futility

2010-12-09T09:49:00.003-06:00

Below is my letter to Oklahoma's U.S. Senators Tom Coburn and Jim Inhofe. In it, I try to lay out a conservative argument in favor of the DREAM Act. I probably should have made the word "taxpayers" bold and capitalized.

_____________________________

Dear Senator (Coburn / Inhofe),

I am writing you today to please consider voting in favor of the DREAM Act. You may have heard many arguments both for and against the proposed bill, as have I, but one argument that has not been given a lot of play is this one:

We taxpayers have been subsidizing the education of immigrants without status for years in the public education system. The whole point of public financing of education is that we all share a common belief that an educated population is an economically productive population; it is worth taxpayer funding for the betterment of the common good. And we hear stories all the time about the many immigrants without status in our society who are honor students destined for success in college and beyond.

But our current immigration policy mandates that we deport these students right at the time in their lives when our nation would start to be able to reap the benefits of the education we taxpayers have financed for so long.

How can it make sense to give away to some other country the future economic power generated by these individuals? Why would we want to prevent graduates of our colleges and universities from using their knowledge to form a better society right here in the United States?

Please don’t let trillions of dollars of taxable income go to waste. Please don’t exacerbate “brain drain” by forcing new graduates and young professionals to leave the country.

Please vote in favor of the DREAM Act.

Don't Believe the Pledge: Social Issues Still Dominate the Republican Agenda

2010-12-01T11:48:00.009-06:00

One of the sites that I visit several times a day is the Slatest, Slate.com's picks for the dozen most important or newsworthy items at any given time. Today, this morning, I went there and discovered that item number one was this story about how all Senate Republicans have now signed a pledge stating that they will block all Democratic legislation unrelated to tax cuts or government spending in the current "lame duck" session of congress, according to the AP.

To an idiot, this pledge would seem to fit right in line with the Republican Party's current focus on economic issues rather than social issues. Ever since the economy tanked and the Tea Party gained national prominence, Republicans have made it seem like they are more eager to talk about taxing and spending rather than divisive social issues. But the real idea behind the Republicans' pledge isn't a call for congress to focus more on the economy: it's a call to stop progress that Democrats are trying to make towards ending discriminatory government policies.

There is not and has never been much of a threat that congress will refuse to act on the sunsetting of the Bush tax cuts. News agencies and the public have been talking about this for months, even since before the election, and every move in the negotiations between Democrats and Republicans has been high-profile. And also, congress is not full of idiots: our elected senators and representatives do have the mental ability to discuss more than one issue per session of congress. So the whole point of the pledge is that Republicans have vowed to block the Democrats' two important social policy bills: the DREAM Act and repeal of Don't Ask Don't Tell. The whole point of this pledge therefore is not to advance discussion on the economy, but rather to advance a social agenda that discriminates against gay people in the military and perpetuates the injustice of deporting non-citizen U.S. college grads and military servicepeople.

The hypocrisy doesn't stop there.

I noticed some of the other items on the Slatest were also about Republicans. The number 4 item was a story about an art exhibit at the Smithsonian that was pulled because Republican lawmakers were offended at its content. The number 10 item was a story about how the chief of staff of incoming House Speaker John Boehner had a meeting with a rabid right-wing anti-abortion activist named Randall Terry, who has called for the murder of abortion doctors. And the number 6 item was a story about Julian Assange, who Republican Representative Peter King has labeled as a terrorist.

Censorship of art, abortion activism, calling people terrorists: all of these things are social issues, and all of these things are foremost on the minds of prominent Republicans.

You would think the newly fiscally-focused GOP would be able to put aside their social views and seriously discuss a measure that would generate $3.6 trillion dollars over the next 40 years of new taxable income for America. One would think Republicans would be open to hearing about ways the military could retain thousands of honorable soldiers while simultaneously increasing the number of college campuses in which ROTC groups will be allowed to operate, not to mention the cost and efficiency savings that would come from not having to investigate the personal lives of soldiers. And one would think that any politician would think twice about blocking measures that have the support of 58% (DADT repeal) and 70% (DREAM Act) of Americans.

By signing the pledge of non-cooperation, Senate Republicans have made a choice. They have chosen to allow social issues to continue to dominate their party, even if those social policies would create significant economic good. They've placed social issues above economic issues, even as they claim that they are doing the exact opposite.

Friday Post: "Compassion" and "Sensitivity" are Partisan Issues in the Oklahoma House

2010-11-18T14:51:00.006-06:00

The swearing-in ceremony for the recently-elected state representatives was held at the Oklahoma capitol this week, and a reverend from Shawnee, Dr. James Hewitt, was asked to perform the invocation. This invocation is getting some coverage in conservative blogs this week because of some statements that Rev. Hewitt made, such as the following:

- "Give wisdom, sensitivity to curcumstances, and compassion to our legislators for these who labor and live among us without appropriate authorization"

- "May Oklahoma become a model for our nation of just, fair, and functional policies for immigration."

The minister also asked that God enlighten the legislators so they don't victimize the tribal peoples of Oklahoma.

These statements apparently made some legislators, including Representative Randy Terrill, a little bit peeved. But these legislators didn't want to present their grievances to the new speaker-designate Kris Steele (R-Shawnee) because, as it turns out, Kris Steele is an associate minister at Rev. Hewitt's church, and they feared retaliation by Speaker Steele in making his House committee assignments. So they got together and bitched to a conservative talk radio reporter instead, I guess.

Some of Randy Terrill's friends' complaints are that the invocation is supposed to be neutral, and that they're not supposed to refer to any issue before the legislature. Which means, apparently, that "victimizing" the tribal peoples of Oklahoma and creating disfunctional policies for immigration are two agenda items on the legislative agenda next year. Not surprising.

_________

Ladies and gentlemen, the most ridiculous letter to the editor in opposition to Muneer Awad's well-publicized lawsuit against State Question 755, entitled "Banning Sharia Law Similar to Banning Polygamy":

Muneer Awad referred to Sharia as a set of rules that “guide” the daily life of Muslims. He further said that no government should “intrude on any religious
community's right to practice its faith.” Would this exclude a ban on polygamy? Should Kalona, Iowa, allow Amish law? Should the Wiccan community be as respected as the Muslim community?

The Constitution wasn't written to protect minority (or community) rights. It was written to protect individual rights. I can no longer exercise the way of life in which I grew up. I can't smoke where I please. A child can't ride on his mother's lap in the front seat, as I did. I have to turn packages in stores around to read the English labels. Rarely can I eat in restaurants for the spices in the food, adapted to accommodate alien palates. People neither dress nor act in the decent manner expected when I was young.

I had to adapt to the society around me. So should Awad.

The Constitution certainly does get in the way of individual rights, doesn't it? Like the right to endanger one's own child, the right to not be confronted with Spanish, the right to inflict carcinogenic pollutants on your fellow diners, and, most importantly, the right to eat bland food, dammit!

________

Lastly, an amazing map of Oklahoma City's racial segregation.

Friday Post: Simpson-Bowles Report

2010-11-12T12:59:00.008-06:00

The Simpson-Bowles report: I don't know what to make of it. Would it be better used for toilet paper or for firewood kindling?

Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles are co-heads of a bipartisan commission set up by President Barack Obama to find some unpopular ideas to reduce the federal deficit, and the draft report they released is actually intended for debate with the other members of the commission; in other words, the report isn't yet a policy idea. The reason for convening this fiscal commission, if I recall, was so that the commission would develop a plan to deal with an unpopular problem, and so that legislators could then merely "sign on" to the plan, rather than having to "debate the merits" of action or, even worse, be forced to "grow a pair" and make a plan themselves. In order for the Simpson-Bowles plan to have worked, it would have had to make cuts in spending AND raise tax rates in roughly equal proportions in order to be bipartisan. But bipartisan it most certainly is not.

The draft report makes a lot of cuts in spending, and even tinkers with social security. But it fails to make tax increases. In fact, as Paul Krugman points out, the goals of tax reform according to the report are primarily to lower tax rates across the board. Deficit reduction, what I thought was the whole purpose of this commission, is relegated to an afterthought. While it lowers the tax rate for the poor from 10% to 8%, it lowers the tax rate for the rich from 35% to 23%. That's two percent for the poor and 12% for the rich.

The commission, ostensibly all about deficit reduction, also fails to talk seriously about the rise in the cost of health care, which is the reason that Medicare and Medicaid expenditures will rise sharply in the future. Kevin Drum of Mother Jones makes the point that any deficit reducing commission without a proposal to deal with Medicare and Medicaid cannot be taken seriously, becuase it isn't federal employee salaries or admission prices to the National Zoo that's causing our future debt problem.

I would like the full commission to keep one key tax increase in the proposal: the gas tax. It is a tax that is badly in need of not only an increase, but also to be indexed to the actual price of gas so that it can do what it was intended to do: pay for highways without an expenditure from the general treasury. It's an idea whose time, I hope, has finally come, for more than just personal reasons.

Script Font and Republican Women

2010-11-09T15:36:00.015-06:00

The three campaign signs/emblems above all share a few things in common. All three were election signs I saw over and over in the runup to the election. All three candidates (Mary Fallin for governor, Janet Barresi for state schools superintendent, and Sharon Parker for state senate district 16) are women. All three are Oklahomans. All three are Republicans. And all three use a script font for their first names.

I have a tendency to pay attention to yard signs. I like noticing the color combinations of signs, and I commend those who use colors other than red, white and blue. I like examining the candidates' choices of fonts. We had two district judges in Norman this year who used an all-caps Gotham font with a blue background, consciously evoking the campaign signage of Barack Obama. So I took notice when I saw yard signs for the above campaigns that featured script font, which is an unusual font for campaign signage.

Yard signs generally try to convey a simple message with words: candidate name, office the candidate is running for, and occasionally party affiliation. Everything else on the sign is meant to convey a characteristic that the candidate is going for: bold, strong, effective leader, patriot, statesman. This is why few campaign signs stray from red, white and blue colors, and even fewer stray from strong easily-readible fonts. But the Fallin, Barresi and Parker campaigns strayed from the norm and used script font. Script font gives the impression of femininity and elegance, which can be a nice change of pace in a genre that tends to reward masculinity and bluntness.

Mary Fallin and Janet Barresi were matched up against Democratic women: Jari Askins and Susan Paddack. Neither of their Democratic opponents used script font on their yard signs, although from the picture to the right, it does appear that Susan Paddack had some kind of script font thing for her first name on larger signs, although it's so tiny I don't know why she bothered.

Republican Sharon Parker's opponent was male (he didn't use script font), but running for the state house seat in Norman was female Democrat Emily Virgin. Virgin also refrained from script font. Did they not feel the need to convey to voters their femininity?

This got me thinking: are Republican women more likely to use script font than Democratic women? The answer: yes!

Republican Sharron Angle, candidate for U.S. Senate in Nevada, used an array of fonts on her signs, but her first name is in a script font on top of her angled "ANGLE".

Republican Jan Brewer, governor of Arizona, scripts the "Jan".

Republican Carly Fiorina, candidate for senator in California, did not use a script font, but she does use a skinny-letter lowercase sans serif that conveys the image of "fashion magazine".

Republican Kristi Noem, congresswoman-elect from South Dakota, uses a very modern fashionable font for her name, but girlies up the "for Congress" part of her sign. I found quite a few campaign signs that had a script font for the "for" part of their sign, which was used by both Democrats and Republicans, but no one else had the balls to use script font for "Congress".

Washington Republicans - congresswoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers's signs feature the name "Cathy" scrawled across the top half of the sign. This photograph found on McMorris Rodgers's website features two other Republicans with script font, senate candidate Dino Rossi and some county commissioner named Mark Richards. This picture must have been taken in the 2008 campaign, because Dino Rossi is listed as running for governor and not senator. He has since changed and modernized his typography.

I can't find any other examples of script type face in political signage from this most recent election, but I think it's strange that it's Republican women who are almost exclusively the candidates to use it. By no means are script-font-users the majority among women candidates or even Republican women candidates, but I would like to know why there are more Republicans who use it than Democrats.

Friday Post: the Red Shift of 2010

2010-11-05T15:33:00.009-05:00

In 2006, Republicans were melons being evaluated for ripeness. In 2010, Democrats were given a floor treatment to seal out moisture. But instead of accepting the defeat and moving on, some Democrats are finding small victories on which to console themselves. Ooh, many (not all) of the Tenthers (Republicans who think that most things the federal government does is unconstitutional) lost! Hey, Jim Inhofe said Republicans were going to control the U.S. Senate. Joke's on you! The Tea Party actually cost Republicans control of the Senate! And look, now we don't have to worry about pacifying those pesky blue dogs anymore!

No, all of that stuff isn't important. The 2010 midterms showed that the country was unhappy with Democrats generally. The top two issues were the economy and the new federal health care law. We lost because the economy sucks and people are scared of Obamacare.

Here's the actual good news for Democrats: the economy will get better, and most of the health care provisions will be tough to repeal. The economy is already getting better, as evidenced by this morning's jobs report. The results until now had been less noticeable because it is harder to perceive benefit from a saved job as it does from a created job, even though they both take the same amount of capitalistic energy.

And as we've all heard, the individual provisions of the health care law poll much better than the comprehensive, easy-to-slander whole. Lawmakers will tinker with it, because that's what lawmakers do. But now that it is law, it will be very difficult to find enough votes to take away key provisions like policy rescision, college students on parents plans, and the closing of the prescription plan doughnut hole. And if future speaker John Boehner is serious about closing the deficit, he won't be able to rescind or delay the mishmash of taxes and spending cuts that make Obamacare a net surplus for the country. Two years of legislative dominance for Democrats clearly wasn't enough, but it's not like those two years didn't bear any Progressive fruit.

And now that the Republicans have gained a chamber of Congress, they will have more stake in governing. They won't be able to simply snipe from well-secured positions in the bunkers of Fox News anymore.

Perhaps the best news of all: Republicans don't actually control much. President Obama still wields executive control and with it a veto pen. Harry Reid will amazingly still be majority leader of the Senate and will use his power to schedule bills for a floor vote like Project Runway contestants use the Piperlime.com wall: thoughtfully. Most likely any successful legislation that comes out of the House of Representatives will have to be either a) moderate, or b) mostly irrelevant. Which means sweeping legislative change is probably out for the next two years. And if it leads to questions like "what the fuck has Obama done so far?", well, there's a website that can answer that.

Vote for the Chicken!

2010-11-01T15:55:00.008-05:00

I was looking at my sample ballot today from the Cleveland County Election Board website so I could get a handle on the myriad statewide races that I have not bothered to look into yet.

First thing I noticed was the choice between the flying eagle (Republicans) and the strutting chicken (Democrats) for the straight party voting option. In almost every other state, the official image for the Democratic Party is the donkey. Oklahoma is one of only a few states to use a rooster as the Democrats' symbol, which apparently has a long and storied history that I read about here. As we are a change-averse state, it doesn't surprise me to see an icon from a different time still surviving on our ballots.

Anyway, here are the choices for elected offices on my sample ballot.

Governor:

Mary Fallin - Republican

Jari Askins - Democrat

The highest profile of all the races, I won't waste time talking about them here.

My vote: Askins

Lieutenant Governor:

Todd Lamb - Republican

Kenneth Corn - Democrat

Richard Prawdzienski - Independent

Todd Lamb and Kenneth Corn are both in the state legislature. Richard Prawdzienski is actually a Libertarian. In an Oklahoma Gazette profile, Corn emphasized jobs, education, and lobbying reform, while Lamb emphasized jobs, economic development and tort reform. In a League of Women Voters profile, Prawdzienski emphasized limited government, business creativity and liquor store reform. Corkscrews for the people!

My vote: Corn, but without much enthusiasm.

State Auditor and Inspector:

Gary Jones - Republican

Steve Burrage - Democrat

Steve Burrage is the incumbent State Auditor, having been nominated by Brad Henry to fill a vacancy caused by corruption charges. Steve Burrage got the endorsement from Brad Henry, of course, but also from the Daily Oklahoman, a newspaper whose editorial board usually recommends Republicans. His challenger is Gary Jones, who has unsuccessfully run for this office two other times. Apparently this campaign is nasty, according to Jones and the Republican news site The McCarville Report. Among Jones's claims is that Burrage said he was thrown out of office by the voters. Jones retorts that he merely lost an election. Hmm.

My vote: Burrage. If a Democrat can get an endorsement from the Oklahoma, they must be doing something right.

Attorney General:

Scott Pruitt - Republican

Jim Priest - Democrat

My vote: Priest.

State Treasurer:

Ken Miller - Republican

Stephen E Covert - Democrat

How unfortunate for the Democrats to have a candidate named Covert. If they try to donate to his campaign, the headlines will surely read "Democrats Fund Covert Operation". Perhaps a lack of funding explains why Covert's official website looks like a Geocities page from 1996. Ken Miller, a state legislator, is well-funded and has a professional website proclaiming his dislike for spending of any kind, and he will let his conservative values guide him. Current state treasurer Scott Meachem, a Democrat, is not running for another term and has endorsed Miller, a Republican. But Stephen E. Covert is the only one to point out the constitutional limitations on the office of the treasurer, pointing out that his opponent is going around acting like he can make policy. And Covert is, as he puts it, the only CPA in the race, even if his low-technology style does give his official campaign photo a passing resemblence to the stapler guy from Office Space. Can't you just picture Covert fondling a Swingline in his left hand?

My vote: Covert

Superintendent of Public Instruction
Janet Barresi - Republican
Susan Paddack - Democrat
Richard E Cooper - Independent

Barresi is the founder of two successful charter schools and is also a dentist. Paddack is a state senator from Ada and a former science teacher. Cooper is an educator also from Ada. Barresi is for expansion of charter schools, testing reform, and local control of schools. She is adamantly opposed to State Question 744, although she does misrepresent its accountability measures (Barresi thinks there will be no invoice telling how the money is spent, but one of the few things SQ 744 does mandate is that there will be a report published telling how the money is spent). Paddack is hard to pin down. She has refused to take an official position on SQ 744. Cooper is all for SQ 744. According to this Oklahoma Gazette profile, none of them seem to have a response to the perceived exodus of teachers to other higher-paying states (Paddack: Please stay! Barresi: We'll get rid of some onerous rules for you. Cooper: We'll get creative about job titles.) I heard part of a debate among the three candidates this past week as I was waiting for a tow truck to show up, and I found Paddack and Barresi to be well-spoken and assured, even though it was still hard to determine exactly what Paddack was for. For what it's worth, Paddack has the endorsement of Brad Henry and the Norman Transcript, while Barresi has the endorsement of Senator Jim Inhofe and the Oklahoman.

I think there are lots of reasons to vote for any of these candidates. I like Barresi's "research-based" strategies and her openness to merit pay for teachers, but I also like the fact that Paddack is less likely to be in favor of vouchers and "local control". It seems that conservatives really like Barresi, which I think is enough to turn me to voting for Susan Paddack.

Commissioner of Labor
Mark Costello - Republican
Lloyd L Fields - Democrat

Lloyd Fields famously ended up in the detox center in Oklahoma City after a night where he "attempted to steal a professional bull rider's guitar". He also has been sued for "political harassment" and back child support. Republican Mark Costello has jumped all over this story. He got the professional bull rider to support him. He made a Jib-Jab-like video of all of the rest of Fields' misdeeds. And he even found time to record a jingle for himself to the tune of Mellow Yellow, with the lyrics "Vote for Mark Costello (labor commish!)/ He's the right fellow (that's right!)". What this all has to do with the Department of Labor, I don't really know. The Norman Transcript supports neither candidate.

My vote: Costello

Insurance Commissioner
John Doak - Republican
Kim Holland - Democrat

Kim Holland, the only Democrat to be leading in the polls for statewide office, is more of an independent than a liberal. She is racking up endorsements from all over the political spectrum, including the right-leaning Daily Oklahoman (her website* lists them all). John Doak is obsessed with getting rid of the new federal health care law. He has joined a federal lawsuit against it. He has made an ad where all he does is talk about how much it removes choice. He is spearheading a yes on State Question 756 campaign (the one that says no to ObamaCare). He has even tied Holland to Obama in another ad (She was a delegate! How awful!).

My vote: Holland

*Note: If you're stumbling around online for information about the race for insurance commissioner, perhaps while making a blog post, don't decide to bypass the convenient Google search toolbar in the upper right corner of your screen and type in kimholland.com instead to see if there's anything there. Because there is something there, and it is incredibly NSFW.

U.S. Senator
Tom Coburn - Republican
Jim Rogers - Democrat
Stephen P. Wallace - Independent
Ronald F. Dwyer - Independent

I'm not going to vote for Tom Coburn, so this section will be about all those other guys. Today I ran across a piece written for Wonkette.com by Josh Fruhlinger, who also happens to run another of my favorite sites, the Comics Curmudgeon. The Wonkette piece is entitled "Grizzled Old Coot Will Be Oklahoma's Next Democratic Senator". Among the many theories about how Jim Rogers, the White Alvin Greene, got to be the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate was that voters may have thought he was related to Will Rogers.

Jim Rogers is not in fact related to Will Rogers, although he is like Will Rogers in that he doesn’t have a website. But who needs a website when you have an enormous sign that you can hold up in the direction of oncoming traffic — a sign that, as near as we can tell, declares that “US MILITARY PD TINKER AFB USPS VETERANS FDX UPS TAX PAYERS OHP TRUCKERS OPE [...] CHURCH?”

As for the other two candidates, they both appear to be conservative Republicans in disguise. Tulsan Stephen P. Wallace actually has a website: he is for abolishing the "death/estate tax", a "fiscal freeze" on all federal branches of government, and "Constitutional Amendment for Balance the Budget." Ronald F. Dwyer, another Tulsan, is even more mysterious and, if possible, more grammatically incorrect. I have scoured the internet for some record of this Ronald F. Dwyer person, and all I can find is this statement he gave to the Oklahoma Prosperity Project, an organization tied to the Chamber of Commerce.

I have a program to be put into federal law that can increase the monthly income by $4,000+ of every man, woman and child in Oklahoma; Every business, company, organization, church, charity, etc. My program will eliminate unemployment, welfare programs, etc. My program will provide a new way to finance government (at all levels) by helping people make money instead of taxing (taking money) from the people. 'Welcome to the Golden Age!'

Oklahoma does not allow anyone to write in a candidate for office, unlike most other states. This proves to be a problem for me in this U.S. Senate race. I'm not going to vote for Coburn, Dwyer or Wallace, and I don't want to reward Jim Rogers for lucking into the Democratic nomination. I may just leave this one blank.

Judicial Retention

Supreme Court
Stephen W. Taylor
James R. Winchester

Both of these men are highly qualified. Taylor is a Brad Henry nominee, and Winchester is a Frank Keating nominee. I'm going to vote to retain both.

Oklahoma Court of Civil Appeals
Deborah Barnes
Doug Gabbard III
John Fischer
Larry E. Joplin

Muskogee Politico, a right-wing blog, suggests voting no on retention of these judges because they were appointed by Democratic governors, and their vacancies would be filled by Mary Fallin, presumptive governor-elect. This is the reason I am going to vote to retain all four of these judges.

State Senator, District 16
Sharon Parker - Republican
John Sparks - Democrat

My vote: Sparks

State Representative, District 44
Kent Hunt - Republican
Emily Virgin - Democrat

My vote: Virgin

County Treasurer
Jim Reynolds - Republican
Mona Nelson - Democrat

The Norman Transcript has an article about this race. Mona Nelson is a deputy county treasurer with 25 years of relevant experience. Reynolds is a state senator who is campaigning on being a conservative, and he hopes you'll agree with him that we need conservatives in all parts of the government.

My vote: Nelson

County Commissioner, District 3
Rusty Sullivan - Republican
Jim Robertson - Democrat

The Norman Transcript also has an article about this race. Jim Robertson, a "graduate of life experience," is challenging Commissioner Rusty Sullivan, a Republican with endorsements from local Republicans and some local Democrats. Jim Robertson wants to stand up to unspecified "men in suits" responsible for certain misdeeds in the county. Both men want to build roads.

My vote: Sullivan

District Judges

Tracy Schumacher
Jonathan Nichols

Norman Transcript article.

Schumacher has experience as a defense attorney. This simple fact has caused her to be labeled "soft on crime" by Nichols, a Republican state senator. But this world needs more defense attorneys as judges.

My vote: Schumacher

Greg Dixon
John Mantooth

Norman Transcript article.

Mantooth is able to self finance most of his campaign. Dixon was a former football player for Barry Switzer. Neither of these facts really sway me that much.

My vote: Dixon

Jeff Harley Bryant
Tom Lucas

Norman Transcript article.

Lucas has apparently been there for a long time and is competent and well-liked.

My vote: Lucas

Charles L. Broadway
Lori Walkley

Norman Transcript article.

Charles Broadway has been adding little stickers to his signs all over town stating that he is the "true conservative".

My vote: Walkley

The Friday Before the Election

2010-10-29T16:23:00.004-05:00

So Bill Clinton urged Kendrick Meek to quit the Florida senate race in order to possibly swing the race to nominally-independent moderate Republican Charlie Crist over Tea Party-backed conservative Republican candidate Marco Rubio. I first read about this story last night, and the thing that caught my attention was not so much the backroom dealmaking as the presumption that Marco Rubio is on "the cusp of national stardom." I think they may be right. All other Tea Party candidates with high profiles (Christine O'Donnell, Sharron Angle, Rand Paul, Ken Buck, and others) have made some extreme statements about certain things. I have not yet heard of Marco Rubio saying something dumb. An ascendant conservative known having a fiery personality and not known for saying stupid things could definitely gain a higher profile before 2012 or 2016, especially since he will be known in January as Senator Marco Rubio.

Oklahoma's gubernatorial candidates had a debate last night, only five days before the election. The headline I read in the Norman Transcript is "Governor Opponents Boast Right Leanings." Well, just great. It's a race to the right, apparently. Ironically it was the Democrat (Jari Askins) calling out the Republican (Mary Fallin) about her "yes" vote for the TARP bank bailout (signed into law by George W. Bush, but supported by Barack Obama). Jari Askins reinforced her self-imposed "conservative Democrat" label by pointing out how fiscally conservative she was in comparison. The candidates also got asked about Sarah Palin, for some reason. Jari Askins called Sarah Palin a "strong communicator". As soon as Palin is able to communicate her favorite newspapers and her geographic knowledge of the location of Russia, Jari Askins will apparently let us know, presumably while she's "hunting grizzly bears" with her in Alaska. Needless to say, this run for the right favors Mary Fallin, who is against abortion, gun restrictions and health care, and for Arizona's immigration law.

Jim Priest, Democratic candidate for Oklahoma Attorney General, pointed out that his opponent Scott Pruitt has taken $62,000 (7% of his total donations) from poultry companies, which is an issue because of current Oklahoma AG Drew Edmondson's lawsuit against poultry companies in Arkansas for their pollution of Oklahoma waterways. Sure, $62,000 is chicken feed (ha) when it comes to buying influence, but Priest was trying to use it as a way to say that Scott Pruitt is someone who is opposed to clean water regulations from the EPA, and therefore, if elected, Scott Pruitt would be bad for Oklahoma rivers. At least, that's what I think he's trying to say.

Scott Pruitt: Another Ken Cuccinelli

2010-10-26T21:08:00.006-05:00

There is only one week until the election, and this is usually the time where I start investigating the races that are maybe a little bit under the radar to me, down-ticket from Jari Askins or Mary Fallin. They're usually full of names I've heard of from yard signs and maybe the occasional NPR local news brief: Corn, Lamb, Baressi, Paddack, Priest. But I took notice for real when I read a news story about a particular attorney general from Virginia coming to the Sooner State to campaign for Republican attorney general candidate Scott Pruitt.

Ken Cuccinelli is proud to be known as a warrior against ObamaCare, but he's also known as a culture warrior dealing with other constitutional things besides the commerce clause and the supremacy clause; Cuccinelli is against non-discrimination policies that include sexual orientation, the separation of church and state, academic freedom, and a woman's right to choose, among other things. He's also proud to endorse and campaign for Scott Pruitt for Oklahoma AG. Virginia's top lawyer, who filed the first lawsuit in the country against the federal health care law just minutes after it was signed by Barack Obama, is endorsing Scott Pruitt in large part because Pruitt is proposing to start an office of federalism.

According to Pruitt's website, the Office of Federalism's "primary responsibility is to determine how the office can and should push back against Washington."

In addition to bringing suit against the Obama Administration’s newly passed health care mandates, the new Office of Federalism will defend Oklahomans against agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency when its regulations seek to establish climate and energy policy absent congressional action, and the Nat'l Highway Traffic & Safety Administration in setting new fuel-economy standards.

Besides his dislike of the EPA and NHTSA, Pruitt would immediately sue the government over ObamaCare if elected, even if State Question 756, which would allow Oklahoma to opt out of ObamaCare (and which would be null and void upon passage due to the presence of the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution), doesn't pass. Cuccinelli wholly endorses SQ 756, calling it a question of the "dignity of the sovereign, the State of Oklahoma in this case." It would certainly be undignified of Oklahomans to pass such an unconstitutional law, supported by a state attorney general who supposedly is sworn to uphold the Constitution.

Scott Pruitt's rival in the election, Democrat Jim Priest, could certainly not be described as out of touch with Oklahoma values. He wastes 937 words on his campaign issues page retelling a story he wrote about his first gun. But compared to Scott Pruitt, Jim Priest seems like his middle name should be Delano. Ken Cuccinelli came to Oklahoma to say that he needs another extreme right-wing cultural warrior/demagogue for his fight against what Cuccinelli perceives as tyranny, and that Scott Pruitt is the man for the job. But the last thing we in Oklahoma need is another Ken Cuccinelli.

Looking at the Mail

2010-10-21T12:53:00.005-05:00

We got 5 pieces of campaign mail yesterday, by far the highest one-day total of this election season. One of them was for the campaign for Yes on 744, the state question that would increase spending on education by 20% without legislator influence. One was for Rusty Sullivan, a candidate for Cleveland County commissioner. I think he's a Republican, but he has what I think is a very effective ad depicting his bipartisanship. On my list of things to look up on the internet before I vote is exactly what the county commissioners do.

Two pieces of mail were from Emily Virgin (D), candidate for our district in the Oklahoma state house of representatives. She won the primary in July in a 4-person race that, judging by local lawn signs at the time, felt like it should have been closer. But Virgin, a former manager for the OU football team, won more than 50% of the vote and avoided a runoff. She canvassed the neighborhood way before I was even thinking about the election, and so when she rang the doorbell, I couldn't think of anything to ask her. Just last week she came by again to get out the vote for the November election, and I was slightly more prepared. Virgin uses the lesson in her campaign literature of a corporate tax break to a private space aviation company called Rocketplane that quickly went out of business as an example of money spent by the legislature that would be better put to use helping out both k-12 and higher education in the state. I asked her how she would be able to tell ahead of time that any particular corporate tax break would hurt the state more than help the state. She gave an answer indicating that it was the transferable nature of the tax break to Rocketplane that should have been eliminated; that Rocketplane should have been required to deliver the results rather than be allowed to sell the rights to the tax break to another company. She was more articulate that I can reproduce from memory. I don't think she answered my question exactly, but she sounded knowledgeable enough and I was impressed with her grasp of the concept.

One other piece of mail came from Aaron Stiles (R), who is running for a house district on the east side of Norman. My family cannot vote for him, so I don't know why we got this mail. But he is running against a Democrat named Wallace Collins, who has the reputation of being one of the more outspoken Democrats in the state legislature. And it got me thinking about the reframing of the health care law passed by the U.S. congress and signed into law by Barack Obama. It has now so thoroughly been relabeled as "Obamacare" that even "respectable" "blogs" like mine tend to refer to it as Obamacare just for brevity's sake. Stiles claims he has the "backbone to stand up to Washington, D.C. and keep ObamaCare out of Oklahoma," and that Wallace Collins voted against a bill "keeping ObamaCare out of Oklahoma". It's a crazy, twisted world when the candidate for office is labeled as soft on health care when he votes against exempting his state from tougher new federal health care laws.

We have not yet received a single piece of campaign mail from any politician running for governor, U.S. senator, or U.S. representative. Tom Cole, our Republican representative, is running unopposed, so this is no surprise. Tom Coburn, our Republican senator, is running against a homeless-looking man named Jim Rogers, a man who doesn't do any campaigning because it's "not his style", and who is one of those "perennial candidates," a class of individuals for whom no long shot is long enough. Tom Coburn definitely doesn't need to do anything to get the vote out. But we have a nominally competitive race for governor between current lieutenant governor Jari Askins (D) and former lieutenant governor Mary Fallin (R). I'm not as tuned in as I should be to local news, but I'm very tuned into yard signs and campaign mail.

...When I Poll Into the Wild Wild West

2010-10-19T08:48:00.006-05:00

There is an article on Fivethirtyeight with the headline "Alaska Race May Make for Long Election Night". It won't be the only state. Consider the following:

- Control of the U.S. Senate will most certainly come down to states on the west coast. Current projections show Washington, Nevada, and California to be tossups. As polls close in Nevada at 10 pm eastern, the projected Senate count may be as high as 47 Democrats to 47 Republicans. California, Washington, Oregon, Alaska, and Hawaii will be the only states remaining with polls open.

- Nevada will be one of the closest races in the country, so no one will be able to project a winner for a couple of hours.

- Washington and California's incumbent senators Boxer and Murray are each in surprisingly close races. The 2010 equivalent of Tim Russert (John King?) will do the math and state what will be the obvious; that for the Republicans to win control of the Senate, either Fiorina must win in California or Rossi must win in Washington (or both).

- Besides having late poll closings, west coast states also count election results very slowly. A majority of people in Oregon and Washington vote by mail. These results take longer to tally. Oregon was one of the last states in 2000 to move out of the too-close-to-call category. It took several days.

- The write-in candidacy of Republican incumbent Lisa Murkowski in Alaska, according to polls, is doing remarkably well. Unfortunately it will be difficult to count, and the results will be haggled over for days, weeks, or months, quite possibly. The election in that state may come down to the legibility of Alaskans' handwriting.

So, don't expect to know which party has controlled the Senate until the next morning at the earliest. Political junkies like myself should feel free to go to bed knowing that the question will remain unanswered until we wake up.

State Questions!

2010-10-15T15:43:00.008-05:00

Last night the League of Women Voters of Norman hosted a forum to discuss the 11 state questions that Oklahoma voters will encounter on the ballot in November. The panelists were Rick Tepker, a constitutional law professor at the University of Oklahoma; Rick Farmer, director of communication of the Oklahoma House of Representatives; and David Morgan, emeritus professor of political science at the University of Oklahoma. The moderator was Helen Duchon.

I thought the forum was extremely informative. I learned that apparently, unlike the constitution of the United States, which is short and vaguely-worded, the Oklahoma constitution is complicated and long, and that no one really knows what's in it. Rick Farmer said that a printer at the capital had to be manually shut off because it was being tied up by an aide who wanted a copy of the entire constitution and had been printing for hours. The panelists all shared a laugh at the expense of a state lawmaker who wanted print services to make a pocket-sized version of the Oklahoma constitution that he could carry with him. Rick Tepker posited that such a document would have to have such a tiny font that the whole thing would appear to the naked eye to be page after page of black sheets, as if the whole document was some redacted version of itself.

All this levity about the length of the Oklahoma constitution was in response to questions from the audience primarily about state questions 744 and 754. State question 744 is a measure that would constitutionally require Oklahoma to fund k-12 education at the same per-pupil level as all six of the states that share a border with Oklahoma, regardless of the status of the rest of the budget. In other words, a predetermined constitutional formula based on how much other states spend on education. State question 754 is a measure that would revoke all such predetermined constitutional formulas and formulas based on how much other states spend on anything. The constitutional law professor Tepker said that if either or both of these pass, the result will be litigation. Lots of it. Because no one really knows if legally these two questions can peaceably exist within the same state constitution. And apparently no one knows how state question 754 affects other previously-passed statutes, statutes which may or may not exist, and if they do exist, there may be something like 20 of them, but no one can say for sure because the constitution is so long and, apparently, unprintable.

There also may be a relevant statute to this question, brought up by both Farmer and Tepker, that states that if both of these conflicting statutes pass, then the one with the most votes will be law and the other one would be, I guess, S.O.L. And one other aspect to state question 754 is that it cannot be repealed or amended if it is adopted. And we know this only because that's what it says about itself. Whether a law can make itself unrepealable is still a matter of debate and will certainly be decided in the courts, says Tepker, who is of the opinion that most of the state questions are terrible for the public but would be great for the employment of lawyers.

State question 744 deserves some extra attention because it is, according to Tepker and most everybody who follows these things in Oklahoma, the most important measure on the ballot. It mandates a substantial spending increase for education (close to 20% of the education budget, or $1.0 to $1.7 billion per year, according to Tepker) without any sort of plan to increase the state's revenues to pay for it. The website for the proponents of 744 claims that it can be paid for by eliminating legislator perks and pork barrel projects; or in other words, stuff that will never be eliminated by any legislature anywhere (sorry to break it to you, Tom Coburn). Tepker was asked how the proposal would be funded if it were to pass, and Tepker replied that since the Republicans would likely be in charge of the legislature, a tax increase would be even more unlikely than usual, and that the legislature would have to find ways to cut spending in other areas of government. Some critics of the measure claim that a 20% cut would be necessary across the board. And there are no strings attached to the money, beyond that it has to be spent on instruction costs, not debt relief or construction of new buildings. In other words, no new academic standards or testing would be required. Rick Tepker said that Oklahoma would become California in terms of fiscal gridlock if 744 passed, which isn't likely, according to poll numbers conveyed by panelist David Morgan. Only 27% of people support 744 now, which is down almost 40% from a poll in July. I brought with me to the forum a whole bunch of questions that I had planned to ask about the details of education funding from other states, and how it would fit in with local and federal mandates, and all kinds of arcane things that aren't really that relevant now that I see that 744's support is dwindling.

But there are plenty of other half-thought-out measures that apparently are very popular in the Sooner state. State question 751 is a measure that will allow the state to conduct its business in English only, if it wants. There are some exceptions for federal forms and for tribal languages, but the measure says that if passed, it would prevent the state from being sued for not providing non-English documents. According to Rick Farmer, a woman in Jenks sued the state because the state refused to offer her a drivers license test in Farsi. The lawsuit was quickly thrown out of court. By passing state question 751, the lawsuit could apparently be thrown out of court more quickly, according to Rick Farmer. The English-language-only state question has the support of 85% of the citizens of Oklahoma.

There is a voter ID law on the ballot. State question 746 would require voters to present a valid government issued photo ID in order to vote. 3 other states have tried this, and the Supreme Court threw out a challenge to a similar law in Indiana (which I have previously talked about and made made a graph for). The usual arguments for and against were conveyed by David Morgan (who, I must say, has an excellent voice for radio and public speaking): it could disenfranchise a number of poor or elderly people, but it prevents fraudulent voting to a certain extent. According to Morgan, the editorial board of the venerated Daily Oklahoman claims that if the measure prevents even one fraudulent vote, then it would be a worthy law, no matter how many people (Democrats) it disenfranchised. Most of those in attendance last night were not sympathetic to the Oklahoman's opinion, but a poll puts those in support at 43% and against at 35%.

The question that got constitutional law professor Rick Tepker riled up the most was state question 755. SQ 755 would prohibit Oklahoma courts from using or considering international law or Sharia law when deciding cases. Tepker called it "offensive" with language that is "overbroad." He pointed out that it would also remove any basis for consideration of English common law, the historic root of the U.S. Constitution; and also for the ten commandments, which are popular 'round these parts. But it is all moot anyways; all that state question 755 could do would be to uphold the oaths to uphold the constitution that judges must swear to do already.

Another pointless headline-grabbing state question deals with "Obamacare". State question 756 would prohibit forcing any person or employer to participate in the federal health care law. Rick Tepker railed against this question as well, saying that "if it passes, it does nothing, I repeat, nothing to make the [federal] health care law unconstitutional," and it also does nothing to make it constitutional. Since the U.S. Constitution's Supremacy Clause trumps whatever our state does, the law will have no effect except to be reported on by the "lamestream" media. Tepker believed that the law would be deemed "null and void" immediately upon passage, which would mean no disruption in Medicare funding for Oklahomans. He compared it to the city council of some town in Vermont declaring that the war in Iraq is unconstitutional; a plea for attention worth nothing.

The rest of the measures on the ballot are not overtly controversial, but they still reflect the political composition of the conservative legislature that put them on the ballot. State question 747 would put term limits on all the statewide elected offices that don't already have term limits, such as lieutenant governor, attorney general, treasurer, labor commissioner, corporation commissioner, state auditor, and the state schools superintendant. And you thought entrenched interests only existed among politicians whose name you had heard of. Brad Henry, our term-limited Democratic governor, opposes the measure (sour grapes?). David Morgan revealed that 69% of voters were in favor of this measure, which Rick Tepker complained would take away the ability of the voters to elect the best person for the job if that person had already served 8 years.

State question 750 is a measure whose effect is to lower and make relatively consistent the number of signatures required to get a state question on the ballot. Currently in Oklahoma, one needs to collect a number of signatures equal to a certain percentage of the voters in the previous statewide election, held every 2 years. State question 750 would set the threshhold at the same percentage of voters, but count the voters for the statewide election for governor only, an election that always features a lower turnout than the one for president. It's a complicated explanation for a state question, David Morgan said, which is why there is no polling data on it. When asked if there was anything in the measure to prevent frivolous petitions, Morgan replied that silly questions would still be allowed, and that state question 750, if it would have any effect, would probably result in more state questions on ballots in the future. Another related question led to a lecture by Rick Farmer about the history of state questions. A third of state questions have come from people circulating a petition, but were less likely to pass than the two-thirds of state questions that have come from the legislature. The eleven state questions on the ballot this year (state question 744 from petition, all others from the legislature) are in fact a new record.

The apportionment commission is the subject of state question 748, and if you've never heard of this commission, it might be because it has never, in the entire history of statehood, actually convened a meeting. The apportionment commission is set up to meet if and only if the legislature fails to act on redrawing state house, state senate, and congressional districts in the legislative session following the decennial national census. The apportionment commission would be changed from a commission controlled by possibly-partisan statewide office holders (attorney general, state superintendant, treasurer) with no skin in the map-redrawing game, to a commission controlled by the governor, the speaker of the state house, and the president pro-tem of the senate. Legislators put state question 748 on the ballot as a measure that would give legislators more power (but only theoretically) over decisions that affect legislators, in the event that legislators cannot act on the matter before then. David Morgan said that there was no polling data on this question.

A shift toward legislative branch power is also the point of another ballot measure about a commission most people don't care about. State question 752 adds a couple of people and a couple of rules about the existing people on the Judicial Nominating Commission, which meets to select a list of nominees that the governor can appoint to the state supreme court. Currently the commission is composed of 13 people, with 6 non-lawyers appointed by the governor. State question 752 would add two more people, chosen by the house speaker and president pro-tem of the senate; and it would also mandate that the six non-lawyers must also not have a lawyer in their immediate family. In addition to making me ineligible to be one of the governor's choices on the commission (oh drat!), state question 752 also has the effect of shifting power ever so slightly away from the American Bar Association and towards the state legislature, according to Rick Farmer. Farmer recommends that if one is pro-ABA, one should vote no on this measure, and if one is anti-ABA, one should vote yes on this measure.

The one remaining state question involves the state's Rainy Day Fund, which has a more formal name that I forgot to write down when I was taking notes. State question 757 would raise the limit on the Rainy Day Fund from 10% of the budget to 15% of the budget. Oklahoma topped out the Rainy Day Fund for a couple of years before the recession of 2008, according to Farmer, and the fund has apparently helped out with the economic situation in the state since then. Rick Farmer characterized three positions from the political left, right, and center. He says the left would look at surplusses as evidence that the government should spend more, the right would look at it as evidence that the government should tax less, and centrists would look at it like a savings account where the state could tuck some money away for, as they say, a rainy day. Savings accounts are popular with many people in the center, according to Farmer, and indeed, poll numbers show support for the measure at 53%, compared to 29% against, according to David Morgan.

After the question and answer session, moderator Helen Duchon asked the panelists if there were any state questions that they would actually vote yes on. Rick Tepker answered first and advised skepticism generally for all state questions. He loathes with a passion state questions 755 (Sharia Law) and 756 (Obamacare), and he wouldn't vote yes on any of them, with the possible exception of 752 (Judicial Commission) and 757 (Rainy Day Fund). David Morgan pointed out tactfully that many of the questions were intended to get "a certain political party's base" out to the polls to vote. He too would vote no on all of the measures, except for maybe the unimportant ones. Rick Farmer ended by saying, "I am an at-will employee of the speaker of the house," and then gave out the recommendations of speaker Chris Benge (R-Tulsa): no on 744 (Education Funding), yes on everything else. This elicited gasps of displeasure from the audience.

___

A numeric guide to the state questions on the 2010 Oklahoma ballot:

744 = public education funding (the big one)
746 = voter id law
747 = term limits for low-profile statewide offices
748 = apportionment commission, the one that's never met
750 = petition signature threshhold
751 = English only
752 = judicial nominating commission, the one with all the lawyers
754 = no predetermined constitutional formulas, or, the anti-744
755 = no Sharia law
756 = no Obamacare
757 = rainy day fund increase

2010 Election Senate Rundown (as in, the Republicans are Running Down the Democrats)

2010-09-28T10:21:00.005-05:00

It's my favorite season of the year, when a chill forms in the air to compensate for all the heated rhetoric coming from campaign commercials. It's election season, and it's not going to be pretty for Democrats.

The conventional wisdom (as of September 28, 2010) is that the Republicans will probably take control of the House of Representatives but that Democrats will hold on to power in the Senate. But since all politics, even Republican-wave elections, are local, a closer inspection of the polls and the trends is warranted. And, shit, it's not like any other site on the internet is doing this.

Every seat in the House of Representatives is up for reelection, of course, and while the premise that the Republicans will easily take the chamber over may be overblown, I'm not going to question it for now. But the Senate is analyzable, so I shall analyze it.

There are 37 seats up for reelection (20 Democrat-held and 17 Republican-held). Subtracting these from the current configuration of the Senate gives us our baseline:

39 Dem
24 Rep

Now let's add in safe seats. For Republicans, there are an awful lot of safe seats.
RED STATE INCUMBENTS

Coburn-OK
Thune-SD
Crapo-ID
Grassley-IA
Isakson-GA
DeMint-SC
Burr-NC
Shelby-AL
McCain-AZ
Vitter-LA

All are incumbents who will breeze through to another term, even scandal-plagued David Vitter of Louisiana.

39 Dem
34 Rep

There are fewer safe Democrats
BLUE STATE INCUMBENTS

Wyden-OR
Inouye-HI
Schumer-NY
Leahy-VT
Mikulski-MD
Gillibrand-NY

45 Dem
34 Rep

Oh, but there are more safe seats for Republicans.
RED STATE NEWBIES.

Lee-UT
Hoeven-ND
Moran-KS
Coats-IN

In these four states, relatively unknown candidates face each other in the general election. In red states like Utah, North Dakota, Kansas and Indiana, this generally favors the Republican, and polls back this assumption up.

45 Dem
38 Rep

FAILED MONKEY WRENCHES

Miller-AK
Rubio-FL

In both of these states, the Tea Party overthrew the establishment Republican, and the establishment Republican decided to go it alone with an independent candidacy (Crist of Florida) or a write-in campaign (Murkowski of Alaska). The typical result of intra-party squabbling is that the other party comes in (Democrats in this case) and sweeps up the vote. That won't happen this time: both Rubio and Miller are leading handily in the polls despite the monkey-wrench candidacies of Murkowski and Crist.

45 Dem
40 Rep

DEMOCRATS FADING FAST

Ayotte-NH
Portman-OH

Both of these purple states had open seat races that were considered to be close at one point. The Republican in each case has now opened up a lead in the polls consistently greater than 10 percentage points.

45 Dem
42 Rep

DEMOCRATS FADING SLOW

Blumenthal-CT

Richard Blumenthal, who once enjoyed a 30 point lead over all Republicans, is now just 5 points ahead of his Republican challenger for Chris Dodd's seat. Will the lead last? I kinda sorta think so in this blue state, but it's not like Blumenthal is the perfect candidate. All I know about him is that he claimed he served in active combat duty in the military when he didn't really. And that's not the kind of thing you want to be known for.

46 Dem
42 Rep

THE LEFT COAST

Boxer-CA
Murray-WA

Both of these blue state incumbents have challenging reelections ahead of them, and both have been surprisingly free of Tea Party turmoil. Both Democrats are leading in the polls, but not by all that much.

48 Dem
42 Rep

OZARK TH'OWDOWN

Blunt-MO
Boozeman-AR

Blanche Lincoln, Democrat Senator of Arkansas, will be the first Democratic incumbent to fall on election night. She has been consistently down in the polls despite her attempts to sever herself from the Democratic establishment. It's a little different in Missouri, where a well-known popular Republican will simply beat a less well-known less popular Democrat.

48 Dem
44 Rep

The rest of the races are tossups really.

THE SURPRISINGLY STRONG

Johnson-WI
Toomey-PA

Millionaire Ron Johnson is just an average guy from Wisconsin, he'll tell you in his campaign ads, but he's polling extremely well against "mavericky" Democratic senator Russ Feingold. Republican Pat Toomey hasn't trailed in a poll against Arlen Spector-beating Democrat Joe Sestak since May.

48 Dem
46 Rep

THE TEA PARTY EFFECT

Buck-CO
Angle-NV
Paul-KY

All three candidates have said crazy things. All three candidates are Tea Party insurgents. All three candidates were expected to be the easier opponent for Democrats than the Republican establisment candidates. And all three candidates are leading (just barely) in the polls. If all three get elected, it will be a bad night for Democrats. I'm predicting a bad night for Democrats.

48 Dem
49 Rep

THE WHY ISN'T THIS GUY LEADING BY MORE STATE

Manchin-WV

Extremely-popular Democratic governor Joe Manchin threw his hat into the ring for the seat of the deceased extremely-popular Democratic senator Robert C. Byrd, and it was expected to be a landslide for him. But he hasn't polled as well as expected against a perennial candidate named John Raese; Manchin is only up by about 5 points, and it's possible he may lose. I sort of doubt it though.

49 Dem
49 Rep

HOLD YOUR NOSE AND PULL THE LEVER

Kirk-IL

Two scandal plagued candidates go up against each other. The democrat is a sleazy banker named Alexi Giannoulias, and the Republican is a confirmed liar named Mark Kirk. They have been tied in the polls for months, but Kirk is slightly ahead in almost every poll.

49 Dem
50 Rep

The last senate seat left to be discussed is Delaware.

THE SARAH PALIN EFFECT

Christine O'Donnell looks like Sarah Palin, says ridiculous things like Sarah Palin, and is backed by Sarah Palin. She is skilled at playing the "look how the mainstream media persecutes me, the outsider" card. This is an excellent way of not having to explain yourself or the charges against you. It was thought that it would be a landslide for balding low-profile candidate Chris Coons, but since the primary, O'Donnell is closing in the polls, down by 9 points from 16 a couple of weeks ago. People love celebrity. So therefore my guess is:

Coons-DE

I mean, come on, she's ridiculous.

50 Dem
50 Rep

VP Biden will break all ties and keep the Senate in Democratic hands, at least until Joe Lieberman switches parties for good.

Memo to Tea Party: Stop Sucking

2010-09-23T10:31:00.004-05:00

I want to understand Tea Party sentiment, because I think there are some morsels of good ideas hidden deep within their murky bowl of freedom chowder.

In the broadest sense, the Tea Party is a coalition of people who clamor for balanced budgets and elimination of wasteful government spending, and who also believe that government action should be within the bounds of the Constitution. I can actually get behind this idea. It's when the Tea Party folks use specifics, like eliminating the Department of Education, allowing health insurance companies to sell policies practically without regulation, and recklessly lowering taxes that are already low that I start to disagree. It's when the Tea Party folks use inflammatory language, like a desire to "firebomb" the Fed, that they turn me against them. It's when the Tea Party leaders lie about facts like the economic state of Social Security (it is after all fully funded) and mischaracterize certain politicians' stances, like calling Obama a socialist that I start to rally against them. And it's when Tea Party leaders dabble in social issues like gay rights and religious freedom issues that I find them unconscionably reckless and a danger to our society.

This is why it's easy to characterize the Tea Party as an angry white conservative mob blinded by hatred for outsiders and driven by sensationalism of cable news and AM radio. They are a divisive group, and their popularity stems from anger, a potent political emotion. Their specific policies would undoubtedly be bad for the country as a whole. But if in some alternate universe the Tea Party stood only for balanced budgets and responsible government, I could see extraordinary benefits from a tolerant group of tax-paying citizens who would push an agenda of control of government expenditures. They could act as a vigilant watchdog group, which could push for a more transparent government. Their political candidates could focus on the economy and be spokesmen and women for the benefits of conservation, austerity and efficiency.

But unfortunately we live in this universe and not some alternative version of it. Tea Party candidates are known for making radical statements that wouldn't help anything, like that non-discrimination laws are unconstitutional, that Americans would be better off if Social Security and Medicare were eliminated, and that Obama is either a socialist or a Muslim Nazi without a U.S. birth certificate, and he's trying to steal your money. And I don't see how it helps the country to put inflammatory liars into political office.

Oklahoma's Newest (and Likely Unconstitutional) Abortion Laws

2010-05-10T14:27:00.005-05:00

Critics say the state should stay out of this issue, but I believe turning a blind eye to women in need is inexcusable, and preventing them from receiving accurate medical information is true cruelty.

That's Oklahoma state representative Lisa Billy (R-Lindsay), author of one of the two abortion bills that recently passed into law in Oklahoma over the veto of governor Brad Henry, in an interview published in USA Today, according to the McCarville Report. The other of the two bills, HB 2656, eliminates the possibility for a woman to recover damages from a medical provider if that provider misleads the woman into thinking her fetus is healthy and normal. In essence, it allows for preventing women from receiving accurate medical information, which should be "true cruelty" according to Rep. Billy. Governor Brad Henry called it "unconscionable to grant a physician legal protection to mislead or misinform a pregnant woman in an effort to impose his or her personal beliefs on his patient."

Rep. Billy's own bill, HB 2780, requires that all women receive an ultrasound, and a doctor or medical technician must show the woman the screen and provide a medical description of the images an hour before every scheduled abortion. Rep. Billy stated that "women should have the choice to see that image" of the fetus. And yet her bill, which also became law, actually does just the opposite, eliminating choice from the equation.

I filed this bill to empower women, no matter what their circumstance, to have as much information as possible before making a life-altering decision.

My mistake. I thought taking away the power to make a decision about having an ultrasound was actually the opposite of empowerment.

On the Tea Party and Undenounced Lies

2010-04-27T11:12:00.005-05:00

This was an email that turned into a blog post.

I believe the reporting of the phenomenon is way bigger than the phenomenon itself, and I feel that all except the most extreme tea party folks realize that the way to bring about change in this country is to rally popular support and elect different representatives. I definitely don't think the movement will end up in revolution. One thing that members of the tea party make clear is that they love the Constitution.

Having said that, it's all this inflammatory chest-thumping posturing that is ridiculous. This author is exactly right that the stupid things these white people are saying would scare the shit out of white people if black people were saying them. And the mainstream reporting of the phenomenon covers these right-wing talking heads with respect undeserving of the commentary they produce. The media should be loudly exposing the lies espoused by conservative commentators, not broadcasting them without comment. Congressmen and senators should be loudly denouncing their fellow members for this chest-thumping counterproductive revolutionary talk. And they should be doing it loudly because it is the right thing to do, not because it will score political points. And they should do it overtly, like calling out by name, and including the term "pants-on-fire" as many times as possible in their press conferences. Because these people should know that when they whip the public into a froth of fury, some radicals may actually believe the lies, and they'll start flying their planes into IRS buildings or start plotting to kill local police officers or something.

I'm Definitely Dim

2010-04-08T09:57:00.003-05:00

Cool! This blog is mentioned in a survey of Oklahoma blogs on the McCarville Report Online, one of the few frequently updated political blogs in Oklahoma. I've gone dim! What an honor!

Health Care Concerns: Interstate Commerce Clause

2010-03-25T10:01:00.005-05:00

As far as I can tell, 100% of the non-spamming readers of this site have law degrees. So I need your help with these two questions: does the government really have the power to force people to buy a private insurance plan, and is a tax on the uninsured an overreaching form of discrimination?

I was listening to an interview with the Attorney General of Virginia Ken Cuccinelli on NPR the other day, and his gripes with the new health care law seemed to be well-thought-out and well-articulated (unlike his gripes with homosexuals). Ken Cuccinelli is suing the government because he believes the law is unconstitutional because it compels all citizens to buy a product from a private marketplace. And honestly, I can't immediately think of a private good or service required by all individuals, not just car-owners or house-owners or business-providers.

Another worry of mine about the health care bill is the prospect for the private insurers in the exchanges to jack up prices. They will no longer be allowed to rescind policies or deny policies to people, but as far as I can tell, there's nothing that says they have to provide a policy at a low price. And, like so many Republicans have argued, there is nothing in the health care law to control costs of medical service. So rising insurance premiums will surely keep rising without any market control method of the size that only a government could provide. This was the rationale behind the extinct public option, after all. (Hell, it's the rationale behind single payer coverage too).

It was thought to be the news in California of Anthem Blue Cross's 39% rate hike that steeled the nerves of Democratic lawmakers and helped them finally pass the health care law. But what is the method by which this new law would be able to stop rate hikes like this? Increased competition? There are many health insurers with many plans in California already. It doesn't stop them from raising rates. The market for health insurance contains too much friction for people to be able to switch insurance policies. And because of measures that strengthen employer-based health insurance policies, the health insurance market should continue to operate opaquely.

I don't like the private-insurance-only health care bill, but only time will tell if it makes the country better or worse.

Ronald Reagan = Leftist Fringe

2010-02-04T13:27:00.001-06:00

Glenn Greenwald, Salon.com:

How much clearer evidence can there be of how warped and extremist we've become on these matters? The express policies of the right-wing Ronald Reagan -- "applying the rule of law to terrorists"; delegitimizing Terrorists by treating them as "criminals"; and compelling the criminal prosecution of those who authorize torture -- are now considered on the Leftist fringe. Merely advocating what Reagan explicitly adopted as his policy -- "to use democracy’s most potent tool, the rule of law against" Terrorists -- is now the exclusive province of civil liberties extremists. In those rare cases when Obama does what Reagan's policy demanded in all instances and what even Bush did at times -- namely, trials and due process for accused Terrorists -- he is attacked as being "Soft on Terror" by Democrats and Republicans alike. And the mere notion that we should prosecute torturers (as Reagan bound the U.S. to do) -- or even hold them accountable in ways short of criminal proceedings -- is now the hallmark of a Far Leftist Purist. That's how far we've fallen, how extremist our political consensus has become.

If You Wrongfully Detain a Suspected Terrorist

2010-01-07T16:37:00.004-06:00

Dahlia Lithwick's latest Guantanamo piece reminds me of a series of childrens books by Laura Numeroff that the kids love, the "If You Give A [anthropomorphic animal] a [baked good]" series.

If you wrongfully detain a suspected terrorist,
He'll ask you for his lawyer.
You'll have to keep him at Guantanamo for awhile.
He'll probably be radicalized there.
He'll go on and on about his right to access a court.
You'll probably have to suspend habeas corpus.
His Yemeni background will be enough.
There will be an act of terrorism in this country eventually.
The public will be shocked
Then outraged.
They'll expect you to "do something".
You'll probably have to interfere with the judicial system some more.
And chances are,
If your Yemeni can in any way connected to the terrorist plot,
You'll have to send him back
To Guantanamo.
Forever.

Now all I need is an illustrator!

A State's Guide to Qualifying for Higher Medicare Payments

2009-12-21T10:20:00.006-06:00

From a NY Times article:

Another item in the package would increase Medicare payments to hospitals and doctors in any state where at least 50 percent of the counties are “frontier counties,” defined as those having a population density less than six people per square mile.

And which are the lucky states? The bill gives no clue. But the Congressional Budget Office has determined that Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Utah and Wyoming meet the criteria.

This is an interesting wrinkle in the health bill, and since it falls at an intersection of two of my interests (the health care reform bill and trivial U.S. geography), I felt the urge to comment.

What is interesting to me is that the extra money for Medicare payments does not go to the least populous states (bottom five: Wyoming, Vermont, Alaska, North Dakota, South Dakota), nor does it go to the states with the least population density (bottom five: Alaska, Wyoming, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota). It goes to the states with the highest number of counties that fall under a certain threshhold of population density. Why so arcane? I'm guessing by having it tied to counties, the provision was designed to screw Alaska, the least population-dense state by far, but a state without counties. (Take that, Sarah Palin!) But in it's stead, the provision rewards Utah, the 10th least population dense state in the country, and just as rosy red. It's two senators are no more likely to vote for the provision than they are to vote for a pro-gay marriage law. States that have less population density than Utah include swing states New Mexico and Nevada, as well as the swing-senator-Ben-Nelson-containing state of Nebraska. Utah has 29 counties, and it just so happens that the lines have been drawn so that 15 of them have a population density of less than six people per square mile.

But have no fear, sparse states! You can qualify for this additional Medicare payment just by doing a little redrawing of your maps. All you have to do is some combination of merging populous counties together while splitting less populous counties in two or three parts. For instance, New Mexico currently contains 14 counties out of a possible 33 that have a population density of under six people per square mile. Therefore, all that New Mexico would need to do was to merge six counties together that have population densities over 6 per square mile. For instance, by merging Lea, Eddy, Roosevelt, Otero, Curry and Chaves counties together into one mega-rancher-haven county, New Mexico could qualify for extra Medicare payments. (14 out of 28 counties).

There's nothing that says every state in the union can't do this. I suggest Oklahoma get in on this deal too. Keep the panhandle counties. Merge every other county together. 2 out of 4 counties would get Oklahoma some Medicare money. The state could even designate the existing counties in the main part of Oklahoma as some kind of special jurisdictions (parishes? boroughs?) so that county-level services like courthouses and rural roads don't need to be compromised geographically. But under this plan, Oklahoma would only officially have four "counties".

E.Z. Million, Norman's Most Interesting (-ly Named) Politician, Dies

2009-10-28T10:34:00.004-05:00

Oh, E.Z. Million, never could you manage to proclaim
An electoral victory due to a football game.
A single issue politician rarely gets to claim
A democratic victory to carry him to fame.
We'll all fondly remember every Fall when you'd exclaim
That it was so unfair to go to Texas for this game.
And when we'd read your interviews, our thoughts were all the same:
"But seriously, sir, is that your honest Christian name?"

Health Care Reform - It's Gonna Suck

2009-08-17T11:53:00.005-05:00

…Health care has been moving target for republicans …. the Democrats will shift, thinking they have something that the Republicans will go for, and then the Republicans will shift further. And [the Republicans] make a big deal about something that distracts and frightens the voters like those so-called death panels, then the Democrats drop that and Republicans find something else to object to.

Cokie Roberts, NPR’s Morning Edition, August 17, 2009.

Health care reform, as I want it (legitimate socialized medicine, with doctors employed by the government) has always been doomed. Health care reform, as I would accept it (mandatory single-payer government baseline insurance with plenty of room for supplemental insurance policies) has also been doomed for a long time. But it's looking more and more like health care reform, as the President originally wanted it (public "option" insurance) will also be doomed. If a final bill makes it all the way through both chambers of Congress this year, that bill would be generously described as "watered-down" and more accurately described as "gutted". Both Democrats and Republicans will claim victory, both for the actual passage of the bill and for the holes shot into it. Bipartisanship in action.

But even I can't dismiss all of the points that have been made by conservative analysts in the media over the last month. One in particular that I've heard only a couple of times is this: you can't expect to have a government option on health care, or provide semi-universal coverage, without raising taxes. This is true. For any meaningful reform to take place, it's going to take a lot more efficiencies than just computerizing medical records. A lot of inefficiency comes from the complicated method of filing and paying insurance claims, and fighting with insurance adjusters for money, which is mostly done by people in the doctor's office. Like any other marketplace, health care works more efficiently when there isn't market friction caused by complicated rules, policies, procedures, and differences in plans; and substantial savings could be derived by simplifying the terms of all insurance plans, or of course by having a baseline plan for which the rules about what is covered and what isn't are widely known and accepted (socializing medicine, for instance). But the inefficiency involved is paid for by the private marketplace; no public savings could be achieved by such a reform. It would benefit society as a whole, but at an expense to government (and therefore to taxpayers). And yet no Democrat wants to admit this.

Another Republican-derived point is that it would be unfair to the upper 5% of income earners to be taxed to pay for a service that gets used entirely by the lower 95% of income earners. I sort of agree with this. I understand progressive taxation, but on a government program as expensive as a proposed Medicare-for-all, I would want it to be paid for like Social Security is now (or for that matter, like Medicare is now); that is, as a social contract with everybody so that everybody pays a little bit and everybody gets to use the service. I'm saying I'd be in favor of tax increases on everyone if I got to have a medical insurance program that everyone got to use. Mr. Obama, please raise my taxes.

As usual, the problem with having politicians in charge of social programs is that politicians play politics all the time, and only consider the good of society if the good of society is popular at the moment. What's popular at the moment is views from "Main Street, America" of people angry about the government paying for things they can't afford, and are feeling like outsiders, which pays dividends for the Republican congressmen who believe they too are outsiders. The lock-step-feel of Congressional Republicans is back now that they've been put back into their comfortable roles as outsiders from beyond the Beltway. And as the Obama administration wastes more and more time trying to get a weak health care bill passed, the Republicans may use the time to get another Newt Gingrich-like movement going.

East Versus West: the Media Wars

2009-06-24T16:59:00.004-05:00

"No one has the right to insult the president, and they did it. And this is a crime. The person who insulted the president should be punished, and the punishment is jail. ... Such insults and accusations against the government are a return to Hitler's methods, to repeat lies and accusations ... until everyone believes those lies."

Reuters quotes Mahmoud Ahmadinejad speaking to supporters outside Tehran's Sharif University.

I think this is interesting, and not just because the Holocaust-denier Ahmadinejad is using Hitler as an example of wrong. I think it's interesting because Ahmadinejad makes certain inescapable points about the Western media's coverage of the riots in Iran. And that is, they are biased. They are biased towards our Western ideals of basic universal human rights such as the freedom of expression.

It is a fact that journalists from the West, including CNN and all the cable news media, have made it a habit now to broadcast unconfirmed rumors and opinions from blogs that may or may not be located in Tehran. I mean, you can't trust Twitter users at all, and yet the media (having no other choice than to report from their outposts in foreign countries) has reported unconfirmed reports straight off the internet as fact, simply because they fit in with our Western perception of Iran. The Ayatollah and Ahmadinejad always make this diatribe about the biased coverage of the Western media, but they're completely right. I mean, the western media is going to sniff out anything that seems revolutionary. They interview so-called experts who talk about the people's desire for reform of the system even though these experts often are Iranian ex-pats teaching at American Universities, which is a demographic that obviously favors reform. The media always emphasizes the oppressed over the oppressors in Iran, especially women, but of course we base our definition of oppression as curtailing freedom of expression (speech, dress), which is an individual freedom that we in the West recognize instantly when it is taken away by the government.

Okay, having said that, of course no nation in the West is going to kick out all foreign journalists, imprison peaceable dissidents, and use the chant "DEATH TO IRAN" as an official state policy. Iran is run by oppressors who mask their tyranny of human rights behind a shroud of oppressive religious dogma. But you know, for having two weeks of riots in a country whose leaders are reportedly without scrupules, there have been shockingly few deaths, as in, maybe only in the dozens. A couple of orders of magnitude less than the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989. So far.

You Can Tell People Hate Democrats Because More Senators Are Becoming Democrats

2009-05-04T13:25:00.006-05:00

From Oklahoma's senior Senator Jim Inhofe:

There is no evidence more visible that the American people are already rebelling against the far-left agenda than Senator Arlen Specter switching parties to become a Democrat. He did this for one reason, and that is his advisers told him he couldn’t retain his Senate seat as a Republican. In other words, the same people who supported Senator Specter six years ago have soundly rejected him today.

What? A moderate Republican shifts leftward and this is an indication that his constituency has shifted rightward? Arlen Specter switched parties because the formerly conservative moderates are now voting Democrats into office, leaving behind a Republican party out of touch with Pennsylvania values.

Speaking of values, this quote was found in a NY Times opinion-almalgamator on the subject of gays serving openly in the military. Inhofe is one of several contributors to confuse being openly gay with having sex in front of everyone non-stop.

The Oklahoma State Legislature is Filled with Morons! Aargh!

2009-04-29T14:06:00.004-05:00

The Republican-dominated Oklahoma state legislature has accomplished the following tasks this legislative session:

Hating on the Flaming Lips: the innocuous resolution declaring the Flaming Lips' song "Do You Realize??" as the official state song (based on an online poll) was not passed by the state house of representatives because some conservatives didn't like the fact that one of the band members wore a red t-shirt with a hammer and sickle symbol to the state senate chambers for the ceremonial passage of the bill there (04/23/2009)

Wasting time trying to deny access to the courts: Governor Brad Henry had to veto a bill that would require plaintiffs to get a certificate of merit from a "qualified expert". This would hinder legitimate lawsuits, could cost up to $12,000 by some estimates, and was determined to be unconstitutional by the Oklahoma Supreme Court in 2006. The same bill (with the same exact wording) was vetoed by Brad Henry last year too, for the same reasons. (04/24/2009)

Declaring sovereignty for Oklahoma while accusing U.S. leaders of violating the U.S. Constitution: Governor Brad Henry had to veto this one too. The measure, which passed by a huge margin in the House, also would have required Oklahoma to refuse and return its stimulus money. (04/24/2009)

Denying insurance coverage to autistic kids ... twice: Well, making huge profits is more important than providing the service for which people pay insurance companies money. (02/03/2009 & 04/28/2009)

Voted to erect a 10-Commandments monument on the grounds of the State Capitol: Overwhelmingly passed, I might add.

Placed restrictions on voting in elections: Bad Brad vetoed a voter-ID bill. Immediately afterwards, before the ink dried from the governor's veto stamp, election fraud became rampant. I myself voted in some school board elections outside of my district, just for yucks. I make sure to carry a lot of fake moustaches and beards with me too, just so I can revisit the same precinct over and over again. "Sure, my name is Rita Sanchez! Prove I'm not!"

Fox News: Defenders of Right Wing Extremism

2009-04-17T10:27:00.005-05:00

Apparently conservatives are steaming mad at Janet Napolitano. The Homeland Security Secretary has not withdrawn the report on rightwing extremism released April 9th, nor did she disagree with its findings. The part of the report that most angers Fox News and talk radio personalities is the following footnote:

Returning veterans possess combat skills and experience that are attractive to rightwing extremists. DHS/I&A is concerned that rightwing extremists will attempt to recruit and radicalize returning veterans in order to boost their violent capabilities.

Fox News has sounded the horns of umbrage based primarily on this statement, and they have encouraged conservatives to talk it up like it accuses all veterans of terrorism. Republican senators and representatives around the country have issued many statements chastising Napolitano and the DHS for a failure to apologize and withdraw the report. And on the heels of a successful series of tax day tea party rallies (even though, as Paul Krugman notes, they did start unconventionally from the top down, their attendance by throngs of people makes them a success), Fox News has learned that it can bolster its role as red America's megaphone, a role that necessarily takes it even farther away from the realm of objective journalism.

But there are several layers of obvious hypocrisy on this issue. First of all, at no point does the DHS report state that veterans should be or will be monitored like terrorism cells. Many conservative talking heads are insinuating that this is a likely possibility in order to drive the perception that the Obama administration is anti-soldier. This is a complete lie, and it is vile to continue misleading people in this way. Secondly, it's hard to argue that the findings of the entire DHS report are not valid. The report cites evidence that veterans have been recruited in the past to rightwing extremist groups. Much of the report notes the similarity of our current economic and political climate to the last time rightwing extremism was on the rise, which was in the early 1990s. It would be foolish to ignore rightwing extremism's affinity for veterans, just as it would be foolish to ignore Al-Shabaab's affinity for Somali-American men from Minnesota.

Thirdly, the report was not written by or even commissioned by Janet Napolitano or the Obama administration. The Bush administration got the ball rolling on the report, and like so many economic summaries or CIA summaries, this Homeland Security summary took time to develop. Conservatives are suggesting that the Obama administration only started this report as a kind of grudge against conservatives and the military, when in fact the Obama administration didn't even commission it.

Fourthly, it wasn't even the only report to be developed and released by DHS. There is a similar report that looks at the threats from leftwing extremism, which is mostly concerned with cyber-terrorism and protesters of the type found at economic summits. Conservatives rarely mention this report, which claims that leftwing extremists may "encourage recruitment of individuals with sophisticated cyber skills into their trusted circles." I don't see code monkeys (or even Iphone owners)erupting en masse with umbrage at the Department of Homeland Security.

Expect to see more mischaracterizations of minor reports in the coming years as Fox News and others start to regain their swagger by relearning how to manipulate large groups of people who don't know any better.

The Most Profitable Banking Practice

2009-03-23T16:33:00.004-05:00

While reading Eliot Spitzer's continuing effort to excoriate Goldman Sachs over their involvement in the AIG bailout, I came across a sentence that precisely sums up my feelings towards these bailouts that started with Henry Paulson and George W. Bush and is continuing with Tim Geithner and Barack Obama.

What continues to be fundamentally disappointing is that the "too big to fail" institutions continue to absorb enormous sums of taxpayer support without either demonstrating the genuine need for such support or altering their behavior after receiving it.

As I say every time I post something about this subject, I can't stand bailouts. But I understand the desire by the federal government to save the economy because it saves peoples jobs and keeps smaller businesses from being turned into debris from any potential financial supernova caused by the explosion of a big bank. This continues to be the rationale given for saving big corporate institutions that claim to be doing poorly.

But even after trillions now in federal help to giant private industries, credit is still tight, and unemployment continues to grow. Why have their business practices not changed? Because they don't have to. The bailout money has been one no-strings-attached handout after another, because our government still trusts the experience and decision-making ability of existing CEO's to deliver the most efficient outcome. But it's not in the interest of the powerful executive to create a better economy for everyone; it's only in his interest to make money for his company. And about the most efficient way to generate skrill is not to spur innovation or streamline production but rather to stick your hand out in Washington D.C. and beg. Goldman Sachs just made $10 billion in just one day, October 3, 2008, when the Troubled Asset Relief Program was signed into law. The only work put into that was done by whoever was in charge of financial reporting. Screw investment banking. The real money's in bailouts.

_________

A note on honest math: http://xkcd.com/558/

AIG

2009-03-18T08:09:00.002-05:00

I really hope this dies in the current news cycle, but there has been a lot of fury by members of Congress, UAW members and the general population over the bonuses paid out to top executives at AIG, which was bailed out by the Bush administration (which I only mention to set the timeline of the bailout; Obama would have done the same thing). AIG's defense: they had to honor contracts made in the previous year to these employees. Honoring contracts regarding employee pay? How is this not a good thing?

I definitely don't want the federal government in the business of forcing any employee of any private industry to give back part of their salary beyond what they would owe in taxes. That would be a terrible precident to set, and while I'm not usually a big fan of the "slippery slope" cliche, I think it would be appropriate to use it in this case.

Many would and have argued that the rules for these salary contracts shouldn't apply because the company was bailed out. This may have been a worthy argument had the bailout bill stipulated any sort of regulation of AIG, through the firing of executives, the explicit elimination of bonuses, the elimination of dividends, etc. But there was no such language in the bailout bill for AIG. It was basically a free, no-strings-attached cash infusion to a business thought at the time to be too big to fail and apparently too big to regulate as well.

So it's the government's own fault that their hands are now tied by contract law. Maybe they should have just let AIG fail in the first place. Then the executives wouldn't have gotten bonuses and the government wouldn't have taken an $80 billion hit to the treasury. Or barring that, the government should have taken over the company so that they could actually enforce rules for the company, like China would have done. But because of the no-strings-attached cash AIG received, they are under no obligation to do anything about executive pay. Suck it, USA!

On Presidents and Monkeys

2009-02-20T10:03:00.006-06:00

Saw this AP article on how some people were up in arms about the racial connotations behind depicting the President of the United States as a chimpanzee being shot.

Of course it's only racist because the current President is black. Depicting the former President as a monkey was a favorite pasttime for Steve Bell, political cartoonist for the UK's Guardian, who may be the most famous person named Steve Bell, at least until my grand plans for world domination come to fruition. An example of his work is shown above.

GOP Governors Consider Turning Down Stimulus Money

2009-02-18T20:41:00.004-06:00

If only the headline to this AP article was true. Or rather, if only it removed the word "consider". Then Oklahoma with its Democratic governor would get a larger slice of the pie and poor people in neighboring Texas would get fewer unemployment benefits, jobs and tax cuts, as well as contraceptives and monument sodding, I guess.

Evolution Still Considered Scientific Truth in Oklahoma, but Just Barely

2009-02-17T09:55:00.008-06:00

Oklahoma science teachers just barely dodged a bullet yesterday when the Senate Education Committee "narrowly defeated" the Scientific Education and Academic Freedom Act (SB 320) 7-6. Thankfully this bill that would allow for treating intelligent design as a science subject was killed in committee.

SB 320, written by Senator Randy Brogdon (R-Owasso) was not an overtly obnoxious mandate for equal time for intelligent design with the theory of evolution, which is why it was even more dangerous: it actually had a chance of passing. Language in the bill states that the Legislature "finds that the teaching of some scientific subjects, such as biological evolution, the chemical origin of life, global warming, and human cloning, can cause controversy, and that some teachers may be unsure of the expectations concerning how they should present information on such subjects."

There is this argument from right-wing philosophers that there is some kind of scientific controversy over biological evolution; in fact the only controversy with evolution is the inability of some people to reconcile their Biblical-literalist viewpoints with scientific evidence. Throwing in global warming and human cloning in this statement revealed even more about the agenda behind SB 320. Global warming is a real evidence-based phenomenon (although not as dire as some would make it seem), and human cloning is more of a practice than a theory. There is definitely a moral question behind human cloning, but that is certainly no place for science, which strives for separating what is from what is not, rather than separating what should be done from what should not.

The bill was rightfully killed by one vote in committee, and it could have come from Senator Jim Halligan (R-Stillwater). Halligan objected to a provision in the bill that would have allowed students to refuse on moral grounds to answer questions on a science test. That section of the bill allows that "students may be evaluated based upon their understanding of course materials, but no student in any public school or institution shall be penalized in any way because the student may subscribe to a particular position on scientific theories." From this bill, a student could either refuse to take a test on evolution or respond to questions that have a definite right answer blatantly wrong, and the student would not get marked off for it. Arguing for solutions that may not be defined clearly as right or wrong is a hallowed tradition in English classes, literature classes, philosophy classes, etc. But there is very little place for argument when it comes to science, math, engineering, etc. And there is a right answer to the question of how organisms came to possess the traits they have; in the science classroom, the right answer is not God.

When Senator Susan Paddock (D-Ada) noted that Senator Randy Brogdon's bill was endorsed by a preacher who spoke to the Senate last week and who had issued a warning about the spread of atheism, Brogdon retorted that at least the minister had spoken from the heart and his sentiments would be supported by "80 percent, probably 90 percent of Oklahomans." Of course Brogdon should know that in this country, a majority even as large as 80 or 90 percent isn't always right. If only Brogdon could be part of an "open and objective discussion of the facts and observations of" religious beliefs "and the assumptions that underlie his interpretation", maybe then he could "develop the critical thinking skills needed in order to become an intelligent, productive and informed citizen."

Private Insurance Makes Nick's Law More Expensive

2009-02-06T08:17:00.008-06:00

Since the election in November, both the state House and state Senate of Oklahoma are now controlled by Republicans for the first time in roughly forever. And while the House and Senate have only been in session for one month, they've already started kowtowing to corporate interests, especially in regards to health care coverage.

"Nick's Law" was a bill that would require health insurers in the state of Oklahoma to cover the diagnosis and treatment of autism in children. On Tuesday the state House Economic Development and Financial Services Committee voted 10-5 along party lines against a motion to send the mandate bill to the House floor. And if killing this bill wasn't enough, they then voted 9-5 for a "do-not-pass motion that under House rules will prevent the mandate idea from being considered again until a new Legislature is seated in 2011", metaphorically shooting the bill a couple extra times in the head just to make sure it's really dead. Elsewhere though there are 18 states with similar autism mandates and many more with legislatures considering mandates right now, which follows the advice Rep John Carey, D-Durant, will be giving to parents of autistic children: "...move to another state."

According to that article, there was a study performed for the state House that said an autism mandate would increase health insurance rates by at least 7.8% and possibly as high as 19.8%. 7.8% to 19.8%!? Without being privy to the methodology of that study, I think that sounds really high and I would like to quibble with it.

According to that article, one mother of an autistic child said that therapies cost $30,000 a year, and another father of an autistic child said he spends up to $5,000 a month, which could be as high as $60,000 a year. For the sake of this back-of-the-envelope calculation, let's use $45,000 a year. And a well-known statistic from autismspeaks.org states that 1 out of 150 children are affected by autism. All other data will come from the Kaiser Family Foundation's statehealthfacts.org.

If there are 971,331 children in Oklahoma, autism could be expected to affect about 6,475 of them. This would make the cost of all treatments for all autistic kids in Oklahoma $291 million per year. There are about 3.5 million people in Oklahoma, only 2,845,529 of them with health insurance coverage. If we assume all autistic kids will have 100% of their therapies covered by health insurance, then we can expect only the 2.8 million people in the state with health insurance will have to pay any more in premiums. This works out to an average of $102 increase per person per year. Currently, the average premium for an individual in Oklahoma is $3,967 ($635 paid by the individual on average, the rest by his/her employer). If the average premium increased $102, the new average due to autism coverage would be $4,069 ($651 paid by the employee), an increase of 2.6%. For the insured employee, the cost of the autism mandate would be on average $1.33 a month. If you told me we could cover autism diagnosis and therapy for all autistic children in Oklahoma and I'd only have to spend roughly a dollar a month extra, I'd totally be down.

Ah, but of course I'm thinking about this from a not-for-profit and governmental sort of viewpoint. It's fine to think about averages and cost spreading in these terms when your pool of customers is as large as an entire state, but if you're only insuring a few hundred thousand people just like 20 other private insurance companies in the state, you have to be prepared for more statistical anomalies. Like what if for some reason autism just happens to affect 1 in 50 children in your particular pool of customers? This could be within one or two or three standard deviations of the 1:150 rate. In order to break even in such a scenario, you would have to increase rates three times higher than the statistical average calculated in the previous paragraph. Now we're up to a 7.8% rate increase for private insurance simply because private insurers can't spread risk like a government insurer could.

Plus, as an insurance company, you don't simply break even with treatments. There are a lot of claims adjusters and management types to pay, and the probably-publicly-traded company needs to earn a profit for its shareholders. Add a few more percentage points to that total, and you could be up to somewhere like 13% increase in premiums. Oh, and the CEO really likes travelling to exotic getaway vacations, corporate meetings in Switzerland, and owning a few houses and boats, and really, who wouldn't? So if you can squeeze just a bit more out of the pool of insured customers, say to the tune of 19.8%, you could have your shareholder meetings in Tahiti, and of course you'd deserve it because you just figured out a way to turn a mental ailment into ungodly sums of money for your company.

So the cost of "Nick's Law" may in fact be a 7.8% to 19.8% increase in private insurance premiums. This is all the more reason why we need universal health insurance. (Maybe after that we can tackle that cost of $45,000 per year per child by putting socialized medicine in place. But first things first.)

(For more, visit nickslawok.blogspot.com)

My Hero the Scandal-Plagued Former Governor

2009-02-05T11:58:00.002-06:00

I can't possibly recommend Eliot Spitzer's columns at Slate.com any higher.

Bush Isn't Done Bringing his Allies Down

2009-01-28T21:04:00.005-06:00

The Bush Effect claims another victim.

My OU women's basketball team wins in Waco, 56-51, in an ugly game.

Health Care Reform Article Number 142,857

2009-01-28T14:12:00.004-06:00

With very few potatoes to quibble with recently and little time for thorough investigation of current political events, I'm just going to post a health care article that more clearly explains why our free market health care system does not produce better health.

Hey, haters! The Inaugural Speech Didn't Suck!

2009-01-21T11:45:00.000-06:00

Look out, America, Barack Obama's at the wheel now!

Unlike a lot of commentators, I thought it was a great inaugural speech. Maybe they were expecting the best speech of their lives, perhaps a speech that would make sweet, sweet love to the English language as Daily Show correspondent Aasif Mandvi said. But what we got was something that I was hoping for; a polite implicit castigation of the policies of former president George W. Bush.

He started out by listing all the big problems in our country today; job losses, health care costs, oil-dependent energy policy, et cetera. Then he started with the hope spiel, which all along has been an implicit put-down of the fear politics of former president Bush. Obama made sure to proclaim an end to the "recriminations and worn-out dogmas that for far too long have strangled our politics." Always an expert at reframing the debate, Obama put the big government vs. small government argument to rest by saying we need a government that works; and he pleaded for a new era of transparency to replace the shadowy dealings of former Lord Cheney and his minions. And then he said probably my favorite line of the whole speech, "The nation cannot prosper long when it favors only the prosperous." Take that, tax cuts for the wealthy!

Of course this was a good line too: "As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." This is about as flowery as a statement of rejection of torture and illegal wiretapping can get. Obama went on to make the case for diplomacy over brute power using history and pragmatism as a reference. "Our security emanates from the justness of our cause; the force of our example; the tempering qualities of humility and restraint." Speak softly, even if you do have a big stick.

As a president, Obama must now make tough statements directed at unfriendly nations just like former president Bush was fond of doing. But even Obama's tough statements are tempered with moderation. Take for instance the sentence that is now banned in China: "To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history, but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist." If former president Bush was the one speaking, he probably would have stopped after "history".

Then Obama wrapped it up basically by saying we shall overcome if all nations can see we share a common respect for humanity, and that we shall prosper by taking responsibility for our actions, and let's keep gettin' better, America! So while it was maybe not an epic speech, it served its purpose of turning the page on the Bush administration and uplifting a nation that has taken a few punches over the last 8 years.

So now the real business begins!

Our Long National Nightmare is Over

2009-01-20T12:14:00.004-06:00

It was 12:04 pm after I had started my car to go home for lunch when I first heard this phrase while listening to NPR's news bulletin: "Former President George W. Bush".

It's all smiles today!

In George W. Bush's Final Press Conference, a Parting Jab at the Elites in Europe

2009-01-13T19:39:00.008-06:00

A very interesting question from Monday's press conference with outgoing president George W. Bush:

One of the major objectives that the incoming administration has talked frequently about is restoring America's moral standing in the world. And many of the allies of the new President -- I believe that the President-elect himself has talked about the damage that Gitmo, that harsh interrogation tactics that they consider torture, how going to war in Iraq without a U.N. mandate have damaged America's moral standing in the world. I'm wondering basically what is your reaction to that? Do you think that is that something that the next President needs to worry about?

The still-president responded, "I strongly disagree with the assessment that our moral standing has been damaged." He went on to list Africa, India and China as regions that still cling to a generally positive view of the United States. The problem is with those "elite" Europeans.

I disagree with this assessment that, you know, people view America in a dim light. I just don't agree with that. And I understand that Gitmo has created controversies. But when it came time for those countries that were criticizing America to take some of those -- some of those detainees, they weren't willing to help out.

Well, the Europeans and I are in agreement on this one. The problem with Guantanamo is the problem with the whole War on Terror concept in the first place. Normally how it works, via the 6th Amendment, is that the accused has a right to a speedy public trial in whatever district the crime was committed in. The prisoners at Guantanamo were not picked up in the United States, and plus the United States can't pin any particular crime on the accused. This is preemptive action in work. Logically if you get detained before you commit a crime, there is no evidence against you because there was no crime.

Ordinarily such a situation would mean that the accused detainee would be released back into his own country. And this has happened for American citizens, as well as citizens of most European nations. But many of those detained could possibly face persecution and (more) torture if they were released back to their own countries, such as Yemen. And this matters because it is an international violation of human rights to release anyone to the custody of countries that have committed human rights violations.

So Europe is the one place that could take Guantanamo detainees from the United States without the latter getting accused of human rights violations. This is because Europe has roughly the same detention laws as the United States. But of course, unlike the United States, European nations have realized that a prisoner not charged with a crime has to be released, or else it's a human rights violation.

In addition, the United States insists that the detainees be indicted or put under 24-hour surveillance if they are transferred to other nations. Of course in order to get an indictment, a formal accusation that a person has committed a crime, a crime has to have been committed. And 24-hour surveillance, if you're not actually in prison, can be very costly and likely an abuse of power.

The Bush administration insists that the prisoners who aren't charged with any crime must not be released, neither in the United States nor in any other nation, because they could potentially commit a crime in the future. If Castro or Saddam threw people in prison and claimed that it was because those people could potentially commit a crime in the future, we'd all just chalk it up to the despotic rule of a dictator. Of course we wouldn't accept prisoners of those nations with a stipulation that they must be detained indefinitely.

So it comes as no surprise that England, France, Germany, the Netherlands, etc., don't want our Guantanamo detainees, especially if they had to continue the detainment themselves. But the reason isn't because the Europeans are jerks who criticize America without helping the human rights situation. It's George W. Bush who is the detainment jerk.

It should be noted that with the election of Barack Obama, European nations are now signalling that they would be more open to helping out with America's little torture camp problem. Barack Obama has strongly declared his intention to shut down Guantanamo Bay starting on Day 1 of his presidency, and European countries have answered his call (before he even made a call for it, no less). So maybe in the end it's not a matter of human rights issues but more of a diplomatic plea: "We'd be glad to help you out if you'd stop calling us elitist do-nothings in your press conferences."

The Media's Racial Quota Obsession

2009-01-06T14:36:00.007-06:00

Happy Epiphany!

Did you know that there are currently no black U.S. senators since Barack Obama got a promotion? I feel this is really important for everyone to know, and a fact that almost certainly is being buried by the media. I mean, think about it: racism would almost surely cease to exist in this country if we were to have a senate with one token black person in it. But since our racist nation would never be able to vote a black person to a high-powered office, a black person is going to have to be appointed to a high office. By some embattled white governor, most likely. After that happens, we can move on to appointing random token black people as college football coaches.

So let me get this straight: some people are upset that Barack Obama has chosen someone from outside the CIA's sphere of torturers and torture apologists to reform the CIA. Honestly I couldn't be happier at the choice of someone like Leon Panetta; if he had picked Dianne Feinstein, who fell prey to the "imminent terrorist threat" what-if scenario in an interview in the NY Times last month, I would have demanded my Change back.

Bill Richardson ... *shakes head*.

Oklahoma is getting new license plates this year, and they're a vast improvement over the old ones with the Osage shield in the middle that looks like a plate of cat barf from any sort of distance. The new plates feature a statue of a warrior firing an arrow at the sky: in other words, they're just like this weird Boston side project's only album. The new license plate rates somewhere around a B- in my book because of its small numerals and lack of embossment, but may get some kind of fictitious Most Improved award from ... me.

America's New Sacred Rite: Purchasing a Gun

2008-12-23T14:14:00.011-06:00

There are a couple more weeks before the new Oklahoma state legislature will convene for the first time with Republicans in control of both chambers, and many legislators have indicated several bills they intend to submit. There are at least two sales tax bills of interest. One bill from state senator Jay Paul Gumm would repeal the state sales tax on groceries. A similar bill died last year. Another bill from state representatives Eric Proctor and state senator Kenneth Corn (both Democrats) would repeal the state sales tax on guns and ammunition. This bill may gain traction. After all, owning a gun has become more sacred than, say, owning an Ipod or a Wii or a Tickle Me Elmo or any other consumer good.

After a several-decades-long movement by the conservatives in this country, guns have been converted from a mere tool to a sacred constitutional symbol. Hunters are now revered more because they are outspoken gun owners than because they provide food and/or clothing (because usually they don't). Citizens wanting in on this constitutional street cred need only to defend their purchase of a handgun by saying they intend to defend themselves and their family. Suddenly buying an item in a sportsman's catalog on par with fishing rods and tackle boxes becomes a sacred constitutional duty on par with voting and saluting the flag. And the legislative effects of this mentality of reverence for guns are spreading.

Eric Proctor, author of the bill that would eliminate sales tax on gun purchases in Oklahoma, used all of the right talking points when describing the need for such legislation.

“As Americans, we should not have to pay a tax to exercise our constitutional rights – especially our Second Amendment rights."

It's exactly the same as a poll tax on black people, you see.

"In Oklahoma, we have a long tradition of sportsmanship and hunting that precedes statehood and we should protect that heritage."

It's true, except before statehood it was the tribes with the weapons and the goal was surviving the winter.

"People shouldn’t have to pay a tax to the government if they need a gun in the home for self-protection,” Proctor said. “No matter what, the responsibility to protect your family is greater than the state’s need to generate taxes.”

And yet, house alarm systems, cars with airbags, sunscreen, bicycle helmets, and net nanny software all shockingly keep being taxed.

Another piece of legislation likely offered in the upcoming session is the issue of concealed weapons on college campuses. There are many legislators who are in favor of forcing Oklahoma State University and the University of Oklahoma to allow individuals with concealed weapons permits to carry guns on campus. Private entities are already forbidden from banning guns brought onto their property by their employers. Defenders of such legislation argue that students having weapons on campus would stop other students from having weapons on campus.

This November Oklahomans approved a ballot initiative that enshrined hunting in the state constitution. No one really knows why this was even an issue. No one was challenging the existing hunting regulations, and the ballot initiative didn't create any new regulations or modify any old ones. But many defenders were afraid that some group like PETA or the Humane Society would try to fight a legal battle at some point in the future, so they decided to go ahead and officially deify gun-toting hunters.

But it was completely unnecessary! In Oklahoma, it would be hard to come up with more lax gun laws. There are no gun registrations, no bans on assault weapons, no requirements for childproofing guns or mandates that would require guns to meet certain safety standards, no licensing for gun dealers, no background checks at gun shows, no license requirements for handguns, and no restrictions on buying guns in bulk. There are laws forbidding city and county governments from suing gun makers or enacting gun control laws stronger than the state's, and laws forbidding police from keeping records on gun purchases.

Gun sales were widely reported to be on the rise after Barack Obama won the election in November. Many idiots thought that immediately upon inauguration, Barack Obama would take away the ability to purchase a gun, if not make guns entirely illegal. Along these same lines of thought, expect many more knee-jerk anti-regulation gun bills to come through the legislatures of many states.

Bush's Interior Department: Completely Corrupt by Design

2008-12-16T09:36:00.013-06:00

It's hard for a lame duck president in his final days in office to make the big headlines he used to get, and short of an assassination attempt or a random shoe-throwing attack abroad, the president is typically treated with quiet disinterest by the media. This is a shame, because one of the most widespread department-wide displays of corruption and scandal is playing out right now in George W. Bush's Department of the Interior.

Lots of information over the past two or three years has been revealed showing the amount of brazen corruption in the department, but most people have ignored it, quite possibly because they don't give a shit about the goings-on of the vaguely-named Interior. Or it could be that it's the least surprising cabinet-level department to be influenced by cronyism from the top. I mean, if you had to pick just one department in the executive branch that would be most influenced by the anti-environmental pro-oil Bush 43, wouldn't it be Interior, a department responsible for both wildlife protection and regulating oil companies?

So how has Bush hollowed out Interior from the interior? By putting in place corrupt executives and officials who had compelling interests in loosening Department of the Interior regulations. It started off early. Two members of George W. Bush's pre-inauguration transition team were J. Steven Griles, the future Deputy Secretary of the Interior and a coal-industry lobbyist who pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice in 2007; and a disgraced Indian affairs lobbyist known as Jack Abramoff. The first Bush secretary of the Interior, Coloradoan Gale Norton, now works for Royal Dutch Shell oil company in their oil-shale department. Her biggest claim-to-fame was opening up Yellowstone National Park to snowmobiles, but her most lasting legacy will be the rules loosening regulation of federal lands and opening them up to developers and hunters.

Bush's second and current Secretary of the Interior is Dirk Kempthorne, who worked for a chemical manufacturing company before becoming mayor of Boise and eventually a U.S. senator and then Governor of Idaho. Not surprisingly, the chemical company's man Kempthorne sought to undermine the Safe Drinking Water Act once he got to the U.S. Senate, and was given zeros year after year by the League of Conservation Voters in their annual legislative scorecards. As Secretary of the Interior, Kempthorne has constantly worked to reduce protections to endangered species. He was the inaugural recipient of the Rubber Dodo Award from the Center for Biological Diversity for holding the record of the longest amount of time without a new federally protected species (at the time, 472 days). Earlier this month, Kempthorne presented a change to the Endangered Species Act that would remove oversight of projects that potentially could be harmful to endangered species.

But all of that stuff is legal! There are plenty of illegal ethics violations and straight up crimes to report from the Interior Department too! The above-mentioned former Deputy Secretary of the Interior J. Steven Griles was alleged to have steered policy and oil and gas leases to his own lobbying clients. He was forced to resign and pleaded guilty to Obstruction, but he is once again an energy company lobbyist. Former Secretary Gale Norton was accused of dismissing or ignoring 25 ethics violations against Griles in a 2006 Inspector General's report of Interior Department's "culture of managerial irresponsibility and lack or accountability".

In 2007, the Inspector General found broad failure by the Minerals Management Service to collect the $10 billion in royalties owed by oil companies to the government, mostly because the government agency in charge was "too cozy with oil companies". That report also found that individuals who leaked information about the corrupt activities of management were often retaliated against.

Further Inspector General reports released this year threw alcohol, drugs and sex into the "ethical failures" mix in the ultimate example of getting too "cozy" with industry. But more damning is the report released earlier this week showing how the Interior Department often "interfered with scientific work in order to limit protections for species at risk of becoming extinct." This is the report where we learned about Julie MacDonald, former deputy assistant secretary for Fish and Wildlife. The Inspector General Earl Devaney had this to say:

"Ms. MacDonald’s narrow focus on her own agenda not only endangered the Endangered Species Act, it opened the door for countless land-use decisions and developments that would have never otherwise been considered.”

Mr. Devaney also criticized several of Ms. MacDonald’s colleagues at the agency who, he said, aided and abetted “her attempts to interfere with the science” and “the unwritten policy to exclude as many areas as practicable from critical habitat determinations.”

Julie MacDonald has a degree in civil engineering and worked as a hydraulic engineer for the Bureau of Reclamation before becoming an administrator. As a civil engineer who has worked on many hydraulic engineering projects (okay, a handful of detention ponds in Lawton), I know that environmental protections are annoying to work with and seem like bureaucratic nonsense to comply with. Julie MacDonald probably took a similar mindset with her as she ascended the bureaucratic ladder. Maybe the Fish and Wildlife service should have hired more of a conservation-type rather than a developer-type to run their conservation-type program. But such is the way of upper management decisions in Bush's Interior Department.

Change can't come soon enough for this country, but the Department of the Interior is perhaps most in need of it. One hopes that Colorado Senator Ken Salazar (the most recent senate candidate who I voted for who actually won) will be up to the task.

Bailout Hypocrisy from Oklahoma's Congressional Delegation

2008-12-11T16:53:00.003-06:00

I'm against bailouts. I don't like the fact that public taxpayer-funded money could go to private companies if said private companies are huge, dying and poorly managed. But I'm warming to the auto industry bailout precisely because the final version of the bill will be dispensing loan money with tight controls, unlike the $700 billion in mostly free money with little control that the House and Senate passed in October. It's also less of a big deal because of the math involved: $19 billion is much much less than $700 billion.

But many senators and representatives don't see it that way. Here's a sampling of the hypocrisy just in Oklahoma:

Senator Tom Coburn:

The labor rates of the Big Three are out of sync with labor rates across the nation and it is unfair to ask American taxpayers to subsidize poor management decisions. The only acceptable Congressional action would be the possibility of guaranteeing loans after labor contracts are renegotiated

Senator Coburn voted yes on the $700 billion Wall Street bailout, which mandated that Americans subsidize poor management decisions.

Representative Mary Fallin:

With our deficit rising and our economy continuing to shrink, cutting every struggling company a multibillion dollar check is simply not an option. The best way to protect American taxpayers is to ask the automobile companies to work through their problems, reorganize their companies and operate by the same rules that other companies and industries have to play by.

Representative Mary Fallin voted yes on the $700 billion Wall Street bailout, which cut many multi-billion dollar checks for dozens of struggling lenders; institutions that now do not have to operate by the same rules that other companies and industries have to play by.

Representative John Sullivan:

Taxpayers should not be asked to reward failure by subsidizing the very business practices that got them into this situation in the first place. Moving forward Congress should focus on helping to rebuild a viable domestic automobile industry through market driven policies, not massive government intervention by nationalizing these companies.

Representative John Sullivan voted yes on the $700 billion Wall Street bailout, which mandated that taxpayers reward failure by subsidizing the very business practices that got lenders into this situation in the first place and created a massive government intervention by partially nationalizing certain companies.

Representative Tom Cole:

Unfortunately, another costly investment by U.S. taxpayers does not guarantee that automakers will reform the habits that caused their current spiral. In fact, a bailout may only encourage the status quo.

Representative Tom Cole voted yes on the $700 billion Wall Stret bailout, which encouraged the status quo.

Why Automaker Bailouts are Bad, Except for Maybe the One I Propose in this Post

2008-12-03T14:09:00.009-06:00

Allow me to be the 80 millionth person to put in my two cents against the proposed U.S. automaker bailout. This is one of those issues where I strip off all my Democratic/Socialist clothes and swim in Ron Paul's kool-aid. But I'm completely in agreement with all the most curmudgeonly conservative politicians on the issue of federal bailouts. If a business is about to fail because it can't adapt to the current market, because it made poor choices in the past about how to spend its capital to yield the greatest profitability, or because it's in deeper debt than it can possibly ever pay back, the bad business should just be allowed to fail, regardless of how many people the bad business employs or what percentage of market share it has. People will find a way to replace whatever the bad business produced with something more efficient. This is capitalism doing its thing with its invisible hand. As Ron Paul said, "An essential element of a healthy free market is both success and failure must be permitted to happen when they are earned."

People give many reasons why the "Big 3" have arrived at this point where they need to beg Congress for money. The American automakers don't make cars that Americans want to buy. Reliability and quality have been demoted down from job 1 to job 347 or so. They didn't foresee how high gas prices would lower demand for their large energy-inefficient vehicles. They pay people not to work all day. They pay high health care, high wages and high pension costs because they are unionized. They have too many brands and too many dealerships to be efficient. The interest in the debt they have already accumulated is dragging down the companies. These reasons are all absolutely true. So why should the federal government hand these companies a free Christmas bonus for a job so poorly done? It's going to take some massive restructuring to turn GM and Ford around (Chrysler should just cease to exist), restructuring that can only happen under Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Delaying the Chapter 11 filing with a federal bailout is like setting $25 billion dollars ablaze, equivalent to the average annual salary of 370,000 GM employees.

There are many arguments put forth in favor of the U.S. government giving money to the automakers. Some say that going into Chapter 11 bankruptcy would cause consumers to avoid Detroit's products because of a fear that their warranty would not be upheld. I believe bankruptcy is unavoidable, but consumers don't buy cars for the warranty anyways. If they did, the Big 3 automakers would have a much larger market share than Toyota since the American automakers' warranties are usually much better than those of foreign manufacturers. In other words, people prefer buying cars that are reliably built and don't even need warranties.

Many put forth the argument that the American automakers are such a large part of our economy that their failure would be devastating (the same argument used two months ago for the financial services industry). These people also frequently use inflated employment numbers that count people who deal not only with the Big 3 but also with foreign automakers. And it assumes that all 240,000 people directly employed by American carmakers and the other million or so in businesses reliant on the Big 3 wouldn't be able to find other jobs in industries that aren't tanking. But it is true that no member of the United Auto Workers would be able to find a job with such sweet benefits, and as cushioned as their salaries and benefits are, it would still produce many undue hardships on those employees.

I may not be in favor of handing GM and Ford free money to spend however they want, but I am in favor of helping out GM and Ford tackle some of these union benefits. Okay, so here's my plan: I propose the federal government assumes responsibility for the health care benefits and pension benefits enjoyed by UAW members. Instead of asking for wage concessions from UAW, I propose that the automakers be allowed to set wages based on the market, like the foreign automakers operating in America do. I would also propose eliminating by executive fiat the state franchising fees that make it difficult to eliminate car brands and dealerships that aren't profitable, like Pontiacs, Mercuries and everything Chrysler makes. In exchange, I would raise corporate taxes on the Big 3 as well as personal income taxes on their employees in order to offset the costs of the medical care and pension benefits. If they choose to continue making vehicles that drive consumers to purchase more reliable higher quality foreign brands, the Big 3 should be allowed to fail.

Since this whole system would be inherently unfair to the hard-working foreign-owned manufacturers here in the United States, I would offer the same deal to them: health care and pension benefits in exchange for higher taxes. And then when it becomes clear that this gives an unfair advantage to employees in the auto manufacturing industry, I would extend health care coverage, pensions and higher taxes to every citizen of the U.S. Then when it would become clear that health insurance is horribly inefficient, I would urge the government to use its massive leverage to reform the health care system so that hospitals and health clinics, like schools and fire departments, are owned and managed by the government on a not-for-profit basis.

Now that's a bailout!

The College Football Superleague

2008-11-21T21:48:00.005-06:00

Recently Barack Obama showed that one of the first elements of our nation in need of his brand of change is the way we decide a national champion in college football. Barack Obama, reheating the annual stew of sportswriters and jock-talkers, has come out in favor of an 8-team playoff system, rather than the current 2-team playoff of one game. But for a man who has been the face of change, this is an especially small-ball populist approach to the main problem in college football; that is, the subjectiveness of the sportswriters determining which teams are the most worthy. If we were to implement an 8-team playoff system, the annual stew would be about why the 9th and 10th place teams didn't get in. The NCAA basketball tournament has the same problem with subjectivity, but their solution was to expand the field to such a gargantuan size that the difficult decision on if a bubble team gets in or not is practically moot. Who cares if the Richmond Spiders or the Creighton Blue Jays didn't quite make it? They were probably going to lose in the first round anyways.

Real professional sports leagues don't require a human to determine which teams deserve a post-season. This is because there are only 20 or 30 possible teams to choose from. Everyone's schedule has relatively the same factor of difficulty, and so no team has to be handicapped by a sportswriter or poll voter. In college football, there are 100+ teams to choose from, and one team can only play at most 12 or 13 other teams. This means comparing teams necessarily requires some subjective factors, because head-to-head matchups are rare between non-conference foes.

But not everything is subjective. Athletic conference winners are determined not by sportswriters or strength-of-schedule, but by teams actually playing each other. There are tiebreak rules and everything in case two teams have an equal record at the end of the season. Conferences can do this because there are only between 8 and 12 teams to choose from. But unfortunately not all conferences are created equal. If we just had conference winners play each other as a playoff system, the new argument would be something like "why does the Big East #1 get to have a chance at a championship while the clearly superior Big 12 #2 doesn't?"

What I am proposing is that we blow-up the conferences and create a 32-team Superleague. The Superleague will consist of 4 divisions of 8 regionally-similar teams. Each team will play 12 games: 7 games within the division, one game each from the other 3 divisions, and 2 games from the pool of college teams outside the Superleague. This way old-fashioned college rivalries can remain intact even when one team is in the Superleague and the other team is not.

If you don't want to get into the nuts and bolts of such a league, just stop reading now and go look at some LOLcats.

For the rest of you, I will now bore you to tears with details. After the end of the Superleague season (the first week in December), a twelve-team playoff will commence. The playoff will be a seeded tournament, with the top four seeds given to each division's champion. The seeding will be based on best overall record. Tiebreaks outside the division will be, in order, as follows: head-to-head matchups, if applicable, then league record, then divisional record, then record against common teams (minimum possible = 2), then quality of best win, then quality of second best win, etc., and then coin flip. Division winners will be based on the divisional record. Tiebreaks within the division will be based on head-to-head record. In the event of a three-way tie, divisional winner will be determined based on tiebreak rules similar to interdivisional tiebreak rules. When there are two teams with the same overall record within the same division, the team with the better divisional record cannot be seeded lower than the team with the worse divisional record.

Okay, so the top four seeds earn a bye week and a home game similar to the NFL's playoff system. The playoffs will occupy four straight weekends starting in the second weekend in December and ending the first weekend of January.

But here's the part that makes this Superleague more interesting than every other professional league: the bottom team in each division should be kicked out of the Superleague for the next year. The best four teams from the remaining 88 college teams outside the Superleague would get to join the Superleague the next year. Because every crappy team needs a healthy dose of fear to get them to perform to their fullest.

----

As for which teams should get into this Superleague, I decided that it shouldn't just be the 32 best teams from this year. To make the Superleague palatable, it needs to include the best teams, but also perennial contenders who are going through some down times (like Michigan). So I came up with a very simple formula based on the final AP rating of each college team since 1993 that expands geometrically as seed approaches 1 and year approaches 2008, or actually (since I tweaked it a bit), as seed approaches -2 and year approaches 2012. The 32 teams this particular formula chose are as follows, in order:

1. USC
2. Florida
3. Ohio State
4. Texas
5. LSU
6. Oklahoma
7. Georgia
8. Florida State
9. Miami (FL)
10. Alabama
11. Nebraska
12. Michigan
13. Tennessee
14. Penn State
15. Virginia Tech
16. Auburn
17. Texas Tech
18. Wisconsin
19. Oregon
20. West Virginia
21. Boise State
22. Kansas State
23. Missouri
24. Notre Dame
25. Utah
26. BYU
27. Louisville
28. Boston College
29. TCU
30. Colorado
31. Oregon State
32. Iowa

Four out of the next 5 teams were PAC-10 teams.

From these 32 teams, I would place them in the following divisions:

WESTERN
USC
Boise State
Utah
BYU
Oregon
Oregon State
Colorado
Nebraska

CENTRAL
Oklahoma
Texas
Texas Tech
Kansas State
Missouri
TCU
West Virginia
Louisville

NORTHEAST
Ohio State
Michigan
Penn State
Wisconsin
Iowa
Notre Dame
Virginia Tech
Boston College

SOUTHEAST
Florida
Florida State
Miami
Alabama
Auburn
LSU
Tennessee
Georgia

For fun, I made a schedule and created simulations based on KRACH ratings from this year. Texas Tech usually got the overall #1 seed at the end of the Superleague season in my simulations, but Utah and Alabama also laid claim to that spot. The most frequently relegated teams were Oregon, Colorado, Michigan, Louisville, Kansas State, Tennessee and Auburn.

Download my Excel spreadsheet and play along if you'd like!

The Geography of the 2008 Election

2008-11-12T09:03:00.008-06:00

I've been thinking about the election a lot (of course) and which states can now be considered blue states, red states or purple states. It's a little bit more difficult than just looking at the 2008 election and seeing which states went for Barack Obama and which states went for John McCain. A lot of the reason why Barack Obama won was because he was the superior candidate, and that his opponent's party was suffering from a wave of unpopularity.

The map below shows the winner of each county in America and also the size of their victories, with a 15% or greater margin of victory shown in the fullest colors.

ELECTION 2008

The 2008 county-by-county map shows all of our entrenched American voting patterns: the west coast and the northeast all predominantly Democratic, the south and the central plains all predominantly Republican, red rural counties (except in the upper midwest), blue urban counties, a Democratic black belt in the south, etc. The map does seem to show more blue places than one would think, in particular in Montana, New Mexico, Colorado, Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina. But this bluification goes deeper than just the counties that voted for Barack Obama.

2008-2004

When compared to the margins in 2004, almost every county delivered more votes for the Democratic candidate in 2008, even though most of those counties were still won by the Republican. This blue shift was obviously a very important reason why Barack Obama won. All he had to do was decrease the Republican margin of victory in rural areas and hold onto the usual overwhelming number of votes from urban areas. But the 2004-2008 blue shift doesn't necessarily tell a larger story of a shifting electorate. It just shows Barack Obama was a much better candidate than John Kerry. A better but still imperfect comparison would be to compare this election where a charismatic Democrat beat a war-crippled Republican senator to the last one in which a charismatic Democrat beat a war-crippled Republican senator: 1996, when Bill Clinton beat Bob Dole

2008-1996

This map is more balanced than the one for 2004, as it should be since Democrats won both elections. But one of the more amazing things about this map is that it looks remarkably similar to the 2008 county-by-county election map shown at the top. If there were no demographic or idealogical shift since the last time a Democrat won the presidency, then one would expect that most of the map would be in pale colors with some bright colors distributed in a random geographic pattern. This is not the case. The already-red South has gotten redder, the already-blue West Coast has gotten bluer, Democratic northern New Mexico and Colorado's Front Range are bluer, Republican Appalachia is redder. Democrats have increased their strangleholds on urban counties, Republicans have increased their strangleholds on rural counties.

If there is a demographic shift, it is not towards a more diverse and open society. It is towards entrenchment into communities with like-minded individuals. I mean, think about it. How many people you know voted for John McCain? No matter where you live, it probably wasn't 46%, which was his national popular vote share. It was probably somewhere between 0% and 10% (I'm assuming the fact that you're reading this indicates you are probably a Democrat).

This is the viewpoint of Bill Bishop on Slate.com, who is author of a book called The Big Sort about how we tend to migrate to communities full of people who look like us and think like us. I would agree with him. Is this better for our society? Probably not. But I'm not about to move away from my house in my neighborhood full of tall trees, older houses and Obama yard signs. I feel comfortable here.

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Other interesting shifts from 1996 to 2008:

- Election-specific trends for this map would indicate that logically Arkansas and Arizona should be redder while Kansas and Illinois should be bluer since the specific candidates from Arkansas and Kansas (Clinton and Dole) are not present in 2008, while the candidates from Arizona and Illinois (McCain and Obama) are. Arkansas and Arizona are certainly redder, but Illinois and Kansas are not definitively bluer except in the Chicago region and the more urban areas of Kansas, as well as in Russell, KS, where the highway sign proudly displays "Home of Bob Dole". Russell county in 1996 went for Dole by a margin of 62%. That softened to a margin for McCain in 2008 of merely 54%.

- All but one county in Oklahoma has gotten any more Democratic since 1996. The one county is Oklahoma City's county, which moved from a Republican margin of 18% to a Republican margin of 17%. Only three other counties have increased the Republican margin by any less than 15%: Lawton, Norman and Tulsa. Everywhere else is a red explosion.

- Rio Arriba County has been passed by Taos County as the most Democratic county in New Mexico. This has long been expected due to Taos's liberal trinity: hispanics, indians and hippies.

- New York City and San Francisco have gotten even more Democratic than they were 12 years ago.

- The Southern Michigan vs Northern Michigan divide is more apparent than it was 12 years ago.

- The blue border counties of Texas have not gotten bluer over the last 12 years. But Austin, Dallas and Houston sure have.

- If you want to see how a blue area becomes red, shift the slider on nytimes.com from the 1992 election to the 2008 election and keep your eye on Louisiana, Arkansas, east Texas, east Oklahoma and southeast Missouri. It looks like water draining out of the Mississippi Valley.

(All fantastic maps from nytimes.com)

My Votes

2008-11-07T11:26:00.002-06:00

I was thinking about Alyson's post about how for the first time she voted with the majority (or, I guess, the majority voted with her), so I thought about which candidates I've voted for in my 5 national elections.

2000
President - Al Gore (D) - Lost (but won the state)
Senator - Jeff Bingaman (D) - Won
Representative - Heather Wilson (R) - Won

2002
Governor - Bill Richardson (D) - Won
Senator - Pete Domenici (R) - Won
Representative - Heather Wilson (R) - Won

2004
President - John Kerry (D) - Lost (also lost the state)
Senator - Ken Salazar (D) - Won
Represenative - Stan Matsunaka (D) - Lost

2006
Governor - Brad Henry (D) - Won
Representative - Hal Spake (D) - Lost

2008
President - Barack Obama (D) - Won (but lost the state)
Senator - Andrew Rice (D) - Lost
Representative - Blake Cummings (D) - Lost

So, counting presidential votes as half for winning the state and half for winning the nation, I have voted with the majority 8/14 times, a ratio that will keep getting smaller the longer I live in this state.

2008 Electoral Vote Map

2008-11-05T15:36:00.001-06:00

Most Conservative State in the Nation Award

2008-11-05T09:52:00.002-06:00

There were six states that went for John McCain by a "filibuster-proof" 60% majority of the populace: Alabama, Utah, Wyoming, Alaska, Idaho and Oklahoma. Here are McCain's totals in those states in ascending order:

Alabama - 60.5%
Idaho - 61.5%
Alaska - 61.5% (with 99% reporting)
Utah - 62.9%
Wyoming - 65.2%
Oklahoma - 65.6%

Wyoming had the larger margin of victory for McCain (32.5% for Wyoming compared to 31.2% for Oklahoma), but Oklahoma has the special distinction of being the only state in the union* where every single county voted for John McCain. Our state senate also finally completed it's flip over to Republican hands for the first time since statehood. Republicans already control the state house of reps. All our incumbent Republican U.S. Representatives won by huge margins (and yes, so did our one lone Democratic U.S. Representative, who happens to be the most conservative Democrat in the House and is helped by having the last name of Boren), and our incumbent Republican U.S. Senator won big as well.

In Wyoming, their two Republican U.S. Senators won by huge margins, but their U.S. Representative race was substantially tighter. Republicans in their state legislature vastly outnumber Democrats by a 3 to 1 margin.

Which state is more conservative then? Oklahoma or Wyoming? I'll throw my weight behind Oklahoma since there are far more people in Oklahoma, making it's Republican homogeneity more remarkable.

*among states with counties, which excludes Alaska.

Election Night Livish Blog

2008-11-04T18:05:00.018-06:00

5:54 Coming to you from La Casa de Steve, its the Quibbling Potatoes "live blog"! This isn't exactly a "live blog" attempt, but it will be a "running diary". Also, the "quotation marks" will hopefully decrease from "this" point on. Also joining me are Zeke and Copper, dog analysts, as part of the "Worst Political Team".

5:55 I'm starting out on CNN for two reasons: 1) It's the only 24 hour cable news channel I get in HD, and 2) James Carville's amazing shiny head. I'll flip over to NBC, MSNBC and Fox News occasionally too. I'll ignore ABC and CBS and PBS. I only have so much attention.

___

6:00 Time to color! Kentucky to McCain, and Vermont to Obama. 8-3 lead for McCain. I wonder if Bill Kristol is now forecasting a McCain victory. Lets see.

6:01 Fox was supposed to bring me "You Decide '08" at this time, according to my hd tuner, but I'm getting Family Guy instead. Thats fine with me. Human analysts on CNN are breaking down the demographics in Vermont and Kentucky. Dog analyst Copper is breaking down some plush dog toys.

6:09 Joe Scarborough announces that the Republican party is now shattered. Chris Matthews appropriately calls him out on saying this 9 minutes after the first states are called. Chris matthews: the voice of reason.

6:12 Fox News forecasts good things for McCain because Lindsey Graham has been reelected. Let them have their graspable straws, I say.

6:13 I've always thought this, but I might as well say it: Fox News's Brit Hume sounds like the voice of Assy McGee.

6:18 Fred Barnes of Fox News and the Weekly Standard yells at early voters, for some reason. Apparently "absentee" voters aren't actually absentee enough for him.

6:22 Dog analyst Copper just got up in my lap and almost immediately farted. I may have to kick him off the "Worst Political Team".

6:24 Turd Blossom is on! Explains how awesome the socialistic policies of Henry Paulson are. So far its a really subdued night on Fox News.

6:29 John King: my hero. Explains how close margin in Indiana so far (3% for McCain) benefits Obama, since results from his base aren't even starting to show up.

___

6:31 CNN can't even make a projection on West Virginia. That is a fantastic sign for Obama! Dog analyst Zeke greets news with a mighty huff.

6:35 The "Worst Political Team" is going to have the first election night beer of the night, as Fox News puts WV in McCain's column.

6:46 CNN and NBC still refuse to call West Virginia, and refuse to talk about it. Suzanne Malveaux (sp?) of CNN is reporting from Grant Park in Chicago, but we can't hear a word she's saying because thousands of excited people are behind her screaming "Obama". Why doesn't she have a mic? Liberal bias, trying to show a bigger crowd than actually exists?

6:50 Just 10 minutes until polls close in Oklahoma! The question that's on everyone's mind is Will the networks be able to call Oklahoma for McCain at 7:00:01 or 7:00:02?

6:51 CNN analysts are breaking down the historic ramifications of this election. Dog analyst Zeke has now decided to break down a milk jug.

___

6:55 NBC raises Fox News by calling South Carolina for McCain. 16-3 McCain so far for them. Whoops, Fox News now has SC for McCain too. Make that 21-3.

6:57 CNN calls South Carolina for McCain. Still nothing from West Virginia. Still CNN and NBC not talking about it.

___

7:00 Big roundup #1 tonight! CNN projections: Mccain: Oklahoma and Tennessee. Obama: Massachusetts, Illinois, Connecticut, New Jersey, Maine (3/4), Delaware, Maryland, and DC. Obama takes the lead 77-39! Still up for grabs: AL, FL, MS, PA, NH, and MO. More interesting news for Mississippi and Alabama not already being able to be called for McCain. Fantastic stuff for Obama.

7:06 My first trip to ABC and they've got the score at 102-34 for Obama. Kapow! NBC is not in HD for me, but ABC and CBS are.

7:09 Okay, so everyone but CNN is calling PA for Obama already. That's half the puzzle (the other half is Virginia). Wonder if Slate.com has already called the race for Barack Obama.

7:10 Joe Scarborough and Keith Olbermann are pretty giddy right now. Joe - "the thread is getting really thin for McCain". Joe - Pennsylvania = "Fool's gold for Republicans". Keith - "How can McCain possibly win without Pennsylvania".

7:12 First Howard Dean sighting of the night on MSNBC. I'm hoping he starts screaming before the night ends. But he sounds really subdued right now. Those tranquilizers have been working quite nicely for him.

7:14 From newsok.com - Headline says "Voting Problems Reported in OKC Metro Area". First sentence says "They ran out of 'I voted' stickers at Midwest City's Restoration Church this morning." Sensationalist journalism?

___

7:27 Senator Jim Inhofe going to be speaking in about half an hour. With 1% reporting, its Inhofe - 56%, Rice - 40%. I will be happy if Rice can get more than 40%. The Oklahoma Democratic party, ladies and gentlemen.

7:28 Its a tight race for our first openly gay politician in the Corporation Commissioner's office, Jim Roth, the incumbent Democrat appointed by Brad Henry two years ago. Interesting race: Dana Murphy, his Republican opponent, campaigned on a platform of claiming she was more qualified than Jim Roth to be Corporation commissioner. Even though Roth actually is Corporation Commissioner. Bizarre.

7:31 Alabama and Arkansas go to McCain, but the bigger news is that John Sununu and Elizabeth Dole are going down in flames! Like, huge numbers for the Dems Kay Hagan and Jeanne Shaheen (sp?). If these numbers stretch across to other states, we may actually see a 60-seat senate for the Dems, which would be about as surprising as their 2006 victory.

___

7:37 Georgia goes to John McCain, according to NBC. Mitch McConnell is in an incredibly close race still with half the precincts reporting in Kentucky. If that seat flips, just, wow. John King says if McConnell loses, its a Democratic wave. Then he actually made a waving hand motion. Love that guy!

7:41 CNN finally calls Pennsylvania for Obama 41 minutes after all the other networks. A lot of shots of celebration in Grant Park, Chicago. Haven't seen too many shots of the Biltmore in Phoenix.

7:47 Brit Hume at Fox News is always perplexed by green screens. Earlier he had to explain to people that the picture behind Juan Williams was a computer image, and now he's amazed by the green screen behind this dude running down the House races. Actual conversation after he finished his analysis:

You call it a board, is that right?
Yeah, Brit.
But theres no wood there, right?
No, it's ...
So you can't see where you're pointing? It just looks green to you, right?
Yeah, I don't see anything but green, and I ...
So we can see what you do better than you can?
Yeah!
Wow, I love it! What's next, oh, were going to take a break. I love it! Back in a few!

7:51 Voter fraud coverage, thanks to Fox News! In Cuyahoga County, OH, apparently absentee ballots are breaking heavily to Obama 71% to 29%. And a high number of provisional ballots that the correspondant is holding in his hands and resisting the urge to rip them up. He also reports 9000 people have emailed Fox News complaining about voter fraud. Scandals!

7:55 Big roundup #2 coming up in 5 minutes. Dog analysts Zeke and Copper are preparing for the onslaught by going outside and peeing on stuff.

____

7:59 Roth vs. Murphy - corporation commissioner - with 5% reporting, its still 50%-50%. Andrew Rice has to fondle the numbers, or something, before he'll officially speak and concede.

8:00 Big roundup #2: Obama gets New York, Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Rhode Island. McCain gets Kansas, North Dakota (already?), Wyoming. Not projecting Texas(!), Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, Louisiana, Nebraska (!!), South Dakota (!). Millions of votes already tallied, and like 1% of the precincts are in in Texas. But everythings bigger in Texas. Obama leads 174-76 (ABC projection).

___

8:15 Our dog analysts, immune to daylight savings time ending, are requesting a platform of 9:00 walkies.

8:22 With 20% in, McCain's up in Oklahoma 61%-39%. We're going to need to do better than that if we're going to have a chance at beating Utah and Idaho as most conservative state.

8:26 Huge! NBC is calling Ohio for Obama! CNN calls West Virginia for McCain (duh!), but remains silent on Ohio. Instead, we get a live view of Hank Williams Jr at the Biltmore in Phoenix. Now that's journalism! Wolf throws it to commercial, but teases us with "a very big projection after the break". Hank Williams Jr: still born to boogie.

8:28 Okay, if Ohio goes Obama, it means he doesn't have to have Virginia, which is trending McCain. An aside - Florida is also trending Obama. But with Ohio in the bag for Obama, it means I lose the NY times 3 pick teaser on their Economix blog. It was a risk, I know.

___

8:49 Markey's up huge in Musgrave's Colorado House seat! 61%-39% with 31% reporting.

8:55 New Mexico for Obama! My dad fumes! Louisiana for McCain! The south shall rise ... some other time!

____

10:45 Barack Obama, as commonly predicted, was projected the winner at precisely 10:00:01, when California put the race over the top with their 55 electoral votes. From that point on, it was nothing but hyperbolic coverage from every journalist with a microphone! But seriously, this is pretty big stuff, I guess. My dad hasn't called, which is actually fine because I'm sure he's crying over losing New Mexico's Republican senate seat as well as their two house seats.

10:55 Sorry about the big gap, but they wouldn't call it the "Worst Political Team" for anything. Actually M___ and R___ joined the team, and blogging and socializing became two mutually exclusive things.

___

11:01 Obama speaks, and its moving enough. Very poised. Very calm! A good contrast moment from John McCain's concession speech came when Obama made reference to McCain and Obama's audience clapped, unlike McCain's audience who booed Obama.

11:30 Hearing the excuses from Fox News. "This campaign was all about personality." "He outspent McCain by a large margin." But you know, it's actually refreshing to not hear the histrionics of the MSM. It's fine that we can acknowledge what Obama means to the black cause, but at the end of the day he can't just be defined as a "black" president if he's ever going to be truly successful.

But I'm really glad he won!

___

11:54 Turd Blossom says Republicans can't abandon the social issues and uses the Florida gay marriage ban to point this out. But he neglects to point out that the good people of Colorado voted down a proposal to define life at the point of conception (by a 3:1 margin), the medical marijuana proposal passing in Michigan, the rejection of limits to abortion in South Dakota, etc. In other words, plenty of swing state voters rejected social conservative issues.

11:59 Fox News throws support behind Bobby Jindal's 2012 candidacy.

12:00 I've been monitoring the Red Race to see which state is the most conservative, as defined by which state elected John McCain by the widest margin. Oklahoma and Wyoming have been going neck-and-neck, and we're both totally trouncing expected-frontrunners Utah and Idaho. It's 66%-34% in Oklahoma, 66%-32% in Wyoming. Wyoming's probably going to win, all because Oklahoma had no third party candidates or write-in abilities.

12:05 Jacob, after hearing Barack Obama's 2004 DNC speech: "Ladies and gentlemen, the 44th President of the United States of America." Steve, in November 2007 or so: "I guarantee a Republican will win the presidency." Let's just say I should owe Jacob a lot more than a six-pack of beer for how much his prescience kicked my prescience's ass.

12:07 Alaska - Too close to call! Still out: NC, MO, MT and the first state to close their polls tonight, Indiana, amazingly.

12:08 I already colored in Alaska an hour ago. I disenfranchised Aleutians!

___

12:10 Jim Roth lost his Corporation Commissioner seat. I bet if more people knew he was gay, he would have lost by a lot more.

12:12 Bernalillo county - 60% to 39% for Obama! Larimer County, CO - 55% - 44% for Obama! Cleveland County, OK - 60% - 40% ... for McCain. Like 2004, no Oklahoma county went for Obama. The closest county, Oklahoma County, was 58%-42% for McCain.

12:16 Breaking news! Bill Richardson has shaved! BILL RICHARDSON HAS SHAVED!

___

12:21 Bill Richardson and Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, president of Spain = BFF. Keith Olbermann has to ask him why he shaved. It showed white, it required maintenance, it cleans him up (to be an acceptable candidate for Secretary of State ...).

Okay, I've stayed up way too long. I loooooove elections!

When the Polls Close

2008-11-01T10:14:00.006-05:00

Happy November!

Here are my predictions for the election night score:

7:01 - VT - Obama
7:01 - KY - McCain
7:31 - WV - McCain
7:50 - SC - McCain
8:01 - ME, MA, CT, NJ, DE, MD, DC, IL - Obama
8:01 - TN, MS, AL, OK - McCain

(Obama leads 78-54)

8:10 - GA - McCain
8:20 - NH - Obama
8:31 - AR - McCain
8:45 - VA, PA - Obama (kaBOOM!)
9:01 - NY, RI, MI, WI, MN - Obama
9:01 - SD, 4/5 of NE, KS, TX, WY - McCain

(Obama leads 188-125)

9:20 - IN - McCain (this will plant the "why wasn't Obama's victory more decisive" storyline)
9:40 - LA - McCain
10:01 - UT - McCain

(Obama leads 188-150)

10:10-10:40 - Mindnumbingly boring half-hour of TV coverage featuring interviews with Bill Richardson's beard on at least 3 different networks.
10:40 - IA - Obama
10:45 - ND, MT, 1/5 of NE, AZ, FL - McCain, in preparation for 11 pm onslaught
11:01 - ID - McCain
11:01 - WA, OR, CA, HI - Obama

(Obama declared projected winner, leads 272-198)

The remaining states will sort themselves out sometime.

Running diary of the Big Prime Time Barack Obama Election Extravaganza!

2008-10-29T19:45:00.001-05:00

He just lost votes in Philadelphia by delaying the World Series game even more.

7:01 "I'm Barack Obama and I approve this message." I feel more inspired already.

7:02 Hey, this isn't in hi-def! Maybe it can be interpreted as a dig against McCain, champion of hi-def conversion. But almost definitely not.

7:02 Let's see how many battleground states he can feature and/or name drop tonight.

7:03 Lovely warm wood paneled office-type background. Coupled with the warm acoustic guitar music, it's obviously very reassuring. Like a barbecue restaurant.

7:04 Telling a story about a woman from North Kansas City (Missouri) with approximately 20 kids.

7:05 The family with 20 kids just can't make enough money to get by, especially with hubby's knee injury. Try having fewer kids.

7:07 Obama explains why everything is bad with the economy by talking about the skyrocketing deficit. The next sentence, he's talking about tax cuts and spending increases. Ron Paul, meet Lyndon Johnson.

7:08 "Tax cut for families making less than $200,000"? Uh oh. The republicans will see that number shrinking by $50,000 and grab a hold of it. Is this $50,000 difference from previous policy his October surpise?

7:10 BB King's house is in trouble? Noooo!

7:11 Larry (BB King) puts on a Wal Mart name tag to avoid foreclosure, but he doesn't make enough money as an "Associate salesman". There's your liberal wal mart jab.

7:12 So much wood! And that's not just Chris Matthew's leg thrill.

7:13 Natural gas reserves! He sends a yippie kiy yay T Boone's way.

7:15 Energy policy leads to Iraq policy pretty seamlessly.

7:16 Big ups to the 505!

7:17 Nice albuquerque scenes during the special needs segment. Maybe he'll shoot a scene in Oklahoma. Oh wait, he has yet to set foot in this state this year.

7:18 Ooh, Barack Hussein Obama Sr sighting! "He's not like us!!!!" say the Republicans. But it's okay, because the family history stuff is backed by warm acoustic guitar. Feel secure, America.

7:19 Lots of scenes from the Barackropolis from the Denver convention. On a prime time infomercial. Before a Daily Show appearance. What ego!

7:20 Missouri, Colorado, New Mexico ... Wonder where he's aiming his message.

7:20 Talking about the death of his mom to segue from health care policy. Sad piano tinkles.

7:21 "My mother never saw her grandchildren. That breaks my heart!" Hugs to 44.

7:22 First time we see Michelle, Malia, and Sasha. "He read Harry Potter to her". Yeah! Pissing off the social conservatives!

7:23 Dick Durbin. And uplifting woodwinds.

7:24 "I watched him incisively question Condoleeza Rice ... This guy's good" - J. Biden. Incisively?

7:24 Story time with fat guy. He's from Kentucky. Wow, if Kentucky's now a battleground state, its a landslide against McCain.

7:25 You know what word I havent heard yet? Maaaverick.

7:25 See, Appalachians living near Kentucky. White people can vote for black people too.

7:26 National security policies: renew tough diplomacy, refocus on Al Qaeda, rebuild military. Yeah, um, the differences with McCain are striking...

7:26 Holy shit! They dug up John Adams to endorse Obama! Well, if the second president thinks he's worthy...

7:27 Okay, now entering the uplifting inspiring stump speech part of the show. And lots of major chords and long airy tones.

7:27 Bill Richardson's beard makes an appearance at the uplifting part of the show. That sort of brought me down a little, I have to admit.

7:28 Live from Florida! Wait, how's he going to make it to the Daily Show on time?

7:29 Okay, so this Florida Rallly is filmed in hi-def, but not in 16:9 ratio. Still 4:3

7:29 Denver, Cincinatti, Ft lauderdale all named dropped. "All across this nation" ... if you live in a swing state.

7:30 Good job with the uplifting string arrangement that sounds suspiciously like the Olympics theme.

7:31 Cuts nicely to the uplifting Fox Sports music before the World Series. Elections and baseball. Man, if only I was eating an apple pie.

7:36 First negative ad of the night. Aw, that's just a buzzkill, McCain. Didn't you hear that uplifting music?

Four Things I Learned Today

2008-10-29T14:54:00.004-05:00

1. U.S. Senate Minority leader Mitch McConnell is married to Labor Secretary Elaine Chao!

2. Senator John Sununu from New Hampshire is not the same John Sununu from New Hampshire that was George Bush 41's chief of staff! (He's his son.)

3. There's another Marion Berry, and he's a U.S. Representative in Arkansas. And white!

4. Sarah Palin is a socialist! From the New Yorker:

For her part, Sarah Palin, who has lately taken to calling Obama “Barack the Wealth Spreader,” seems to be something of a suspect character herself. She is, at the very least, a fellow-traveller of what might be called socialism with an Alaskan face. The state that she governs has no income or sales tax. Instead, it imposes huge levies on the oil companies that lease its oil fields. The proceeds finance the government’s activities and enable it to issue a four-figure annual check to every man, woman, and child in the state. One of the reasons Palin has been a popular governor is that she added an extra twelve hundred dollars to this year’s check, bringing the per-person total to $3,269. A few weeks before she was nominated for Vice-President, she told a visiting journalist—Philip Gourevitch, of this magazine—that “we’re set up, unlike other states in the union, where it’s collectively Alaskans own the resources. So we share in the wealth when the development of these resources occurs.” Perhaps there is some meaningful distinction between spreading the wealth and sharing it (“collectively,” no less), but finding it would require the analytic skills of Karl the Marxist.

The Failed Policies of George W. Bush

2008-10-28T15:17:00.008-05:00

According to almost every news source in America, the Democratic Party will win big on November 4. Presidential candidate Barack Obama is far from the only Democrat who will ride into Washington on the coattails of bad feelings for President George W. Bush. Almost every Democratic candidate for office in America, fairly or not, has enjoyed a bounce in popularity by campaigning on a platform of being anti-Bush, or by linking his/her opponent to the "failed policies of the Bush administration". Indeed, George W. Bush has never had a lower approval rating than right now, partly because of the recent financial crisis. But what these Democratic candidates are not doing is reminding people what it is that is so bad about the "failed policies of George W. Bush" in the first place. If the American public remembers that it can't stand that Bush guy but can't remember why, then the "failed policies" will surely be repeated by elected members of the Government. So to serve as a reminder mostly to myself, I've jotted down 33 "failed policies" that I think have made our country worse off thanks to the 43rd President of the United States of America.

1) "The United States doesn't torture." Except when it does. George W. Bush vetoed anti-torture bills, watered down water-boarding by referring to it as an interrogation technique (like how rape is just a sexual technique), and flauted the Geneva Conventions time after time when confronted in interviews or press conferences.

2) Unfounded wars on sovereign nations. Bad intelligence that should have been ignored about WMD and yellow cake fissile material led to a war against Iraq. The previous sentence was the best-case, most P.C. explanations for George W. Bush's intentions in the Middle East. Speculation abounds as to his real reasons for war with Iraq, most of which would be inconceivable if you told it to anyone eight years ago.

3) Secrecy. Over-classification of classified documents.

4) The Patriot Act

5) Bullying. Bullying of foreign nations for support for the above unjust Iraq war. Bullying of congressional leaders for support. Bullying of the U.N. to pass the war resolution, or else. It's called negotiating when there's a give and a take, and it's called persuasion when there's a well-explained and well-grounded rationale for action. It's called bullying if threats are made and fear is induced in entities that should be our allies.

6) Over-simplification of foreign viewpoints. You don't have to be either "for us or against us".

7) "Axis of evil". Well so much for negotiation.

8) Isolating North Korea to the point that they needed to build an atomic weapon to get any bilateral negotiation with the U.S.

9) War on terror. How does one win a war against extremism? You can't kill 'em all. There are always fringe elements in even the most tightly regulated societies, like gay people in Iran, bloggers in China, and terrorists in America.

10) Pre-emptive wars. The "Bush Doctrine", I think. Even police *should* have to wait until a crime is committed to detain people. And speaking of detaining people...

11) Guantanamo Bay. And more importantly, the lack of trials for prisoners there. (I hesitate to call them "detainees".)

12) Oh wait, not "prisoners" or "detainees". "Unlawful Combatants".

13) "Extraordinary renditions". They lead to "erroneous renditions" in the absence of the law.

14) Over-reaching of executive power to facilitate illegal wiretapping. FISA courts are just not necessary anymore.

15) The Alberto Gonzales Department of Justice. Attorney firings for partisan reasons, mealymouthed testimony by most Department of Justice officials including the Attorney General himself on several occasions, the approval of warrantless wiretapping, and the attempted repeal of Habeas Corpus.

16) Incompetent "loyal Bushies" like "heckuva job" Brownie.

17) Highly competent yet highly evil "loyal Bushies" like Dick "Overlord" Cheney.

18) Anti-choice-ism

19) Anti-intellectualism

20) Anti-Europeanism.

21) Right-wing judicial nominees. I'm not talking about Roberts or Alito, which almost any other Republican president would have nominated. I mean all the other judicial appointments to lower courts that add unfounded legitimacy to an extreme right-wing judicial viewpoint by giving high-level careers to cronies. This will lead to future right-wing judicial nominees to the Supreme Court who should have gotten rejected long ago for their lack of objectivity being seen as legitimate. These juditial nominees also nearly tore up the rules of the Senate.

22) Federal Marriage Amendment. So glad that one didn't get anywhere.

23) Stem cell research. Not so much for the position (federal funds only for "existing" stem cell lines) but for the process of letting the church's viewpoint into a science decision.

24) Not signing the Kyoto protocol for anti-UN reasons.

25) While we're at it, John Bolton.

26) Sabotaging the EPA to the point where entities are now suing the EPA because it's not strict enough in regulating emissions.

27) Trying to privatize social security. How's that stock market idea looking now?

28) Increasing the national debt from about $5 trillion to about $10 trillion. This riles me up so much, I'm going to need some more bullet points about the budget.

29) Tax cuts benefitting the wealthiest of our society at a time when we were finally getting Reagan's debt under control.

30) Massive non-mandatory spending increases primarily benefitting the military industrial complex. We've got loads of money for super advanced fighter jets, but we're losing wars against people who make explosives out of pvc pipe and wire.

31) Making war spending separate from the budget. This would make sense only if the expenses were unforseeable.

32) Not addressing health care at all. Seriously, during a decade in which health care spending rose faster than any other industry, how was health care almost completely ignored by the Bush administration?

33) Well, he did address one thing. He vetoed SCHIP.

I'm sure there are plenty more policies I dislike, and I know there are plenty more policies that others dislike (No Child Left Behind, immigration). But none of this stuff gets specifically talked about by any of the Democratic candidates. We need to remember this so that we can hold future administrations accountable.

Electoral Vote Map

2008-10-24T11:09:00.005-05:00

Click here for a downloadable pdf so's you can color along with me on November 4th!.

No Go for Ho from FoCo, Yo!

2008-10-24T07:32:00.004-05:00

Word this morning is that the National Republican Congressional Campaign Committee (NRCC) is cutting off funding for ads and such in three house races because they view them as losses. One of those is Marilyn Musgrave in Colorado's district 4 (Fort Collins, Loveland, Windsor, Greeley, and many small towns way out there on the high plains). I couldn't be happier at that news this morning.

Marilyn Musgrave has been a vocal advocate of outlawing abortions and banning gay marriage. Apparently she sponsored a resolution for congress to declare 2007 the "National Year of the Bible". She's one of those lawmakers who views her role in government being a soldier for God. (Local Oklahoma politician Sally Kern is another one, as is Sarah Palin, although she's less outspoken about it).

Please, Windsor residents with the last name of Bortner, go out and vote for whoever is running against Marilyn Musgrave. Wikipedia tells me this is Betsy Markey.

Another Election Breakdown! Because Maps are Fun!

2008-10-21T08:44:00.004-05:00

Analysis of the November 4th election? Why, I don't think anyone else has predicted and analyzed the upcoming election yet.

Okay, so, if you live in Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Nebraska, New Jersey, New York, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Washington, Wyoming, or the District of Columbia, well, I hope you have a competitive senate race or a gay marriage initiative to vote for (or against) because your electoral votes have already been allotted to one candidate or another for ~~months~~ years now. This results in a "Definite" Obama baseline of 183/270 electoral votes, and a "Definite" McCain baseline of 152/270 electoral votes, while generously leaving 19 states up for grabs.

Barring some electoral miracle or sudden adult-onset racism, Barack Obama will "Likely" gain an additional 55 electoral votes by winning Oregon, Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin, Michigan and New Hampshire, bringing his "Likely" baseline all the way up to 238/270. Thank you, upper midwest sensibilities. John McCain doesn't have states that can be called "Likely"; hence, his "Likely" baseline is still 152/270. If he was still the same John McCain beloved by the press and campaigning cleanly, he could have won New Hampshire. But he'd probably have a huge electoral deficit elsewhere.

The next tier of states ("Probable") break down as such: Montana, North Dakota and West Virginia for McCain (163/270); New Mexico and Pennsylvania for Obama (264/270). Montana and North Dakota continue flirting with the Democrats, and polls show anywhere from a 1 point Obama lead to a 5 point McCain lead, but in two states dominated by ranchers and without large urban areas, I don't see them turning blue just yet (ranchers = libertarian tendencies = Ron Paul voters = begrudging John McCain voters). As for West Virginia, I expect the Republican base to show up and the Democratic base to, I don't know, die of black lung. Bush beat the poll predictions by 5% in 2004.

Pennsylvania is a blue state. Pennsylvania has been a blue state for awhile. It was one of the few states where Kerry finished stronger in 2004 than polls would have indicated. John McCain is practically hanging his campaign on Pennsylvania, a state that last voted for the Republican candidate in 1988 (when only 11 states voted for Dukakis). This is not a winning strategy. If Philadelphians turn out to vote in large numbers, McCain's presidential run will be practically over.

New Mexico is bananas. It always has been. It's just that the nation is only now realizing it. The national exposure New Mexico has received from having Bill Richardson as governor has elevated my stomping grounds to the national consciousness, and I see PBS specials and candidates making frequent trips to Albuquerque and NPR hosts walking around wondering what makes these people tick. Polls show a 10+ point lead for Obama, but I don't believe them. Here's my prediction: Obama will win by 2 or 3 percent, long lines will form at polling places, election officials will be unprepared, and my dad will call me on election night to bitch about voting irregularities from Doña Ana County.

So, the "Probable" baseline for each candidate is Obama - 264/270 and McCain - 163/270. I think eight states are truly "Questionable" or "Toss-ups" or "Swing States" or "Undecided" or "Unswayed by two frickin' years of non-stop election coverage": Nevada, Colorado, Missouri, Indiana, Ohio, North Carolina, Virginia, and (of course) Florida. McCain must win all eight of these states to win the presidency. This is unlikely. I think it's a 0.4% chance assuming a random distribution of these states. Each state has a nuanced electorate with different voting patterns, any and all of which can affect the outcome of the election, but it's way more fun to describe states as dichotomies. In Nevada, it's Californian emigrants versus the military; in Missouri it's rural versus urban; in North Carolina it's black versus white; in Indiana it's Chicagoland versus farmland; in Virginia it's sweet tea versus unsweet tea; in Ohio it's racists versus white guilt; in Florida it's old people from the northeast versus old people from the midwest; and in Colorado its young ski bums and a developing liberally-minded Denver versus ranchers and military and Focus on the Family.

My predictions are that McCain will be able to hold onto both Florida and Ohio, as well as states that should never have been in question like North Carolina and Indiana. I predict that the perpetual bellwether Missouri will get it wrong for the first time since 1956, because they will go for McCain. I predict perpetual bellwether Nevada (which voted for Ford in 1976 and before that William Jennings Bryan in 1908) will get it right and elect Obama. I predict Obama will also carry Virginia and Colorado by at least 5%. Obama will win 291-247.

Of course, I also thought Kerry and Gore were going to win.

P.S. I think I'll live-blog on November 4th. Should be fun! For only me!

In Lieu of Flowers...

2008-10-20T22:36:00.003-05:00

Yeah, and you thought Barack Obama's fundraising totals were high for September? Wait until he releases his fundraising totals for October, after everyone in America gives him $10 'cause of his grandma.

Red State Debate

2008-10-08T08:05:00.003-05:00

The big debate occurred last night. No, not that "town hall" debate from Memphis we sat through between two guys hammering talking points on a round stage with extraordinarily crimson carpet. I'm talking about the one and only debate between two-and-a-third term U.S. senator and biblical literalist Jim Inhofe and one-term state senator and former John Mayer impersonator Andrew Rice. This debate sounded like any debate in the country between a Republican and a Democrat right now, as the Democrat Rice hounded the Republican Inhofe about the current state of the economy and attempted to tie him to the failed policies of George W. Bush. In most states, this would mean that Andrew Rice would have won the debate. In Oklahoma, it just showed how out-of-touch Andrew Rice is with Oklahoma voters.

Jim Inhofe wore his voting record on his sleeve. While John McCain was landing punches with his proclamation that Barack Obama was the most liberal senator in the U.S. Senate, Jim Inhofe himself proudly found several watchdog groups that called him the most conservative senator in the U.S. Senate. He's proud of it. His support for Israel's occupation of the West Bank comes from a chapter in Genesis. He wants to openly discriminate against gay people. He voted against banning torture. He voted to make it harder to repay student loans. As the second largest recipient of oil company campaign contributions, he wants to make sure oil companies can drill directly into the skulls of polar bears. He compares environmentalism to Naziism. I only made one of those things up. After proclaiming himself the most conservative member of the U.S. Senate, he stated that there wasn't a race in the country with more idealogically opposed candidates. This would probably be true no matter who the opponent was. And yet, Inhofe leads in the polls by 15-20 points. Oklahomans adore conservatives.

At one point during the debate, Andrew Rice successfully compared Jim Inhofe to George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. Since I only read about the debate in the paper, I have no way of knowing whether Inhofe's response was "Thanks for the compliment!", "Oh, you're too kind!" or "No way! My family doesn't have a single gay or lesbian member unlike Dick Cheney's family!" Bush may be unpopular everywhere else in the country, but I guarantee you that George W. Bush would win a reelection in this state were it to be constitutionally possible.

Andrew Rice also made a reverse-voter-pledge by urging those whose lives are better off than they were 8 years ago to go ahead and vote for Jim Inhofe. This would be a small voter pool indeed in most other states, but probably not in Oklahoma. Over the past 8 years, our oil-based economy has boomed due to the skyrocketing price of oil. House prices still haven't fallen. Our state budget has been filled with surplusses for years. Unemployment is roughly the same as it was in 2000, and (through August) unemployment has been down from last year. We had a GM plant close in that time period, but who hasn't? We have mostly been able to offset those manufacturing jobs with higher paying jobs. Oklahoma has received a boon from the base realignment commission, which called for increases in the levels of soldiers at our Oklahoma military bases. Our colleges and universities have seen increased enrollment even with tuition rising sharply over the past 8 years. Our state even landed its first professional sports team. All in all, if everyone really thought about it, I'm almost positive a majority of voters in Oklahoma truly are better off than they were 8 years ago. But even those whose lives are not better off probably are going to vote for Inhofe anyways.

Let's face it. No matter what Andrew Rice said, he would never have had a chance against the entrenched and well-funded Jim Inhofe. But he spoke at the debate as if he was talking to favorable audience members in his poor urban Oklahoma City senate district. He should have been more like Brad Henry, our two-term Democratic governor who is more of a moderate on most issues and points out his openness to Republican issues like tax cuts and abortions in debates (even if he doesn't follow through on passing them) and who enjoys substantial rural support.

What's That Stuff Trickling Down Again?

2008-10-01T11:10:00.003-05:00

I read this on a comment on a Freakonomics blog post at the NY Times:

Maybe people would be more inclined to believe that Wall Street failure would trickle down to Main Street if Wall Street success had trickled down to Main Street as well.

— Posted by Michael P

This sentiment exactly sums up what we plebes are thinking about generosity towards Wall Street banks.

Let's Not Bailout Capitalism!

2008-09-30T11:07:00.004-05:00

Wow, and just when I was coming around on the whole bailout plan, the House of Representatives defeated Bailout, plan B, just a couple days after minority leader John Boehner torched Bailout, plan A. I think I've finally got my head around the whole short-term credit market and the commercial paper market enough to where I can see the banks' need for lots of capital. But I really love that invisible hand stuff! If the banks need money, some private entity should be able to pony up some money to buy the so-called "toxic debt" that may be worth only 50% of face value, but at a price lower than what the federal government would guarantee in order to make a profit, of course. However, if the "toxic debt" is truly worthless, the holders of said debt should completely write it off their books and see where the chips fall after that. Because, as we've seen this week, the markets hate unknowns.

But the reason I was warming to the Bailout, plan B, was because of the following three provisions:

1) The taxpayers would have gotten something in return; stock, warrants, some say in the companies they'd be helping. The potential to make some money back was there.
2) A provision to at some point pay for Bailout, plan B, if not in the rising future value of the "toxic debt" itself, then in the raising of taxes to cover the expenses. Plan B was not very specific about how not to leave a big gaping hole in the federal budget, but at least it required someone else 5 years in the future to have to deal with it.
3) The money would have been apportioned into three slices with some Congressional control over future dispensations. I'm more comfortable with taxpayer money being spent only if needed.

I hope all three of those provisions make it into Bailout, plan C.

But too bad. All moot. With Main Street's failure to give Wall Street a huge amount of money, Wall Street will be singing the blues on Beale Street because no one's partying on Bourbon Street or going to Broadway, and no one's shopping on Michigan Avenue, which reduces the number of advertising contracts from Madison Avenue. I'm glad I don't live on any of those metaphoric streets.

Let's Bailout Capitalism!

2008-09-22T13:00:00.009-05:00

Over the weekend the treasury department put forth a bill now winding its way through the U.S. Congress that would allow the U.S. government to buy bad debt from several Wall Street firms in order to allow those Wall Street firms to continue to function. The number put out by the treasury department is "$700 billion". This is a huge sum the magnitude of which probably eludes most people.

$700 billion. That's $2,295 if every single American contributed. If $700 billion of debt was a GDP, it would be ranked 17th in the world behind the Netherlands and ahead of Turkey. We would need at least 12 Bill Gates's selling off their entire holdings to make it up. $700 billion is equivalent to 1,750 bridges to nowhere. If you laid 700 billion dollar bills end to end, the chain would stretch from the earth to the sun. On the plus side, it only adds 7% to our astronomically high national debt.

And this goliath of a sum of money is going from the taxpayers' pockets directly to the vaults of huge banks who are now seeing the downside of risky lending. In other words, not to the people who defaulted on mortgages and were foreclosed upon, but to banks which transfer more money every hour than you and I make in a lifetime and which practically define capitalism. I'm all for socialism of some things, but socialism of capitalism is a little too red for me. Our constitution guarantees lots of things to lots of individuals, but the right not to go bankrupt is not one of them. I mean, these banks took on these bad mortgage-backed securities knowing that they would be worthless unless enough homeowners were able to make payments: in other words, they took on risk, an essential part of capitalism.

Which brings up two good points from the NY Times:

"How is it that the administration and Congress, which have not tried to find huge amounts of money to, say, improve the nation’s health insurance system or repair bridges and tunnels, can now be ready to come up with $700 billion to rescue the financial system?"

Yeah! About health care: banks made poor decisions that could have been avoided. Lots (not all) of medical bills stem from conditions that cannot be avoided (breast cancer, lupus, fractured arm, sinus infections, autism, etc.). But we're supposed to pony up for banks and not for patients? And the other quote:

“Treasury’s 840-word legislative bailout proposal comes to more than $830 million per word,” Stephen Ellis, the vice president of Taxpayers for Common Sense, a fiscal watchdog group, said in a statement on Monday, adding that “when they come up with a title, that will drive the average dollar per word down.”

The Federal Gas Tax and How It's Ruining My Livelihood

2008-09-09T11:32:00.004-05:00

We as a nation received some pretty harsh financial news in a statement from a secretary of Bush's cabinet to the media released over the weekend (when bad economic news is always released) that will drastically affect our already-slumping economy. I'm not talking about the government's takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. I speak of course about the highway trust fund. Transportation secretary Mary Peters announced on Friday that the government will run out of money this month to pay for highway projects all around the nation, and states like Oklahoma are scrambling to defer payments for projects already bid, postponing upcoming bids, and basically grinding existing construction to a halt. So a disaster, right?

Well, from my own selfish perspective, absolutely! One of my company's projects was scheduled to bid this month, and now it won't. But the reason for the shortage in federal monies is because revenue from the federal gas tax has decreased, but the need for road projects has not. In other words, people are driving more miles while buying less gas. This is an effect of good fuel efficiency! We've been wanting it for years, and we're finally seeing what the effects are on our economy.

So, should anything be done? Of course! The federal gas tax, unlike a sales tax, stays at a constant rate of 18.4 cents per gallon no matter how much that gallon of fuel costs. When gas was at about $1.30 per gallon, it resulted in a 14% de-facto sales tax. Now that gas costs somewhere around $3.40 per gallon, the de-facto sales tax has decreased to around 5%. Having a gas tax that stays at a constant rate makes sense in a very narrow and theoretical way: the physical damage to highways comes from the number of user-miles driven on them, and not by the price of the gas burned to drive on them. But with improving fuel economy, more user-miles can be driven on highways for the same cost. Plus the cost of materials for construction has risen dramatically, partially because the cost of fuel has gone up so much. It would make much more sense for the road-building business if the revenue from the gas tax could be tied to the cost of the fuel since the cost of new construction of roads is going to rise right along with the cost of fuel anyways. The way things work right now is that the government runs out of money, large numbers of private contractors run out of work, people lose construction jobs, and drivers are stuck in more traffic.

Now, the trouble is getting a politician to agree to an increase in the gas tax. It will never happen. But like so many things, what's best for our economy is also just about the least popular idea ever. As it happens, most economists see the gas tax as way too low and think the gas tax should raise dramatically (at least a dollar per gallon). But politicians want to suspend the gas tax because lowering taxes is always a popular idea. Unfortunately, popular ideas always trump smart ideas.

P.S. Expect to see more earmarks because of this too.

Some Thoughts on Russia - Georgia

2008-08-27T09:31:00.004-05:00

Nearly 3 weeks after Russia first rolled tanks and soldiers into the territory of Georgia, we have a nearly daily stream of news reports detailing the many ways that Russia is violating the cease-fire agreement, which you almost never hear mentioned in the Western media without Sarkozy's name attached to it. And now Russia is officially recognizing the breakaway states of Abkhazia and South Ossetia as independent nations, the first step in a process by the territories to join the Russian Federation. There are so many stunning things about this development in the Caucasus.

- First, it's pretty amazing how quickly nations are joining one side or the other. The U.S., U.K., France, Germany, Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and the Ukraine are all denouncing Russia as much as possible and proclaiming Georgia's right to its own "territorial integrity". Meanwhile, on the other side, Russia, Belarus, China, Moldova, and even America-hating Venezuela and Cuba have proclaimed that Russia was right to deploy peacekeeping troops to protect the security of its citizens.

- Soft propaganda from both sides is rampant. U.S. media always focuses on pictures of Georgians in anguish, while Russian media always focuses on pictures of Ossetians in anguish. I love reading the English version of ITAR-TASS's website, a website that looks like it came straight out of the Soviet oeuvre.

- Russia is really leaning on its regional allies to support them. They were really mad when Belarus waited a whole six days to finally back Russia. From ITAR-TASS:

On the fifth day of the operation the Kremlin decided it was enough. The Russian
ambassador to Belarus, Alexander Surikov, said, "It is not very clear to us why
the Belarussian authorities modestly keep quiet."
"One should be more explicit in expressing attitude to issues," he said.

Can't you just imagine a Bond-villain-like scenario with the Russian ambassador and his goons in his office in Minsk, stroking a cat and saying "Perhaps eets time to pay Lukashenko a visit to discuss eessue over cocktails. Molotov cocktails..."

- Posturing and saber-rattling is easily detected in the words both sides are choosing. Unfortunately, the Russians are the only ones with sabers to rattle. Other NATO countries are almost always reluctant to say anything confrontational, which is probably a good strategy. But the U.S. isn't reluctant. This is unfortunate, because the U.S. military is stretched dangerously thin, and everyone knows it. Therefore Russia will have the upper hand for awhile and there's nothing we can do about it.

- I don't think this could possibly escalate to Cold War levels, even with the added news about the U.S. and Poland installing a missile defense system. But before diplomacy can lead anywhere, the West must acknowledge that the South Ossetia conflict was started because of a poorly-thought-through invasion by Georgian forces into Tshkinvali. Every media source emphasizes Russia's forces invading Georgia and obliterating their military in violation with international law, but they all seem to conveniently under-report that it was that douchebag Saakashvili who ordered the invasion on a territory filled with people with Russian citizenship. Saakashvili should have known that Russia wasn't going to stand for it, particularly when most of Georgia's military forces were in Iraq and most of Russia's military forces were across Georgia's border. Almost every media report from Russia's ITAR-TASS makes prominent mention of Georgia's "blitzkrieg" on South Ossetia, and almost every media report from Western news sources conveniently glosses over that fact. If reconciliation is possible, American and European leaders are going to have to come to terms with the fact that the country with pending NATO membership is being led by a reckless idiot who will in all likelihood do more harm to NATO than good.

- Apparently Condoleeza Rice has become our de-facto new president. Every new statement by Putin, Medvedev, or other Russian authorities is always met by comments from Condoleeza Rice, not from President Bush. I think he's on vacation in Crawford, TX (I really couldn't say for sure), so that could be the reason for this sudden conspicuousness of the Secretary of State. It really doesn't matter though, just because the same Bush administration empty threats we usually hear from the president are now coming out of the mouth of the Secretary of State. U.S. diplomacy: everything stays on the table (except nuance).

- European ethnic groups are crazy. It's really easy for both sides to claim genocide based on ethnic cleansing because all these nations are founded on ethnic lines. Ethnic Georgians are killing ethnic Ossetians, while ethnic Russians are murdering ethnic Georgians, but since the Republic of Georgia was killing soldiers in the breakaway state of South Ossetia, and the Russian Federation killed people in the Republic of Georgia, it's hard to tell which actions are based on ethnic cleansing and which actions are based on strategic military missions.

- There is so much world news to comprehend, what with the Georgia thing, the deadliest case of civilian casualties by the U.S. military in Afghanistan, riots in Thailand, the breakup of Pakistan's coalition government and the revelation that Asif Ali Zardari is a nutjob, that it's simply astounding that 75% of our nations press corps is reporting and analyzing pre-scripted meaningless political drivel.

Biden Knows Toasted

2008-08-22T23:29:00.002-05:00

Don't know for sure if it's going to be Joe Biden yet, but I created this side-by-side comparison of the senator from Delaware versus the Ritz chips pitchman and the gay blade himself George Hamilton, just in case.

Hey, Turns Out I'm a War Hawk

2008-08-11T14:04:00.008-05:00

So as the Olympics presses on and more and more Americans learn heartwarming back-stories of Olympians and instantly become devoted fans, Russia has invaded Georgia after Georgia invaded a different part of Georgia. And since Russia is now attacking and controlling parts of the Republic of Georgia outside of the borders of the separatist areas of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, this would seem to me to constitute an act of war. War against a key ally near the middle East and a rare example of a working democracy in a region filled with dictators and oppressive regimes. In other words, something like Kuwait. So, when elder Bush lead the charge against Iraq back in 1990, Americans, NATO, the U.N., Santa Claus, Jesus and everyone in the free world got behind the effort to expel Saddam Hussein's forces from the tiny-yet-important emirate of Kuwait. At least this is what I remember from my 9-year-old brain augmented by a Wikipedia search (which suspiciously left off Santa Claus and Jesus. Hmm...).

What makes Georgia different? Well, it's got less oil, it's democracy isn't all that stable or fair, and, oh yeah, Russia is waaaaaay more intimidating than Saddam Hussein and his SCUD missiles. But if our American principles mean anything (and admittedly, they don't), shouldn't we be standing up for Democracy, to use a cliche? I actually liked this suggestion by Bill Kristol in today's NY Times:

For that matter, consider the implications of our turning away from Georgia for other aspiring pro-Western governments in the neighborhood, like Ukraine’s. Shouldn’t we therefore now insist that normal relations with Russia are impossible as long as the aggression continues, strongly reiterate our commitment to the territorial integrity of Georgia and Ukraine, and offer emergency military aid to Georgia?

If you're a developing nation pondering the pros and cons of establishing despotism, or even if you're well on your way towards abuse of your own citizenry, would you consider reforming your government towards openness in order to reap the economic benefits of a free market if you didn't believe you could be backed up by the democracies of the West should a massively powerful neighbor should start to throw its weight around? Of course not. The past and present leaders of Georgia and Ukraine have chosen to take the hard road towards democracy, and they should be rewarded with more than just empty rhetoric.

Am I advocating restarting a Cold War? Not necessarily (although that does seem to be the style of warfare that we're good at, rather than fighting insurgents in urban neighborhoods). But I think we should show a responsive force even if we won't use it, just to show we're serious. Maybe send an aircraft carrier up through the Bosporus into the Black Sea. That is, if we can spare one from our many other conflicts.

On another note, before this week, the word Osset, unfortunately for lazy crossword puzzle constructors like me, was too obscure to put in a puzzle. But now, I'd bet you could get away with it. So, I guess that's one positive about this whole mess.

Oklahomans Not Happy About Armageddon

2008-08-04T07:43:00.003-05:00

Poll: Obama Support Low in State

(Tulsa World)

A new poll found little support among Oklahoma voters for presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama.

The Oklahoma Poll found that Republican John McCain has broad support in the state to lead Obama by 32 percentage points, 56 percent to 24 percent. Seventy-one percent of those questioned said they are firm in their decisions.

...

"I would rather have had somebody different than John McCain on the Republican side, but I can't even believe who the Democrats picked," said poll respondent Billy Garrison, a registered Democrat who often votes Republican.

"I know our country will be in bad shape if Barack Obama is elected president," said Garrison, of Tulsa.

Another erstwhile Democrat, Charles Ogdon of Muldrow, said he believes Obama will be the next president, in part because Ogden believes an Obama presidency would fit biblical prophesies concerning Armageddon and the Second Coming.

But Ogdon isn't happy about it.

...

So, bad times for the Obama for Oklahoma campaign.

Monthly Harumph - July

2008-07-30T11:13:00.003-05:00

As more national polls come out showing Barack Obama's projected popular vote lead over John McCain by anywhere from one to six percentage points, and as more NY Times opinion columnists make claims such as "The election remains Mr. Obama's to lose," and "Mr. Obama will win," I feel it is necessary to throw cold water on everyone.

1. It's still July. Most people still haven't put much thought into the November election. October is when things can change and polls will perhaps matter more.

2. The popular vote is never how we elect presidents. If it was, we never would have had George W. Bush as president. Therefore the national projected popular vote polls are as meaningless as if we polled people on their favorite celebrity.

3. Swing state polls are fraught with potential error. Barack Obama's projected electoral college lead depends on polls that put him one or two percentage points up for the time being in states such as Indiana, Missouri, Michigan, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico and Montana. I will bet any amount of money that there will be polls in these states between now and the election that will claim that John McCain leads Barack Obama. These too will be meaningless except as indicators saying its a close election.

4. Polls can and are often wrong anyways.

T. Boone Pickens Converting to Natural Gas? It's a Start

2008-07-28T17:49:00.005-05:00

T. Boone Pickens, annointed demigod of Oklahoma State University, is apparently running for the position of King of America and has put out his first campaign ad which is running nationally on various news channels and maybe even on network TV (I don't know, I don't usually watch network TV). He's touting what he calls the Pickens Plan, which is a bold-yet-logical energy plan:

Step 1: Replace natural gas power plants with wind farms
Step 2: Use excess natural gas as fuel for new generation of cars that run on compressed natural gas

This plan to get oil out of our economy is one of the best middle-ground proposals I've heard, and people are actually talking about it. Energy policy was the primary focus discussed among the eight of us who attended the Barack Obama platform meeting I went to here in Norman a week ago. We talked about ethanol from corn, switchgrass and sugar cane, and we mostly came to the conclusion that ethanol was not going to save us from petroleum. So we democrats are completely open to alternative energy sources that will be clean(ish) and renewable.

The genius of T. Boone's plan is that it gives no lip service to Democrats at all. T. Boone frames his plan exclusively as a way to avoid paying those damned Saudis billions of dollars for their oil, an issue near and dear to the Republican heart. This is the reason why drop-in-the-bucket fixes like Arctic National Wildlife Refuge drilling and outer continental shelf exploration gain traction with Republicans. But in giving what is essentially a Democrat-style energy policy change a Republican-style rationale, he can shape the debate much more effectively and get both sides talking about it.

As a Democrat, I love wind farms. It doesn't get cheaper, cleaner and more renewable than wind
power, but as an engineer I also recognize its limitations. It doesn't produce nearly the number of megawatts we would need to replace all our power plants in this country. And of course you can't run a car on wind power. Well, not well anyway. So that's where the Republican-style natural gas part comes in. Natural gas is slightly cleaner than gasoline, but it is still a fossil fuel. That means the same exploration, drilling and refining processes, the same creation of greenhouse carbon dioxide and the same impermanence as oil. Plus natural gas deposits are found only where oil deposits are found; the U.S. only has about 3% of the worlds reserves, and the Middle East and Caspian Sea region combined have something like 75%. If natural gas were to become as desirable as oil, we'd be running into the same problems with dictatorships and cartels that we have now with oil.

What has got to happen in this country is nuclear power. While it is not renewable, the energy density of uranium fission is astronomically high, several millions of orders of magnitude larger than even the most efficient fossil fuels. And it does not release any carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. But T. Boone Pickens wouldn't be able to see any economic benefit; while Texas and Oklahoma are the Kuwaits of American oil, natural gas and wind energy production, Wyoming is the Saudi Arabia of America n uranium. Once we get the American grid up and running on nuclear power, then we can use any of a number of resources to fuel our cars. Hydrogen fuel cells? Sure. Switchgrass ethanol? Whatever.

Why is No One Challenging This Notion That the Surge is a Success?

2008-07-22T15:22:00.005-05:00

So the new thing in the McCain campaign is to retort Barack Obama's claims of superior judgment about the disaster of starting the Iraq War with claims of superior judgment about the success story the "surge" turned out to be. And this story of campaign talking points gets passed around in the surficially non-partisan election-year coverage from the media without any analysis. What gets lost in this traditional election year back-and-forth is that the fiction about the surge's success remains unchallenged.

It's like everyone has forgotten why we had this surge of troops in the first place. We were tired of getting our asses kicked, so congress set up the bipartisan Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group to come up with some things we could do to stop the hurtin'. When their report came out, Bush ignored most of the recommendations and keyed in on a footnote developed by some of the more hawkish members which suggested that the U.S. increase the number of soldiers in Baghdad by lengthening tours and whatnot. Strategy was developed to give purpose to these extra brigades, and the White House came up with the overarching goals, including reducing the violence enough to allow the Iraqis to come up with and enforce their own laws, training Iraqi security and law enforcement more quickly, and in general guiding Iraqis towards stable democracy. Good points certainly, but it required Iraqi leaders to take up the initiative. This is why the strategy was flawed.

The surge started in January of 2007 and would last through this month, July 2008. The new Democrat-controlled Congress gritted its teeth and passed many non-binding resolutions in full awareness of their lack of constitutional oversight into the executive branch's war powers. But they did manage to pass what would turn out to be completely irrelevant benchmark legislation that required the military to evaluate itself. They did evaluate themselves, dishonestly but still poorly, and the surge bumbled along. After the reporting frenzy of September 2007, the media started not caring about Iraq anymore, choosing instead to start Election 2008 coverage.

It wasn't until about November 2007 that violent attacks finally started to decline, which mostly went unnoticed at first. Eventually the media caught on to the fact that merely dozens of Americans instead of hundreds of Americans were being killed every month and reported it unequivocably as a success story, even though about a thousand Iraqi civilians still die every month from sectarian gunfire and suicide bombers. But since the whole stated purpose of the Surge was dependant on the Iraqis developing a functioning civil society, can we really call it a success? Have the Iraqis properly dealt with their problem of training militia members who turn around and become loyal to sectarian leaders like Muqtada al-Sadr? Are the national police loyal to the state? Are the Iraq Security Forces able to take our place yet? Do the people recognize the Iraqi parliament as the creator of laws? Are there oil-revenue sharing laws yet (I actually don't know about this one)? If these benchmarks of the surge aren't met, how can we call the surge a success? Someone needs to call John McCain's bluff.

Paul Krugman Jinxes It!

2008-07-18T10:35:00.002-05:00

You should never talk about a no-hitter while it's happening. You should never plan your victory parade before your team's won the Super Bowl. You should never declare a state won for a particular candidate before the polls close. And you should never declare an election over before August. But Paul Krugman has.

If you ask me, there isn’t much suspense in this year’s election: barring
some extraordinary mistakes, Mr. Obama will win.

This is an attitude felt by blue-state-dwellers like Mr. Krugman about the upcoming election, as I noticed on my recent train trip to New York. But there are large swaths of the country that don't necessarily feel that way, and the way-too-important swing states of Ohio, Florida and Missouri are, as usual, quite swingy still. Yes, it's looking good for Obama. But it's July.

A Trivia Question

2008-06-27T08:02:00.003-05:00

All this stuff about North Korea this week inspired the following trivia question:

The State Sponsors of Terrorism list was started in 1979 with 4 charter states. Which 4 nations were they?

Bonus point: which nation is the only nation of those original four still on the State Sponsors of Terrorism list?

Cheap Land = Unresponsive Fuel Demand

2008-06-10T10:09:00.004-05:00

NPR, the New York Times, and media establishments everywhere are running their usual kerfluffle about high gas prices that they always do when the average nationwide price reaches a certain even-numbered benchmark ($3.00! $3.50! $4.00!). In these pieces, there are often some recommendations for ways to get around without using cars, such as using public transportation, walking or riding a bike. Two things are certain: these recommendations will continue to be made by journalists when gas prices reach $4.50, $5.00, $6.00 and beyond, and these recommendations will continue to be ignored by Americans.

The problem is not with the callousness of Americans refusing to give up cars. We are often pointed to the examples in Europe where there are far fewer cars and more public transportation opportunities. But the only reason this automobile-less lifestyle thrives is because the structure of European cities is far different than the structure of American cities, and most of it has to do with the fact that European cities were built before cars were invented. Their cities are set up like the older parts of the older cities of America: high density, variable land use, narrow streets, all characteristics that encourage walking and discourage automobiles. But the newer parts of European cities are also built with more walkable characteristics than the newer parts of American cities. Why is this?

As always, it comes down to economics. Land is more expensive and harder to come by in Europe since more people have lived there for centuries longer than in America. In most of Europe, you had to be descended from nobility, money, the landed gentry, etc. to have a few acres of land. In America, land is plentiful, and we were annexing and giving away hundreds of acres of land at a time less than a century ago to anyone who promised to develop it. Therefore, a developer's can develop a lot more acres at a time in America than in Europe. This leads to lower density, larger areas of large houses and commercial developments, which of course leads to larger profits for developers. Larger developments and cheaper land also means that citizens may buy larger, better houses, as long as they are willing to live a fair distance from their place of employment, or place of shopping, or whatever. As communities spread in all directions, the ability to profitably serve all areas with convenient public transportation goes away. The only options then become cars or possibly bikes. But bicycles aren't all-weather vehicles, and some communities *cough* aren't very friendly to bikes in terms of bicycle infrastructure.

There are some people who could give up driving or decide to move away from Suburbia, but not most. Most of us decide that paying high gas prices is the price to pay for living in a decent-sized house in a good neighborhood. And if there is a ceiling to that price, we haven't found it yet. Are we all going to live in downtown apartments when gas prices get to $6 a gallon? $8 a gallon? $20 a gallon? I sort of doubt it. Therefore the only way most of us are going to save gas is by buying smaller cars, not by changing our modes of transportation or the places we live.

Hillary Clinton Wishes She Was a Republican

2008-05-30T13:49:00.008-05:00

There's less than a minute left on the game clock in the primary season game of hoops, and Hillary Clinton is down by 200. She's still trying, still reacting to things Barack Obama does and says, and organizing protests at DNC meetings; in other words, she's fouling like crazy in order to extend the game. After all, Obama is only a mediocre free-throw shooter. But after the last primaries on June 3, the shot clock will be off, and she should be able to call off the horses and let Obama dribble the clock out until the convention in August.

If only Hillary Clinton was a Republican, she would have already locked up the nomination.

I had heard that if the Democrats used the delegate-selection system that Republicans use, then Clinton would be ahead in delegates, but I couldn't find any numbers to tell me exactly by how much. So I charted the delegates won by Obama and Clinton on a primary by primary basis in real life and as if they were apportioned using whichever rules the GOP was using in that contest. In most states, the Republicans use winner-take-all or winner-take-most, but there are a few (e.g. Iowa, North Carolina) where the splits are more proportional to the popular vote. I had to guess on some contests (particularly the winner-take-almost-all primaries), but I have come up with (I think) a fairly reasonable estimate of the difference between the number of pledged delegates Clinton would have and the number of pledged delegates Obama would have if the Democrats copied the Republican's rules, shown below.

Hillary Clinton is down by around 162 pledged delegates in real life, but she's up by around 429 pledged delegates in the GOP-style fantasy situation. Her chances are slim at best, and people are calling for her to quit campaigning and step aside at a deficit of 162. But if Obama had a deficit of more than 2.5 times that, he'd already have had to quit and yield to the mathematical certainty of a Clinton nomination.

So why fuck around with delegates, respective political parties? This is supposed to be a government where people directly elect representatives. Yet even the general election we have the electoral college, not the people, deciding who the next commander-in-chief will be, and sometimes the result can be very different. Why should the political parties mimic this inane system? Since a 600-delegate swing exists when different rules are in play, why must we mess around with unnecessary layers of representative amalgamation that serve only to distort the will of the people?