Day: December 20, 2007

Put the Electoral College Out on the Curb With the Other Moldy Stuff

Trish

We love your comments, especially when you agree with us. When you don’t…not so much.

But we really love it when you agree with us and turn us on to cool things. Thanks to joreko, whose comment on a post about the Iowa caucuses and the Electoral College did both.

Here we are, nearly eight years later, with an institution whose expiration date passed long ago still sitting at the front of the refrigerator, in our way every time we try to grab a beer, and producing a loathsome stench

If the partisan divide in a state is not initially closer than about 46%-54%, no amount of campaigning during a brief presidential campaign is realistically going to reverse the outcome in the state. As a result, presidential candidates have no reason to poll, visit, advertise, organize, campaign, or worry about the concerns in voters of states where they are safely ahead or hopelessly behind. Instead, candidates concentrate their attention on a handful of closely divided “battleground” states. As a result, 88% of the money and visits (and attention) is focused on just 9 states. Fully 99% of the money goes to just 16 states.

I remember being dead sure that no matter what the Supreme Court decided in the final weeks of 2000, at least the Electoral College would be abolished before 2004. And yet here we are, nearly eight years later, with an institution whose expiration date passed long ago still sitting at the front of the refrigerator, in our way every time we try to grab a beer, and producing a loathsome stench.

joreko directed us for a remedy to NationalPopularVote.com, the site for an organization that is trying to dump the Electoral College.

It’s bad enough that we worry that our voter’s registration will be yanked, that blue-haired poll workers will refuse us admission, and that voting machines will toss out our vote if we actually get to cast it. We also have to worry that if the other candidate gets more votes than ours, our vote will be flipped because of the Electoral College.

Get rid of it! Go to NationalPopularVote to help.

Poll: Oprah Driving Women Away from Obama

Trish

Talk about your unintended consequences. A new poll shows that Oprah Winfrey’s public efforts on behalf of Barack Obama are turning off both younger and older women.

A Lifetime/Zogby poll of women shows that of those 18 to 29, almost a third said they were less likely to support the Illinois senator because of the Oprah support. Older women, over 65, also showed they were ruffled by Ms. Winfrey stepping “out of her pew,” as the daytime diva herself described it. About 17 percent of older women said the endorsement made them less likely to support Mr. Obama.

Boomer-aged women, however, were more open to Oprah’s guidance.

Among other age groups, those who disliked the endorsement were offset by an equal amount who said they were more inclined to look more favorably at Mr. Obama because of it.

Kerrey Latest to Carry Clinton’s Sewer Water

Trish

Here we go again. Another Clinton supporter is zinging first and apologizing later. As Hillary’s competition grows stronger, it’s getting to be a daily occurrence.

This time the zinger is former presidential candidate and former Nebraska Sen. Bob Kerrey. The zingee, once again, is Barak Obama.

Load your words much, Bob? “I like the fact that his name is Barack Hussein Obama, and that his father was a Muslim and that his paternal grandmother is a Muslim”

“It’s probably not something that appeals to him, but I like the fact that his name is Barack Hussein Obama, and that his father was a Muslim and that his paternal grandmother is a Muslim,” said Kerrey, a former governor and the current president of the New School in New York City. “There’s a billion people on the planet that are Muslims, and I think that experience is a big deal.”

Well gee, thanks Bob. Aside from the fact that Obama is a Christian and his father left home when Barack was 2, isn’t it generous of you to point out it’s a “big deal” that Obama is related to Muslims?

The “Whoops, my bad,” followed after just enough time to let the zing sink in and the boos start, as all of Clinton’s passive-aggressive attacks have.

“What I found myself getting into in Iowa – and it was my own fault – it was the wrong moment to do it and it was insulting,” Kerrey told the AP.
“I meant no disrespect at all.”

None taken, I’m sure, Bob.

Kerrey’s remarks do confirm one thing. Between Romney claiming his religion is a non-issue, Huckabee claiming his religion is the foundation of his campaign, and Kerrey claiming Obama’s religion-by-relation should be taken under advisement, it looks like the War on Secularism is being won by the wrong side.

Quote du Jour

Buck Banks

Once again we find ourselves enmeshed in the Holiday Season, that very special time of year when we join with our loved ones in sharing centuries-old traditions such as trying to find a parking space at the mall. We traditionally do this in my family by driving around the parking lot until we see a shopper emerge from the mall, then we follow her, in very much the same spirit as the Three Wise Men, who 2,000 years ago followed a star, week after week, until it led them to a parking space.

— Dave Barry (1947- ) humor columnist

Mukasey: Exposing Spies ‘Not a Risk Worth Taking’ – Except for Valerie Wilson?

Jon Ponder

I happened to catch the replay on C-SPAN this morning of Attorney Gen. Michael Mukasey’s address to the American Bar Association in which he laid out the case for granting immunity to giant telecom companies that allowed the Bush administration to spy on their customers.

“[The] specific identity of those who assist us with intelligence activities and the nature of their assistance must be protected as vital intelligence sources and methods. The risk of disclosing that kind of information is not a risk worth taking.”
– Mukasey

Despite the fact that my expectations for the speech and the new attorney general’s performance could not have been lower, both the content and delivery of the address were far worse than I could have imagined.

Mukasey read his speech like it was new material to him, like he’d been handed it in the limo that morning. His robotic performance brought to mind a hostage brought before cameras to read his ransom note — which prompts the question: What do the Bushies have on this man? Are they holding his family prisoners in Guantanamo? Are they threatening to shoot his dog? What other reason could there be for Mukasey to toss his reputation onto the crucible of the Bushies’ incompetence and corruption?

And then, three-quarters into his atonal droning, I found myself coming up off the couch when Mukasey made this outrageous assertion:

[The] specific identity of those who assist us with intelligence activities and the nature of their assistance must be protected as vital intelligence sources and methods. The risk of disclosing that kind of information is not a risk worth taking…

Seriously, did he look at the speech before he delivered it — or has Mukasey imbibed the Bushies’ Kool-Aid so deeply that he failed to grasp the tragic irony that, in 2003, his new masters blithely betrayed secret U.S. sources and methods — specifically a covert program that tracked blackmarket sales of terror weapons, in order to attack for political reasons the spouse of the covert agent in charge of the program, Valerie Plame Wilson?

Eventually, he raised the specter of the 9/11 attacks, of course, and suggested that the government needs American companies to fall in line in the phony war on terror, just like they did in the very real struggle against fascism in World War II. And then, finally, his odious, coulda-phoned-it-in reading aloud came to an end:

And of course, our efforts against that threat also must take place with scrupulous respect for civil liberties and within the rule of law. FISA modernization legislation is only one example of how we put in place a tool that we need to fight against terrorists, while protecting the rights of Americans. I recognize that as Attorney General I have to be committed to both of those goals. I am here to tell you that I am Thank you very much for inviting me today.

After those un-heartfelt words, he sat down — and like the true Bushie he has become, the attorney general refused to take questions from the audience.

What Was Really Behind the White House Fire

Trish

Borowitz explains what really caused the fire in the Vice President’s office of the White House.

According to White House aides, the blaze started shortly after twelve noon, minutes after Mr. Cheney slipped out of a cabinet meeting, saying that he had to “hit the head.”

But rather than using the bathroom as he had stated, the vice president instead went to his office and put a blowtorch to a pile of CIA interrogation tapes which the White House had feared might be subpoenaed in the near future.

“I started burning those things and boom, they went up like a rocket,” an apologetic Mr. Cheney later told reporters.