Laughter is the Best Medicine; Trippi’s Contribution to the Comedy

Well, November has not been kind to me. My car broke down, I passed a couple kidney stones, then I got appendicitis and had to have my appendix surgically removed while America had a brain fart and elected the party of Nuance to run Congress in both houses. I mean sure, the GOP had its share of empty suits and broken promises, but putting the government in the hands of a party which thinks leadership is exemplified by the John Conyers, who held fake impeachment hearings, or Howard Dean, who publicly considered seriously allegations of direct Presidential involvement in the 9/11 atrocities is very much like letting a toddler play with your Uzi; I guess when he shoots the neighbors the Donks would sue them for being in the way, and the Uzi company for making the gun they let the kid play with. Diversity means pointing the finger, after all.

Hysteria being in fashion with Liberals these days, even in victory, it is only fitting that we turn to the words of Joe Trippi, as ever the wanna-be man of influence. Trippi’s last adventure, you may recall, was the amusing fantasy that Howard Dean was Presidential timber. Yet Trippi does open a window into the mind of the Modern Democrat, and so his article at least serves a use for analysis.


Trippi wrote an interesting article for the Washington Post on Friday, where he mused on the Democrats’ “mandate” (notice that a smaller Democratic majority seems needed to constitute a “mandate”, hmmm?). To wit, the Donkey Nod for the 2008 Presidential Race – Trippi presumes the Donk control of the House and Senate is a foregone conclusion, which arrogance I believe is as misplaced as the notion that the GOP would hold them in 2006, but that’s for another article.

Trippi’s article should be read all the way through, to catch the flavor of his rather quaint assumptions about certain persons’ credentials, and his presumption that no Republican candidate will catch the imagination and support of America, but in short, here are his candidates for the 2008 Race, in Trippi’s order:

Hillary Rodham Clinton
Barack Obama
Al Gore
John Edwards
John Kerry
Joe Biden
Evan Bayh
Russ Feingold
Bill Richardson
Wesley Clark
Tom Vilsack

Eleven names, but representing really only three notions. Clinton, Gore, Edwards, Kerry, Biden. Feingold, and Clark, are all people who either failed to win or quit the race because they learned they could not win. Obama and Richardson are the ‘formula’ candidates – someone has worked up a profile, and they fit the cutout, but the men themselves are a bit lacking. And the last notion is the ‘great leader’ notion, the idea that doing a good job at the state level equals national appeal.

Permit me a moment to digest Mr. Trippi’s considered analysis …

Bwahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!!!

OK, now that I have that out of my system, here’s why this field is likely to help get a Republican elected President again in 2008, assuming we can avoid screwing up the choice on our end:

Let’s start with what wins Presidential elections. First the acknowledged charismatic greats since 1960 on each side – Reagan for the Republicans, Kennedy for the Democrats, with Nixon and Dubya Bush winning double terms for the Pachyderms, with Bill Clinton winning a double term and Lyndon Johnson the last real rout for the Democrats. Besides them, we need to consider Daddy Bush for the Republicans and Jimmy Carter for the Democrats. Four on each side, accounting for every President since 1960 except Gerald Ford, who never got elected anyway.

Reagan and JFK clearly has charisma, Bill Clinton and Dubya too but to a lesser degree. LBJ and Nixon knew the system, and Bill Clinton had that quality as well. Daddy Bush and Jimmy Carter seemed like good decent men, when that quality mattered. Reagan and Dubya took care of their people, and they deeply loved and respected the military. So let’s take those qualities and set them out plainly:

Charisma
Smart system pros
Decent guy
Loyalty to the team

Add to that two more qualities; tough in the clutch and unafraid to dream. The President does not usually have all of these qualities, but the more of them he has, the better. With those qualities in mind, then, I return to Mr. Trippi’s list and sort out the crowd, starting with two obvious names; Al Gore and John Kerry.

Al Gore thinks he should have been President because he won the popular vote in 2000. The fact that he just cannot let go of that lost election is a serious problem sign for him right from the start, but there’s more. Remember that screaming rant? Remember his snotty refusal to concede in 2000 until well past all reasonable chance of victory? Have you noticed the arrogant condescension in his propaganda piece, “An Inconvenient Truth”? Here’s the Gore standing on the requisite qualities, each on a scale of 1 to 5:

Charisma – 0. Gore still makes dead wood look lively.
System – 2. Gore knows the system, but he has two flaws. He spent all his chips trying to win 2000 on an unprecedented lawsuit/recount strategy, and he has Hillary against him all the way to the party convention.
Decency – 1. Gore is known as a manipulator and an opportunist.
Team Player – 0. Gore never once made an effort to help anyone else get elected. Gore is spelled with all “I”s.
Clutch Toughness – 3. Gore is stubborn, but burns bridges.
Vision – 1. Gore has no National Security plan, he has no plan to save Social Security, he has no plan to secure our borders. But he will attack SUVs.

Overall Score: 07 out of a possible 30 (23%)


Next, we look at John Kerry. Sorry to have to remind you John, but that “botched joke” is far from your only baggage. ‘For before you were against’ is still haunting you, and no one takes a Presidential candidate seriously who depends on “magic hat” stories and false recollections (like Nixon sending you into Cambodia before he was even President?) to bolster a suspicious war resume. Here’s Kerry’s report card on the requisite qualities:

Charisma – 0. Kerry is as boring as Gore.
System – 1. As a Senator, Kerry knows the politics, but not how things really get done. Kerry has absolutely one of the worst record in bills submitted and policies influenced.
Decency – 3. Kerry seems about average for a politician, no real scandals but no clear virtues.
Team Player – 0. Like Gore, everything that comes out of John Kerry’s mouth is in praise of himself.
Clutch Toughness – 0. A good nickname for Kerry from the 2004 campaign was ‘flipper’.
Vision – 0. The only thing we ever heard from John Kerry about what he would do as President, was a vague suggestion that he would let his party tell him what to do. That’s John Kerry’s idea of Leadership.

Overall Score: 04 out of a possible 30 (13%)

Considering these two guys were the Democrats’ idea of “winners” in the last two shots at the White House, those scores are not promising for Trippi’s start out of the box.

Next up is the long-presumed Donk frontrunner, Hillary Rodham Clinton. Hillary has actually been President, you know – well, “co-President” as she reminded us in 1993. Remember Hillary Care? If she gets elected it will happen, you can count on that. Unfortunately for Hillary, the nation had an allergic reaction to her the first time they saw her up close, and for all her efforts to change her image, the ultimate Hillary remains a vicious shrew. Here’s the Hillary Scorecard:

Charisma – 0. When Hillary is trying to be nice, she comes off as fake. And when she is seen in character, the taste is truly awful.
System – 5. Hillary is shrewd, street-smart and a deft political operative.
Decency – 0. Hillary is ruthless, plain and dark. She’s hidden her skeletons under Bubba’s, but they are still there.
Team Player – 0. In 2004, Hillary made a number of appearances ostensibly in support of Kerry, but her name came first on the banners and all the money raised went into her coffers.
Clutch Toughness – 4. Hillary is junk-yard mean, a political gangsta in the mold of LBJ.
Vision – 2. Hillary knows how to speak the words, but there is no follow-through, no sense of her grasping the concept beyond her immediate gain.

Overall Score: 11 out of a possible 30 (37%)

Since we’re clearing out the oldies first, let’s just run down the list of has-beens Trippi thinks would still run well in 2008:

Joe Biden

Charisma – 0. Am I the only guy who sees a Democrat image of Joe McCarthy when I look at Joe Biden? I think a lot of people do.
System – 3. Biden knows the system. He does not seem to control it, however.
Decency – 0. Machiavelli had more scruples.
Team Player – 0. Biden is not a man to pick up the check share credit, or think about someone else.
Clutch Toughness – 3. Biden likes a fight. The bad news is, he doesn't know which ones to pick and which ones to avoid.
Vision – 0. The man can't see past his next union endorsement, and is so locked in the past he wonders why he can't find Dan Rather's newscasts anymore.

Overall Score: 06 out of a possible 30 (20%)


Russ Feingold

Charisma – 0. When's the last time anyone quoted Feingold? When's the last time a regular person indicated they knew who he even is?
System – 3. A has-been. Long ago. Nothing to indicate he is in charge for a lnog, long time.
Decency – 1. A self-serving opportunist, his chief regret in the Abramoff scandal is that he didn't make any money or influence off it.
Team Player – 2. Feingold knows how to play well, but always as a follower, never a leader.
Clutch Toughness – 1. When challenged, Feingold never hesitates to stand up immediately - and blame someone else.
Vision – 1. Feingold has ideas. Old ones, failed ones, unpopular ones, but yeah, he has ideas.

Overall Score: 08 out of a possible 30 (27%)

Wesley Clark ran on one issue; quitting Iraq. He is, therefore, already irrelevant to 2008, but Mr. Trippi does not seem to grasp that fact. Here’s his scorecard:

Charisma – 0. Clark was disliked by his fellow generals, was known as a boor in both military and political circles, and consistently failed to excite.
System – 1. Clark ran as an outsider. The problem is, he was so much an outsider, he was obviously clueless about how the government works. I gave him 1 point because as a former general, at least he is comfortable with bureaucracy.
Decency – 3. Average, nothing notable either direction.
Team Player – 0. Like everyone discussed so far, this guy demands the spotlight, even when he has nothing to add to the show.
Clutch Toughness – 0. When challenged in 2004, Clark was unprepared and looked out of his depth.
Vision – 0. Quick, what is the first thing Clark would do as President? Who would be his first cabinet appointment? Hear that silence? That’s the depth of the Clark plan.

Overall Score: 04 out of a possible 30 (13%)


Then there’s Bill Richardson. Everyone says what a great “resume” he has, and so does Trippi. Here’s the problem; Richardson has been around a lot, but his results are distinctly lacking. At least he’s been a governor, although anyone who thinks the former Governor of New Mexico would translate into Democrat wins in any other Southwest state does not understand the region.

Charisma – 2. He has regional appeal, but it’s not the ‘wow’ kind and it’s definitely not national. .
System – 3. Richardson knows how to run a small state government. No indication he is ready for the big time.
Decency – 3. Average
Team Player – 2. Supports his friends, hates his enemies.
Clutch Toughness – 3. Average, no evidence Richardson has ever been in a long, tough fight.
Vision – 2. If America is just like Tempe, Richardson’s your man. If more is required, Richardson is a poser.

Overall Score: 15 out of a possible 30 (50%)


By now you should have caught the theme. Let’s move on now to the ‘up and comers’, guys Trippi thinks are the future of the Democratic Party. The numbers get more serious in this group.

John Edwards

Charisma – 5. Edwards has flair, and knows how to speechify.
System – 0. Edwards has never yet shown he understands how to get things done. All flash, no substance.
Decency – 0. Edwards is a trial lawyer, total shark, willing to lie or smear his opponent to get his way.
Team Player – 0. Even when he was Kerry’s running mate, Edwards made no effort to put the top name first; Breck Boy was always making clear that he expected more to come for himself, and never a thought to anyone else.
Clutch Toughness – 0. Edwards got thumped in the VP Debates by Cheney. He showed his ‘wounded poodle’ side right then and there. His family herald should feature a man disguised as a woman with a white flag, running away.
Vision – 0. Edwards is paper-thin, the kind of guy to make a car salesman look like a moral paragon.

Overall Score: 5 out of a possible 30 (17%)


Barack Obama

Charisma – 5. Handsome, young, urbane and articulate, Obama shows well on television and carries himself well as long as he does not have to answer any hard questions. Reminds me of a black Gary Hart.
System – 2. He’s done well so far and is a fast riser, but he has no experience yet. No accomplishments besides being pretty.
Decency – 4. Seems like a good guy, but as yet unwilling to tackle moral issues directly.
Team Player – 4. gets along with just about everyone, and if there are rifts he does a good job of not letting them show.
Clutch Toughness – 0. Obama has never yet been tested, nor risen to a challenge.
Vision – 3. He’s not big on specifics, but Obama’s general optimism and fluent populism serve him well in general terms so far.

Overall Score: 18 out of a possible 30 (60%)


Evan Bayh

Charisma – 1. Bayh is a nice person who is generally well-respected. That does not translate into holding significant influence or being able to bring people aboard his plan. Note that there has as yet not been any “Bayh Bill” to make a major change, nor any grassroots movement to see this guy lead the country.
System – 4. Bayh knows the system, but A- he is a Senator, not a Governor, and B- Bayh acts like a follower, not a leader.
Decency – 5. By all accounts a decent man.
Team Player – 5. He really reminds me of Gerry Ford. Now is that good or bad?
Clutch Toughness – 0. Bayh has never once been in a tough fight, much less won one.
Vision – 0. What quote best sums up Evan Bayh? Anything come to mind?

Overall Score: 15 out of a possible 30 (50%)


Tom Vilsack

Charisma – 4. I hate to admit it, but Trippi may have a good candidate here. Personable and smart, Vilsack looks and sounds good. He should sell well in the Midwest and the Northeast in general, including some of the Bush territory.
System – 4. Nothing spectacular, but a good job as Governor. No mistakes to speak of.
Decency – 5. Very clean, and he looks it.
Team Player – 1. no significant alliances or major backers, but it’s early yet.
Clutch Toughness – 0. Vilsack has never yet been tested.
Vision – 1. Vilsack knows day-to-day. He has yet to show a comprehension suited to the big stage.

Overall Score: 15 out of a possible 30 (50%)


So, rated for actual qualities, here’s (back to front) Trippi’s list for 2008:


Wesley Clark – 13%
John Kerry – 13%
John Edwards – 17%
Joe Biden - 20%
Al Gore – 23%
Russ Feingold - 27%
Hillary Clinton – 37%
Evan Bayh – 50%
Bill Richardson – 50%
Tom Vilsack – 50%
Barack Obama – 60%

The sense I catch, is that Clark, Kerry, Edwards, Gore, and Clinton are out of the race but will fight that reality to some degree. Bayh and Richardson are not really suited to the job, nor have they shown the credentials they ought to have by now. That leaves Obama, Trippi’s presumed “rock star” for the Democrats, and Tom Vilsack, the Governor of Iowa. Obama will be more in the spotlight, because of his race, but Vilsack could be much more formidable when it comes down to really making the run. Both men are charismatic and intelligent, and they know how to present a clean face to the public.

The problem is, neither man has much experience in national leadership, and neither has really been in a test yet. Neither has made a statement about Terrorism, about Social Security, or about where they want to take America. It’s two years out, but the race is already underway, and these guys need to start their engines in terms of proving their place in the field. As for Trippi, I can’t quite decide if he included the nine losers along with the two strong candidates as a way to contrast the two groups, or if he really believes that people like Biden, Kerry, or Gore could possibly catch fire any more than a wet fish would.

I Work For God, But I Never Claimed I Was Employee of the Month

Ah, that fine line between righteousness and self-righteousness! Just about a week ago, I learned that I had to go in for surgery ASAP, to remove my appendix, which most unreasonably chose to announce its displeasure by rupturing. This was merely the latest in a series of odd or inconvenient events which seemed to be sending a signal of some kind:

[] My daughter developed a chronic cough, possibly due to allergies but worrisome
[] I passed a kidney stone, and missed some school and work
[] My wife lost a filling in her teeth
[] My follow-up CT Scan showed a “problem” with my appendix
[] The day I was to see my specialist, my car busted a hose and broke down
[] My specialist told me I needed immediate surgery
[] My “hi-speed” internet became “no-speed” internet, as Roadrunner went out completely for more than a week and RR’s IT people are not only incompetent, but arrogant and rude by policy and character
[] While I was in surgery to have my appendix removed, the country went nuts and voted out the only adults in Congress
[] My alma mater has not only continued a dismal losing streak, they are now getting blown out by teams with losing records
[] My wife’s dentist has a demon working in the office, who twice refused to honor her appointment
[] I have not had a cup of coffee in over two weeks now

OK, so if you don’t know me that last item may seem trivial, but I just about have the Folgers people on my speed-dial for a reason.

Anyway, this list is a pretty sour mess for just a couple weeks of events, and does not even include all the fun things like what was waiting for me when I went back to work this morning, or trying to catch up in my classes, with two major projects due and a series of tests and assignments to do before final exams in just two weeks. So this may explain the paltry blogging for the past bit.

All this put together seems to suggest that the Lord has been trying to get my attention; like many people I can get a bit of “tunnel vision” when I get going, and this fall I was pretty single-minded. It’s true to say that men only think of one thing – at a time. Some of the time it’s Sports, or Politics, or Food, but we do tend to act like dogs chasing cars, even when we blog.

I don’t want to sound preachy – too late, I know – but I started blogging on a regular basis because I felt that I was supposed to be doing this. Hey, not that I know everything, but I try to be informative, to provoke debate or at least pose an intriguing question or notion. I love the response I get back from readers – fascinating really, how some people post a comment on the thread while others send an e-mail. Also kind of interesting to notice that my old stuff gets as much attention as my new stuff – either some of my ‘vintage’ material is pretty good, or I have been pretty bad lately, you tell me.

This past week has been a time of reflection for me, with a resolution to be a better husband, father, man, employee, and citizen. Three of those goals are pretty much private things; I’m a decent man all things considered, my wife and daughters know I love them, and I do good work at the company. That said, I want to make sure I neither get complacent, nor miss a chance to improve. But I also understand that no one of us knows everything in Life, nor has all the right answers to even one of the important questions; it’s not a one-size-fits-all reality, and in many ways even if my answer is right and true, there may well be more to learn and comprehend beyond what I hold. And there are dangers and problems which are not always obvious – I could have prevented the kidney stone problem, maybe, with more care years ago about my diet, instead of waiting as long as I did to improve my balance and reduce my sodium intake, but the doctors assure me there was no way to prevent my appendicitis; no one knows exactly why it happens, or why it affects the people it does. Even wise men cannot foresee the unknowable, and I would be rash to consider myself wise.

Well, it’s Monday, this column is long, a bit vague, and fairly egocentric. You know what that means – I’m back!

Thanks, Veterans

I am still recovering from surgery, and I have a term paper due in three days, but for all that, I should have made time earlier to say it:

Thank you, veterans.

Not just because of today, but for everything. Every one of you, every branch, every era, every job, every tour.

Although I admit the Coasties deserve a little extra, just because everyone usually forgets them.

So, Semper Paratus, Semper Fi, "Gig Em", or whatever call or slogan makes you proud. We're proud to know you, and our country owes you a lot.

Thanks.

Don’t Bet Against Bush, Even Now

All right, I admit it. For the first time since his first run for office, Dubs lost to the Donks. Of course, I have been clear that this was largely due to the snubbing of Dubs by his own party. Somebody want to explain to me again, why it was so smart to reject the man who got 62 million votes plus not so very long ago? I called that move stupid just a couple days ago, but really, ‘stupid’ just doesn’t do justice to how profoundly foolhardy the GOP acted in its rejection of its core constituency. Others have pointed out just how stale the “Contract With America” got by this year. Others have warned that acting just like Democrats was a sure way to get Democrats elected. Others have observed that the issues voters cared about the most; winning in Iraq, securing our borders, cleaning the government of trash from either party – these were ignored by Republican politicos who thought they could slide by with a wink and a smile. But it needs to be said again, that it was incalculably poor strategy to turn away from Dubya. All that did was let the Donks play ‘divide and conquer’, all that did was force Republican voters to decide whether they supported their country’s President or their Congressman/Senator, all that did was confuse and anger the base, so that for the first time in memory. Republicans, especially Conservatives, simply gave up and put the electoral gun to their own head in hopes it would “send a message”. Well it did, only the message sent was to the Democrats, and that message was as white a flag as anything Paris could have issued.

So there we are. The party of William “Freezer” Jefferson and Harry “Land Deal” Reid, of Ted “Swim Team” Kennedy and Chucky “Statesman” Schumer, or Nancy “Paxil” Pelosi and Alcee “The Impeached” Hastings, is now in charge of how much you will be taxed, how (if!) we establish a self-sufficient state in Iraq, and even what the Constitution says. But even now, there is hope. Don’t forget that in 2001, the Congress was not in all that much better shape than it is now. Remember how Jim Jeffords gave the Senate to the Democrats? Remember how hard it was for Dubya to get Congress to remember its duty in the first part of 2001? Frankly, Dubya did a pretty good job during the pre-9/11 days, when the Donks played a lot of cards to sway popular sentiment their way. And he will persevere through these coming dark days, to keep his sworn duty to the nation. He’s done it before without the fair-weather support, and he will do his job to the best of his ability, which is considerable.

I heard today that John Conyers and Nancy Pelosi together announced that impeachment proceedings of President Bush are “off the table”. Think about that, and ask yourself why they would say that now. It’s because they understood what those pink-fluff poodles in the GOP who deserted Dubya forgot; Job Approval for President Bush is one thing, but the man himself remains well-respected and liked. Dubya may be down now, but he remains a winner, and only a very great fool would bet against him. Even now.

May God Rest You, Ed Bradley, and Give Your Family Solace

Ed Bradley, one of CBS’ most famous newsmen, has died at age 65 of Leukemia. I took this news without much emotion at first, because it was difficult to sort out what I felt. On the one hand, I have long regarded the figureheads at CBS, and especially at “60 Minutes”, as enemies of truth and justice, willing to give up any ideal for the chance to hurt conservatives and advance their top story, whether true or not. The problem, of course, is that this kind of thinking comes from diminishing a person to one-dimension and losing sight of them as a human being. The political fights come and go, but the people are always what matters. Sixty-five years may not seem young to many people, but it’s a tragedy for someone to be taken from full health to death so quickly. Ed deserved a chance he did not get.

Perhaps, having heard ominous news from my own doctors just last week, I am more sensitive than I used to be to dangers like cancer. I got lucky, Ed did not. Is it really that simple, that cavalier? I think not, though my own views are largely immaterial to the people who mourn the passing of their friend and family member. To Mr. Bradley’s family, his colleagues at CBS, and to his many friends, I offer my condolences, and wish you comfort and solace in this time.

The Election, In Brief

I was unconscious when we lost the House and – possibly – Senate, recovering from having my appendix removed after passing a kidney stone the week before. But before I went in for surgery, I had already warned why Republicans were in trouble; many weak Republicans deserted the President, preferring to believe the Democrats’ spin that they could only keep their seats by distancing themselves from Dubya. This was a stupid, stupid decision and ultimately the biggest factor in their defeat. Putting it bluntly, to win this year the GOP needed turnout at least equal to the Donks’ turnout, and it just did not happen. Why should a Republican support a guy acting like a Democrat? And there was simply no hope that anyone who preferred the Democrat would switch to the Republican because he started acting like a Democrat. In the end, acting like a Democrat only helped the Democrats, though some Democrats won by acting like Republicans.

Quitting support for the President essentially meant quitting being a Republican Congressman or Senator.

Sunday Update

Last week I passed a kidney stone.

The radiology tests now show I have appendicitus. I will be meeting with a urosurgeon to discuss my condition, which I strongly suspect means surgery this week.

The GOP better win on Tuesday - I sure don't need any more pain in that region.

The Man Of Consequence: Why George W. Bush Still Matters

I have written over and over again, that the Democrats have things wrong. They are on the wrong side of the War on Terrorism, wrong on Immigration Reform, wrong on Social Security Reform, wrong about the Economy, wrong about Taxes, wrong about so many things. But the Democrats are correct, to some degree, about the fact that President George W. Bush matters, even in mid-term elections.

John Hawkins at Right Wing News took a poll of “right of center bloggers”, and asked them to select their top six choices from a list of purported reasons why the GOP is having difficulties this election. As always, John’s polls are informative, but I did not much like his list. A number of strong reasons – obvious to me at least – were not available as choices. As someone who lives near Sugar Land, I find it fitting to demand a write-in vote. The biggest single reason the Republicans are having difficulties this election, is because for some inane reason they started listening to the Democrats’ spin and abandoned the President. This plays right into an old strategy, but one which appears to still work – Divide and Conquer.

It’s simple, really – most Americans think about President Bush when they consider the Republican plan for how to handle Iraq, meet the threat from Terrorism, reform how taxes are assessed and collected, how we should choose federal judges and Supreme Court justices, and what cultures will be encouraged and protected in the United States. No other elected official comes close to such a complete alignment with a party position. No Democrat has established any sort of policy positions on the issues Americans repeatedly confirm they care about, and even the other leading Republicans only voice a part of the plan. President Bush is the Republican Party, so far as the people are concerned. Small wonder then, that the Democrats wanted to separate every Republican candidate from the President, because that is the one thing which would weaken Republicans more than anything else. No one is required to agree with the President on every issue, nor are you required to support him on every issue. But if you are a Republican, then you have to understand that President George W. Bush is your party’s voice and standard for all intents and purposes. The Democrats fear Dubya, and rightly so. And any Republican who plans on winning the fights which matter, will stand by their President.

A Horror Story

Washington DC, Friday November 10 2006 (AP) – Democrats are still celebrating the takeover of both chambers of Congress in Tuesday’s mid-term elections, striking a serious blow to Republicans and the influence of now-lame-duck President George W. Bush.

Shaking his head, DNC Chairman Howard Dean laughed at his good fortune. “We had terrible turnout”, admitted the head of the Democrats’ national committee, “but we lucked out because the Republicans stayed home, too.

“It would have been very easy for the Republicans to have saved control of at least one chamber, but they sat on their butts and that worked for us.”

Baghdad, Iraq Monday February 5 2007 (AP) – Ordered by Congress to pull out of Iraq as soon as possible, U.S. troops began the first of a series of scaled pull-outs, removing 25,000 troops from positions deemed by Congress to be “too risky”. In related news, sectarian violence surged in Fallujah, Sadr City, and along the border with Saudi Arabia, as insurgents took heart in the American retreat. Over a thousand people are believed to have died in the new surge in violence over the past ten days.

Washington DC, Monday March 12 2007 (AP) – The U.S. Economy continued its slide for the third straight month, with Unemployment and the Consumer Price index both rising again. Economists say confidence in the economy has weakened due to fears of tax increases and a Congress which is hostile to the average person.

Beijing, Wednesday March 14 2007 (AP) – Iran and China have signed a landmark cooperation and defense treaty, announced today in a ceremony in Tienamen Square. Analysts believe that the weakened U.S. position in Asian and the Middle East made the deal more attractive than It would have been in past years, especially since Senate Foreign Relations committee chairman Joseph Biden has publicly warned that Congress would not approve “any more adventures” overseas for the foreseeable future.

Washington DC, Monday May 21 2007 (AP) – The Senate today slapped a stinging rebuke to the Bush Administration, by demanding a complete review and “overhaul” to intelligence-gathering procedures. In a move unprecedented since the Church Committee hearings of the 1970s, the Senate announced that the proceedings would be aired live and in public. Concerns about protecting “critical sources and methods” would be endangered by the publicity were brushed aside as “spooks trying to cover their behinds”.

The Hague, June 8 2007 (AP) – The International Court of Justice today indicted sixteen U.S. Marines on charges of abusing the human rights of over one hundred suspected members of Al Qaeda, by detaining Iranian nationals and incarcerating them without due process under the terms of Sharia. The case is widely viewed as a test case to determine the new American mood with regard to nations like Iran and North Korea. “It appears that the Congress has finally tired of allowing Bush to treat sovereign nations like beggars” commented an Iranian diplomat through Al-Jazeera. Veterans groups in the U.S. protested that turning over American troops to be tried in a foreign court was unconscionable, but a spokesman for the State Department explained that the new bill by Congress, which overrode President Bush’s veto, requires the United States comply with international law “in all respects”, including abiding by rulings from the ICJ.

Washington DC, Friday June 29 2007 (AP) – Just before the Fourth of July break, Congress dropped a bombshell on the taxpayer, increasing the employer and employee portion of SSI taxes to 22.7% each, with a warning that further increases may be necessary. Explaining the hike, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said “look, no one likes raising taxes, but the only way to fix this problem is to put more money into the system.”

Baghdad, Friday July 20 2007 (AP) – U.S. troops are exiting Iraq as quickly as possible, promised General Peter Schoomaker, Army Chief of Staff, but casualties are an inevitable price paid by “quitting before the job is finished”. U.S. forces have lost over a thousand casualties, including more than six hundred deaths, since the February decision by Congress to pull out of Iraq. Analysts say the country is effectively in civil war at this time, “total chaos in places” as confidence in the nascent democracy was shattered by the sudden decision by the United States to go home.

Islamabad, Monday July 23 2007 (AP) – In a stunning move, the government of Pakistan has cut relations with the United States, opened talks with Iran regarding regional issues, and opened a consulate for Al Qaeda. Officials for President Musharraf explained, “we are merely adjusting to the reality of new conditions.”

Washington DC, Monday, July 27 2007 (AP) – The Fairness Doctrine is back, and bigger than ever. Both chambers of Congress passed a measure which will not only require radio stations and cable television networks to provide “equal time and resources” to contrasting points of view, but for the first time also requires that political opinion websites, often called political “blogs”, be registered their financing reported, and agree to abide by “fair and reasonable” standards. Questions remain regarding enforcement, but one official who spoke on condition of anonymity said, “we can make sure extreme voices don’t get out of hand”.



Is it all just a bad dream? If you sit on your butt or don’t vote Republican, maybe not.

Happy Halloween!


NOW GO VOTE!

You Know What They Say About Assumptions

Today is Monday, which apparently is Lame Excuse Day in the corridors of Real Clear Politics and Spin. I say this, because even as the RCP guys have backtracked a little bit on their weasel post of October 20, these guys are still saying, in the same sort of voice we hear from Couric, Pelosi, and other minions of Leftist Lying, that the race is a foregone conclusion. RCP is still, quite without merit, claiming that “the lack of any released polling is a sign that this race is almost definitely a Democratic pickup”. I must repeat the obvious, that the absence of information must never be taken as evidence for any assertion, because by definition you cannot derive something from nothing. You would hardly be satisfied with a doctor who did no tests, and used the lack of tests as a basis for his diagnosis. You would hardly be satisfied with a mechanic who didn’t bother to check out your car before telling you what he thought was wrong. Even those old mystic types who ripped out goat entrails to see the future, at least based their predictions on something. There are only two kinds of people who would deliberately try to sell the idea that no data must mean ‘x’. RCP is either getting really, really lazy, or else they are flat being dishonest. Even as they continue to spin this race as “over”, the story they link to in their most recent update calls the race “a statistical tie”.

The Houston Chronicle, not known for supporting Republicans, even admitted that when Zogby’s poll specifically named the candidates running for TX-22, “Sekula-Gibbs drew 52 percent support in that situation, with Lampson holding at 35 percent.”

President Bush is visiting Sugar Land today, and since he claimed 64% of TX-22’s vote in 2004, this can only help Sekula-Gibbs.

Why was there no polling information for so long? The obvious must once again be observed:

[] Through the first couple months of 2006, the widespread belief was that DeLay would run for re-election, and was seen as a very strong incumbent. I note that RCP never bothered to consider that the absence of polling then would have been an “indicator” that DeLay had already wrapped up another term, if we applied RCP’s methodology. The fact that DeLay is not planning for his next term, rather effectively disproves that fable RCP has been selling that ‘no polling’ tells us anything.

[] Ronnie Earle’s vendetta against DeLay was years in the making, and had several starts and stops and spurts along the way. As a result, DeLay ran in the primaries because the GOP wanted a consistent message sent to the district. As for Lampson, he did not even open his office to campaign in TX-22 until April 8th. The pollsters waited for the dust to settle before they could poll on the race, since there was a lot of doubt about who was running.

[] Shelley Sekula-Gibbs was not even running until September. This means that the polls had to decide whether – and how – to poll TX-22, since the nature of the write-in requirement made this election unique.

In total then, the lack of polling was clearly not due to anyone locking up the race, but rather the result of a series of events which raised questions about who was running, and how polls should address the decision. It is simply false to claim that Lampson has effectively won this race, and patently dishonest to manipulate a lack of data to claim a result not in evidence. In actual fact, there is no question at all that if this race were a normal head-to-head race with both Lampson and Sekula-Gibbs on the ticket for their respective parties, Sekula-Gibbs would enjoy a tremendous lead, and notions that the Democrats could hope to take this seat would be a poor joke. The only reason that Lampson is in the position he is, is the result of Democrat dirty tricks. I mention this, because most people outside the District do not understand the underlying facts of this race:

[] Lampson has never lived in Sugar Land, but comes from Beaumont. His eligibility for the Congressional race is not unlike Hillary Clinton’s “residency” which allowed her to run for Senator of New York. Sugar Land Texas, however, is very distinctly not New York, and such tricks do not sit well with many voters.

[] TX-22 is strongly Republican and Conservative. It has been described as “leaning” Republican, but that is very much an understatement.

[] Sekula-Gibbs is very well known in Sugar Land. Her candidacy to run for TX-22 comes from not only her residency there, but also her reputation, which is largely positive.

With those facts in mind, it would seem strange that this should be a race at all, but the Donks played their card well, even if it is a filthy card. Republicans who vote “straight-ticket” not only will not have a vote registered for Sekula-Gibbs, but would not even have a chance to write-in her name, because the Donks got the courts to rule both that DeLay could not run, but that no one else could be put in as a Republican on the ballot, so there is no Republican slot on that race. The real question then, is how many Republicans will understand how to write-in Sekula-Gibbs in this election. The 25% “undecided” response in the Zogby poll, it appears, comes from not only people who are undecided, but also include those who are unsure how to write-in Sekula-Gibbs.

From the available information, garnered from local news reports and the internal data from Zogby’s poll, it would seem reasonable to say that Lampson will collect almost all of the Democrat vote in TX-22. That sounds great, but as I said, that being a largely Republican district means that Lampson is looking to collect between 25 and 35 percent of the voter base there, depending on Donk turnout. As for Sekula-Gibbs, she is actually quite popular, but will lose a chunk of the Republican vote from people who fail to properly write her in. Her share of the voter base starts at 52 percent, but loses 15-20 points due to the write-in complication. Figuring in Republican turnout as well, her basic numbers are between 22 and 42 percent of the voter base. Adding those two together, plus the GOP voters who fail to write in Sekula-Gibbs, and that leaves about 17 percent of truly undecided voters. It is possible for anything from a 47% Lampson 28% Sekula-Gibbs result, to a 54% Sekula-Gibbs 31% Lampson result. The only honest answer here is that

A) This race is very much still undecided

B) Turnout will be critical for each side

C) Calling this a sure Democrat takeover is both dishonest and foolish.

The chief reason I mention this, is because so many on the Left and in the Media are calling TX-22 as an example of some kind of Donkey Tide, and come November 7 there will be a lot of those ‘experts’ trying to explain how their lies and distortions were either honest mistakes, or somehow not as bad as they will look in the light of actual results.

I repeat my earlier conclusion: I have no complaint against a partisan choosing to cheer for their side, but when someone who purports to be objective plays a trick like this, I will not hesitate to call them out. For whatever reason, RCP has abandoned honest evaluation of the evidence in favor of a disguised partisanship, and this conduct is clearly unethical.

School Update

For those interested;

Completed Quiz on Chapter 10 in Accounting, got 100%, brings class average up to a nudge above 83% (Assignment 4 of 6 submitted but no grade yet);

Took Economics Quiz on Chapters 7, 10, and 11 today, scored 95%, class average at 99%;

Term Paper due for Business & Society Monday October 30 at 8 AM.

Quiz on Chapter 6 in Accounting this week.

Assignment 5 in Accounting due this Saturday.

Term Paper in Economics due November 14.

Just in case you wondered why I am not as chatty as usual.


Oh, and for the record Time Warner Roadrunner High-Speed Internet is a lying, bumbling, collection of con men and incompetents. More than half of Houston, they say, is unable to access their wonderful service for the second straight day, at least 34 hours and counting by my clock. What's even more telling about the "expertise" of these people is that they do not know what, precisely, is wrong, they will not say what they are doing to fix the problem, they have no idea when it will befixed, and they resent the hell out of customers being at all displeased by any of these things.

I am on dial-up right now. Don't expect any glowing reviews about Total Wripoff Roadkill Won't-Work Internet anytime soon.

The Left and Kidney Stones

Anyone who knows me could have seen this one coming. I have long tried to find meaning in everyday life events, and so again I apply a lesson from a literal pain in a private place to politics.

Earlier this week I wrote a comparison between The Political Left in the United States and Terrorists. The responses were predictable, but some missed the point or else were dishonest. So it seems appropriate to respond to those six comments.

The first comment agreed with me, and naturally I found it easy to accept. Yes, it was difficult to write that so many people have chosen to support a platform which has moved from inadequacy to hostility to common sense, to outright malice against the ideals of America. The problem is not that Democrats are evil, actually, but that their party has been hijacked by the worst sort of extremists and the people who support that party are for the most part unaware or unperturbed by this situation. For all the claims from the Left that the GOP has become fascists, in actual practice and historical comparison it is the Left which has become unpleasantly similar to the regimes of Il Duce and Der Fuhrer.

The second, third, and fourth comments were the sort of denial I have learned to expect from decent-minded liberals; the notion that criticism of the Right is always well-founded and reasonable, but that warnings about evil in the Left must be false and therefore the result of hate or misunderstanding. To that writer, I would repeat the questions which no one in the Left has yet even tried to answer:

[] What are your specific plans for Iraq and the Middle East? I have heard so many criticisms of Republican plans, complaints and blame – so very often far from rational – for all that has happened up to now, but never a specific plan for how you would address the threats from Iran and Syria and the Sudan. Never yet.


[] Why do you believe that raising taxes will, of itself, result in a more sound economy and more responsible government? The lie that Clinton created a surplus just doesn’t fly, since his “surplus” was largely projections for future conditions based on best-case assumptions, and the economic conditions of 1993-2000 were not influenced by any government action, especially not by any economic initiative from Clinton that can be found. Read up on Keynes, please.


[] Since his election as President, I have read and heard a large variety of unsubstantiated charges and vicious insults thrown at George W. Bush. In fact, many leaders on the Left, including DNC Chairman Howard Dean, former Democratic nominees for President John Kerry and Al Gore, and a number of senior elected Democrats, including Senators Ted Kennedy and Harry Reid, and Congresspersons Pelosi and Schumer, have uttered such foul imprecations and false allegations, as to make civil debate on the issues impracticable. While it is unfortunately common for extreme commentators and advocates to make such statements as to compare a sitting President to Hitler, or to pretend that a President would deliberately mislead Congress in order to pursue a desired conflict, it is quite out of bounds for a national party’s leaders to act in such a fashion, yet this is exactly the conduct from the Left for the past six years. Howard Dean publicly speculated that Bush “allowed” the 9/11 attacks to happen. John Kerry repeatedly claimed President Bush misled Congress in his intelligence on Iraq, even though Kerry saw the very same information, and – when he was not running for President – publicly agreed with the President about the threat and its magnitude. Al Gore has acted in a fashion far removed from decency, let alone respectful disagreement, yet he has never once supported his charges. Senator Kennedy publicly claimed that President “cooked up” the War in Iraq “for political gain”, a baseless lie and smear he never bothered to retract or defend. Harry Reid has repeatedly accused the Bush Administration of corruption, even while he himself is unwilling or unable to explain his million-dollar payoff for land he did not even own, and which profit he hid from reporting to the Senate, to say nothing of Reid’s connections to Abramoff which far outshadow in scale and severity any Republican connections yet proven. Congresswoman Pelosi has repeatedly made accusations against President Bush without merit or support, as has Representative Schumer. Taken together, it is completely reasonable to count this as a calculated and sustained smear campaign to avoid discussing the issues. And as such, I must ask supporters of the Left why they accept such conduct on the part of their elected officials.


The fifth comment spoke in much the same tone as my article here. The last comment was a disappointing attempt to twist my words, criticizing the Left, to an attack on all Democrats and Liberals. Full of insults and false allegations, it typifies what I have seen all too often from the Left. While there are clearly individuals on the Right who are hateful and petty, there seem to be so many more of them on the Left. Do I really need to bring up, again, those Democrats in Minnesota who slashed tires of GOP vehicles on election day in 2004 in order to keep folks from voting? Do I need to point out that the only violent acts by protestors during the 2004 political conventions were by anarchists and Liberal activist groups? Do I need to remind you that such people put an NYPD officer into Intensive Care by pulling him off his horse, kicking him in the head and throwing him down a subway stairwell? Do I need to remind you about your “Wellstone Memorial” in 2002, when a funeral for a good man, respected by all, turned into a near-riot of hate and anti-Republican venom, with Republicans who came to show respect for Paul Wellstone and his family targeted for insults and hatred just because they were Republicans? Can you still, even now, not see the poison in your own rhetoric? And worse, there is no prominent voice on the Left warning about this.

As I mentioned above, there are some hateful Conservatives and Republicans. We don’t walk on water. But we do call out those hate-mongers, even when they are as popular as Ann Coulter or Michael Savage. And none of our top elected officials attacks the Democrats as they do Republicans.

The problem is not that you are required to like President Bush, or Republicans, or Conservatives. But you really need to consider that the United States is becoming increasingly Conservative, as evidenced by the trend of the past decade. One comment whined that I was somehow insulting almost 40 percent of the country by criticizing the tone and rhetoric of the Left as displayed in forums and public statements for more than a half-decade. Such complaining is not valid, not only because the Democrats represent – at best – 35 percent of the voting population, not 40 percent of the general population, not only because less than a quarter of the population considers themselves “liberal” in political orientation, but also because even if we grant the notion that we must recognize the opinions of the Left and watch out for the tender feelings of their leaders, logic demands that we pay even greater respect to the mind and values of the Conservatives, who out-number liberals whenever the public is asked, that we respect the opinion of the clear majority of the voting public who voted to re-elect George W. Bush. The Leftists’ demand that they be treated to courtesy they never return, to rights they refuse to acknowledge they owe to the other side, is false on its face.

I mentioned at the start that I like to take lessons from real life. Well, passing a couple kidney stones is not a pleasant experience, but it’s my own fault. Too much potassium and sodium in my diet, along with way too much caffeine, and there you have a recipe for severe abdominal consequences. I will not go into too much detail about kidney stones, except to simply say that rocks in the tubes between your kidney and the – exit point for urination, scraping and cutting the tissue wall along the way, is zero fun. And unless you are wise enough to plan ahead and check for that sort of thing, your first warning is likely to be like mine; sudden sharp pain in your kidney, followed by several hours of burning, cramp-like pain and a lot of pressure where you don’t want it.

The reason I mention that little adventure, is because it could have been avoided. I have learned from that, in fact I have not had so much as a sip of a caffeinated beverage since Tuesday, which is very difficult for me. No coffee, no Diet Coke, no delight in my taste buds. But better than encouraging more of those little blighters; I still have a CT-Scan scheduled for next week to make sure there are not some more little rocks waiting to do a second chorus. The lesson is, no matter what you would like to do or have happen, you must be careful to consider the most likely results of your decisions. And this applies to politics just as much as diet and exercise.

Democrats may or may not take over one or both chambers of Congress. But it will not help them in the long run, unless they return to the Democrats’ manner of governance of more than sixty years ago, and the Liberal thinking which expanded on the rights of the general public and the way they mean to address problems with viable solutions. As long as the Left refuses to offer real, specific solutions, they basically do nothing to move the debate forward. When the Republicans won in 1994, they did not do so by merely attacking Clinton’s positions, but by offering a “Contract With America”, including specific promises which they kept. As much as I respect George W. Bush, he came to office on the strength of six years of Republican work to show they could do the job. If the Left can only deal with his election and re-election by making up vapid excuses to pretend they did not really lose, then they change nothing in substance and invite further defeats down the road. For all the shortcomings of the GOP-held Congress, if the Democrats win and cannot show results where the voters need them most, they most certainly will lose again in later elections.

It might sound from that claim, that I should not worry – the Left will die of self-inflicted wounds. Yet that would most certainly be bad for the country and her people, because America has always needed two viable political parties. Whenever one gets too powerful, things go wrong. But the Left does not deserve a seat at the table just for balance, but only if it can show a deserving quality. Real answers, not just mocking the people who take on the task. Real respect for dialogue, do not just cheer for your own side and viciously banish anyone in your ranks who is not deemed ideologically pure.

It hurts less to deal with a serious problem now, than to wait for it to become unbearable.

Ouch

I will be absent from the blogging board for a little while, recovering from passing a couple kidney stones.

The Defection of Real Clear Politics

I used to consider Real Clear Politics one of the best aggregators of political news and wide-range commentary in the Blogosphere. Not any more. The site, now aligned with Time magazine, has tilted to the Left, and readers should be aware of this. As evidence, I cite RCP’s own commentary on the most significant House races this fall.

Here is what RCP had to say, with an anonymous byline but a clearly partisan attitude, about TX-22, Tom Delay’s old district:

“The absence of public polling in this race is proof that it is over. This is Dem pick up #1.”

That's right, RCP is saying that if you don't hear anything, that must mean that the Democrat is winning. I live near Sugarland, and I can tell you that the best term to describe that sort of opinion begins with "crock". But wait, it gets more obvious. Notes dated August 31 include the following tell-tale smears:

“After initially being indicted by Austin D.A. Ronnie Earle, DeLay ostensibly perceived he could win reelection. His tepid performance in the spring primary, and – in all likelihood – soft internal poll numbers, convinced him otherwise.”

“This is the sort of condition we need to have to see a district as conservative as TX 22 go to the Democrats: either the Republican has to be under indictment or there has to be no Republican on the ballot.”

Only a Democrat would write tripe like that. It is neither valid as analysis nor objective.

AZ-8 is tabbed by RCPas “a pretty safe Democratic pickup”, despite that the polls cited constantly show Undecideds in heavy double-digits, and Giffords appearing to be closing fast with more than two weeks to go.

Once again, this is not analysis, but spin. It's not even subtle.

IN-08 is one more case where you have to look closely, and not just buy the headline. RCP shows the Republican down here by 23 points, BUT – the poll cited is an intermittent poll, not one of the major services. THOSE polls show a much tighter race, and the most prominent of the polls noted, Research 2000, shows a race around the margin of error, and Undecideds at four times the margin between the candidates.

The point is clear – for some reason, the people at RCP are deliberately spinning the contests as clear Democrat victories, when closer examination shows their evidence to be weak, even invalid with regard to the stated contention.

Real Clear Politics is still useful as a barometer. But it is clearly no longer a conservative barometer, or objective by any reasonable definition. This is a Democrat-aligned website, make no mistake about it.

The Damned, The Left, and Terrorists

One of the most difficult things about being a fundamentalist Christian, is that you always have to clear away so many false assumptions and misconveyed statements by others claiming the same name, before you can even get around to saying what you want to make plain. To a degree, the same thing can be said for the three groups mentioned in my title here. There is a lot of confusion and a lot of assumption, which muddies the waters and makes it difficult to discuss the key issues and to advance the debate. With that in mind, I am tossing off a few thoughts on these three groups.

First, the damned. When I say the damned, I am not so much talking about humans as the fallen angels. I have noticed that when skeptics want to deny the sovereignty of God and the truth of the Bible, they often point to the rebellion of Satan and his angels, and ask why anyone close enough to see God as He really is, would rebel knowing the eternal consequences of hell. They say that if the angels were really as smart as claimed, they would never have made such a choice. That claim, of course, misses the fact that all creatures make irrational decisions, sometimes for worse, sometimes for better. It’s actually part of our identity; a perfectly rational being cannot be human at all. In fact, I rather suspect that our gracious Lord is not rational Himself, but I suppose I had better let that tangent go for another time.

And this brings me to my admittedly incomplete thought for the day. The Left and Terrorist groups have an awful lot in common. There was a time when I would not have touched such a thought, but more and more I see an echo between them; what one say the other repeats. Most people on the Left, certainly, do not approve of violence against innocents, yet they more and more turn a blind eye to the injustice and atrocity of Terrorism, because they find a common enemy. As cruel as it sounds, the Left is willing to accept a measure of Terrorism if it means the Republicans and Conservatives lose. And the Left is quite willing to use the same dishonest rhetoric and paranoia to advance their argument. Look at the upcoming election. Terrorists threaten violence if they do not get the result they demand, and now the Left is doing the same.

Is it any wonder the Left wants us to pull out of Iraq? Everytime a Marine kills a terrorist, a Leftist considers it the loss of a friend of his.

The Left are enemies of America and all she stands for. It really is that cold, hard, and true.

Decision Points – Why Japan Must Not Go Nuclear

September 6, 1976 – In the darkest hours of the Cold War, following America’s disgraced exit from Vietnam and the subsequent onslaught by the Viet Cong through the perfidy of Congress, during a time when Soviet proxies were enjoying success throughout Africa and South America, a single Soviet pilot took a MiG-25 “Foxbat” and flew it to the island of Hokkaido, and asked for sanctuary. In the following days, the Soviet government put intense pressure on Japan to turn over the plane and the defector to the tender mercies of the KGB, but Japan stood fast, telling the Soviets in uncharacteristic bluntness where they could go. In many ways this incident proved Japan’s friendship to the United States, as the Land of the Rising Sun showed honor and resolve in a time when it was hardly fashionable to be a friend to America. Yet it also started a new train of thought in Japanese international politics – shouldn’t Japan enjoy greater respect and position? Over the next three decades, this thinking resulted in new initiatives, both economically and politically, benefiting the Nikkei, MITI, and Japanese position relative to the rest of Asia. More than a few people began to say that Japan seemed to enjoy a Pacific version of the “Special Relationship” between the United States and the United Kingdom. From that perspective, it is hardly surprising to hear many people suggest that in the light of North Korea’s attempts to create a nuclear weapon, as well as concerns about the People’s Republic of China with regard to their own nuclear arsenal, that Japan should not only be allowed, but encouraged to develop its own nuclear weapon. Yet this would be a very risky course for the United States to pursue, and one which long-term consequences could prove expensive, and bring about conditions the United States would never knowingly wish to bring about.

Japan, regardless of the Constitution under which it now exists, still considers itself an Empire. The military, now officially designated a ‘Self-Defense Force’, is top-of-the-line in equipment; the air forces include various sub-types of F-15s and AWAC Boeing 767s, and the naval force includes Aegis cruisers. The Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) has a history of imposing conditions and personally-advantageous interpretations of treaties and agreements on trading partners such as would make used-car salesmen blush. And the Japanese official version of World War 2 still remains singularly distant from Reality, and which refusal to accept responsibility for specific (and documented) atrocities offends many nations and earns complaints from historians and the families of victims demanding acknowledgment of responsibility and meaningful reparations. In short, Japan is far from a mature or accountable democratic republic, and future loyalty to America or her interests is anything but certain. Remember “A Japan That Can Say No”, by Sony Chairman Akio Morita and politician Shintaro Ishihara?

It should be understood that the path to nuclear weapons is actually a series of decision points; choices made which determine not only the course in a specific situation, but which also direct the color and direction of future decisions. As an example, the United States found itself in large part compelled to use the Atom Bomb on Japan in 1945. Here’s how that chain played out:

The first major step in the nuclear bomb chain is deciding whether it can be done. That was proven mathematically in 1931.

The second decision point is deciding whether a specific nation can make a nuclear weapon. Einstein (and other scientists) wrote a letter to President Roosevelt in 1939 which confirmed that the United States could build such a bomb.

The third decision point is deciding whether a specific nation should attempt to make a nuclear weapon. That same 1939 letter from Dr. Einstein warned Roosevelt that if the United States did not make such a bomb, they would be at the negligible mercy of the Nazis, who certainly were trying to make one.

The fourth decision point is deciding whether to deny progress on a nuclear weapon to another nation. This was an obvious choice for the United States against Germany in 1942-5, but later a much more difficult decision in “peacetime” against the Soviet Union, China, and so on.

The fifth decision point is testing the weapon. Conditions in World War 2 made that choice obvious, as well.

The remaining decision point in 1945 rested on actual use of the bomb. Bearing in mind that the Soviet Union was already sending signals that they intended to take full advantage of this unique opportunity to grab territory, as well as the anticipated cost of invading the Japanese homelands, which would be largely an American cost in lives and material, using the atom bomb to end the war and send a clear message against Soviet ambition was obvious.

The significance of this chain, is that at each decision point there was a strong or compelling need for the United States to continue on that path. With that in mind, here is the situation for Japan:

1. Can Japan do it? Japan faces two significant obstacles to creating its own nuclear weapon; its Constitution and the lack of a Nuclear Forces framework. In both cases the changes necessary to allow for development of a nuclear weapon would be in conflict with all known and recognized legitimate Japanese goals and ideals, and so would inevitably create political chaos, legal fights, and a vacuum in control of the military as its role and duties were redefined. By all existing measures, the foreseeable benefits are outweighed by the known costs.
2. What would Japan do with a nuclear arsenal? The sole argument presented in favor of Japan obtaining nuclear weapons is the notion that this would counter North Korea and possibly also China, perhaps serving to calm the governments in South Korea and other Asian governments. This notion is less than thought-through all the way. For one thing, nations which already have nuclear weapons have never yet abandoned them because a potential opponent acquired them. Also, because of Japan’s unwillingness to resolve issues surrounding Japanese aggression in World War 2, many Asian nations are unwilling to accept Japan as a regional leader, much less consider Tokyo as an appropriate guarantor of their sovereignty. Again, there seems to be no real reason to encourage Japan to obtain a nuclear weapon, and strong reasons to demur.
3. What would the United States do, if at some future time Japan was once again an enemy? If North Korea is a concern now, how much more would Japan be, given its obvious economic and military strength? There is no way to take back nuclear capability, and Japan has never rejected its desire to become an hegemony. They simply have used the available tools of economic and political pressure to gain as much as possible. A nuclear capability could easily tempt Japan into making military overtures, given their history, perceived threats, and resource needs.

In summation, a nuclear Japan would be far worse than a nuclear North Korea. Put away this foolish notion, please.

Election Polling Made Simple – Look Deeper

Like an alley cat in heat, those Democrats and MSM polls are crying "Doom!' well past the point of credibility. But, since it's out there, we need to look at those numbers. Sharpen up those knives, it's dissectin' time!

OK, let's start by clearing out the trash. There are 33 seats in the Senate being decided, along with all 435 of the House Representatives. On the face of it, that makes it seem reasonable that control could change. But historically, better than 90% of incumbents get re-elected. It would take a truly significant set of conditions for the public as a whole to throw over control of Congress in the way that Democrats are predicting, conditions which the facts do not support. And the polls, if you look closely, are no great friend to the challengers.

I went through the Real Clear Politics' list of recent polls for the House and Senate, and here's what I saw:

For 33 Senate races, RCP has poll numbers for only 19 races. For 435 House races, RCP only shows poll numbers for 26 races. Now, I agree that it's possible that RCP is simply posting only the newest data, but I found it hard to find hard specific data on many of the predicted GOP losses. They are just assuming the results on no evidence.

Polling Report, for example, just focused on the generic poll. OK, I grant that there is some effect to a national preference, assuming for now that the polls are not skewed in their demographics or biased in their methodology. But even if we grant that, the notion that a specific Congressional District or State Senate race would ignore its own conditions and requisite politics in order to comply with the opinion from outside their borders is specious at best.

Also, one wonders about the sort of assumptions demanded of a reasonable observer, to accept a claim without something beneath the claim itself for support. Take the 22nd Congressional District in Texas, for instance. Tom Delay's resignation and subsequent dirty tricks by the Democrats certainly made it more difficult for a Republican to win against Nick Lampson, but the notion that voters who gave President Bush 64% of their vote in 2004 and whose Republican position has been unquestioned for a very long time would just hand over the district to the Democrats is laughable. I looked and looked for a poll on Lampson v. Sekula-Gibbs, but only found an old one from the start of September. But that one had Sekula-Gibbs ahead in double digits. Certainly, the need to write-in Sekula-Gibbs will make it tougher, but those people claiming that TX-22 is a sure thing for the Democrats, or even likely at this point, either don't know what they are talking about, they're liars, or both.

My point is, as a starting point for any projection we need to begin with the historical base, then advance conclusions only when there is substance to back them. And the baseline for this election, is that the Republicans hold the majority. It takes substance, not rumor, to change that condition.

Looking at those polls I could find in RCP, in the Senate only four races show polls with the incumbent trailing, and one of those is the Democrat Menendez in New Jersey. You can talk all you want about 'close' here and 'if' there, the fact right now is that the incumbent or incumbent party is leading in 15 of the 19 states where polls were posted. Sure, Chafee could lose Rhode Island, but where's the proof? In fact, from what I could find of the older stuff from September, Chafee was leading and if there is no evidence to the contrary, that's your scoreboard for now.*

In the House, RCP noted 26 races with polls, and the incumbent is leading in 10 of them, with another incumbent behind in one poll and ahead in another. That shows sixteen incumbents with polls showing them trailing, but only nine outside the statistical margin of error and only six where the challenger's lead is greater than the number of undecideds.. Someone tell me please how six seats equals Speaker Pelosi, when they need 15 or more? Yes, it could happen and I will be the first to scream that we all have to get out and vote, but where's the reason for the panic?

I also want to point out something which never seems to get mentioned. Intelligent people will remember that when a margin between two candidates is less than the margin of error, that's a statistical tie. But also, never forget that many of these polls, even as October winds down, still show a large number of undecideds. Dewine, according to the less-than-honest John Zogby, trails challenger Brown, 49% to 45%. Besides being darn close to the margin of error for a poll which queried only 750 people, the number of undecideds - six percent - means that this race is not at all clear. And yes, CBS News did broadcast a much larger margin - 14 points - but that one still only gave 49% to Brown, claiming only 35% for Dewine in a poll which allowed for a sixteen point undecided stake. And the difference between those two unfriendly-to-GOP polls also indicate that there is a lot more doubt in that race than you will hear on the air.

Nothing is over yet, unless you give up.


UPDATE: I went to look up some specific races which, for some reason, were not cited in the link from RCP I originally noted. Here's the detail when you don't just accept the headline:

Chafee: Trails by 5.6 in the RCP average, which accepts as valid polls from Zogby and Rhode Island College, but more to the point cites 13.4% "undecided".


Talent: Within statistical margin of error, with 8.4% "undecided"

Menendez: The link I originally cited had him down by 2, but in any case the average is well within the margin of error, and again cites 12.0% "undecideds"

Burns: None of the polls cited is even close to nominal threshholds for validity, plus again we see 9.3% "undecideds"

Anytime the "undecided" portion exceeds twice the margin of error cited for the poll, that poll is garbage. And traditionally, in Senate and Congressional elections, the undecideds break for the incumbent. Heavily so. I stand by my call.

Mid-Term Exams: Discussion and Analysis

Time to shift gears again, folks. I have promised to update my work on pursuing my Masters of Business Administration, and since all my Mid-term grades have come back, it’s time to do a review.

It ain’t pretty.

Now, people who know me will not be surprised to read that I consider myself an intelligent person, smart even. That’s partly because a lot of people have been telling me that I am smart, every so often. Well, in times past that has come back and smacked me, as I have mistaken assumptions I liked for actual knowledge. I thought I had been trying to correct that.

With the Mid-Term exam grades in, here is where I stand in each of my three courses:

Business and Society: The Mid-term grade is the only grade received so far, worth 30% of the total. For that exam, I received a score of 80.5% (80.5 out of a possible 100). Remaining grades to come are my Individual Case Analysis (due October 30, worth 15% of the total grade), my Final Exam (December 2, worth 30% of the total grade), and my Discussion Board grade (posted end-of-semester, worth 25% of the total grade. The professor has said she is pleased with my posts on the Discussion Board (“your discussion posts are great”, she wrote), so at least there I have some hope to raise the numbers. I can get a ‘B’ – not that I want to settle for that – with a 79.8% average the rest of the way, and I can work for an ‘A’ if I can average 94.1% the rest of the way. One thing important about the Business & Society Mid-Term, was that this class used a special browser with which I was less familiar than I thought. What I mean is, I took the recommended practice sessions to get familiar with it, but did not realize what would happen if/when I lost my Internet connection during the test – Roadrunner sucks, by the way. I was way stressed by the time I was able to get back in and finish my exam, so I think I can reasonably say that I did not do my best in part due to unique conditions that should not reoccur. That said, I obviously need to work hard on my Individual Case Analysis, and study more effectively for my Final Exam.

Accounting: And things were going so well! Before the Mid-Term, I had grades as follows:

Quizzes: 90%, 100%, 90%, 90%, and 100% (2% of total grade each)
Assignments: 100%, 96.6%, 96.6% (3% of total grade each)

Discussion: 100% (5% of total grade)

Average before Mid-Term: 232/240 or 96.6%

Mid-Term grade: 72% (216 of 300, 30% of total grade)

Average now: 448/540, or 82.96%

Ouch. The Mid-Term had four “problems”, each of which had several parts. What really slammed me was the first section, where I was shown twelve columns of financial summary data, and twelve companies with a very brief description about them. The problem, worth 60 points out of the total 300 for the test, or 20% of the test grade, was to match up companies with the correct column. Not only that, but to get full credit I had to explain my reasoning for the match.

There are several reasons to be unhappy with that problem. First, it’s easy to get it all or almost-all right, or else all or almost-all wrong. That’s because if you put a company in the wrong column, say company A in column 5 when it belongs in column 6, you not only lose company A but also the company which should have gone into column 5. Further, your remaining choices are predicated on the remaining slots, so one error can easily cascade into other mistakes. Insofar as accountants need to understand how a critical error can cause other errors, I agree that this is a worthwhile and important lesson. However, while this type of problem was briefly touched on in the Learning Resources, it was not addressed in any of the assignments of quizzes, nor even discussed in detail by the test or in discussions. In that light, it does not seem to me reasonable that such a problem should count for 20% of the Mid-term examination. Judging from responses I have read from other students, they had the same trouble I did. There is talk about appealing that question, though in honesty I doubt such an appeal would succeed.

My Accounting class has a dozen grades remaining to be issued, constituting 46% of the total grade. They include two group assignments worth 7% of the total grade, one individual assignment worth 4% of the total grade, five quizzes worth 2% of the total grade each for a collective value of 10% of the total grade, the group Final Report worth 20% of the total grade, a peer evaluation worth 1% of the total grade, a survey of the class worth 1% of the total grade, and the grade for the Discussions worth the last 3% of the total grade. I can get a ‘B’ if I average 76.5% the rest of the way, but an ‘A’ is still possible, but just barely, if I can average 98.2% the rest of the way. There is no Final Exam in this class, so the Group Report and series of assignments and quizzes are very important; I cannot afford to slip up again.

Economics: The Mid-Term exam was the third grade received in the class so far. The other two were quizzes, each worth 2.5% of the total grade. I got a 90 and a 100 for those quizzes. My Mid-Term grade started out as a 96% (96 out of 100), worth 30% of the total grade, but the professor gave everyone a four-point bump, which I am happy to accept. The adjusted 100 grade gives me a 99.2% average to this point in the class, but with 65% of the grades still to come, I know I’d better work hard. Remaining grades to earn in Economics are two more quizzes at 2.5% each, an Industry Analysis paper due November 14 worth 15% of the total grade, the Final Exam (December 3) worth 30% of the total grade, my grade in the Discussions, and my Homework grade. Interesting, that last part – we are not automatically required to turn in our Homework, but the professor may demand it if she has any doubts about whether we have done it. Personally, I like the homework, since the homework is great preparation for the quizzes and exams. I can get a 'B' with an average of 69.7% the rest of the way, which again is below the goal, and I can earn an 'A' with an average of 85.0% the rest of the way.

Analysis: I still consider myself to be a reasonably intelligent man, despite the unfortunate results in two of my three exams. Some of that – I hope – may be due to getting back into studying after so many years in the real world, but I also know that I should be careful to avoid excuses or crutches. I could have done better on those tests, and will just have to man up for the remaining work.

I posted this update in part to vent, but also because I know there are other students going through similar trials. Yes, it really sucks to get a grade worse than you expected, or to have a question hurt you which seems disproportionate to what it should have counted, but that happens in Life, and we all have to pull ourselves back up and press on. A bad grade does not automatically make you stupid, and there are a lot of opportunities to pull things back up. Don’t let the good stuff make you overconfident or the bad stuff depress you, and remember there are a lot of us the same boat. To all my fellow students, press on and remember what you’re working for and why.

Why The Democrats Are Lying to You

They are deceitful and hypocritical, they claim a patriotism they never actually put into practice, and they constantly seek the gains of extremists and special interest groups over the rights and needs of regular people, but you can’t say the Democrats are not savvy; the Democrats have figured out their best chance to grab power in Congress these fall elections – lie, lie, and lie.

Most of the lies are obvious, once one thinks about them. Polls have constantly shown that the voters care almost exclusively about National Security and the Economy, but the Democrats have lied to pretend that the Foley mess will be the deciding factor in this election. Individual head-to-head races show many competitive and close contests, but the Democrats harp over and over again about the generic polls – polls which historically have missed the mark more often than a reasonable person should accept in a barometer. To hear the Democrats, there’s no reason for anyone to bother voting, it’s all over and we should just accept Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Reid. Never mind the mounting legal and ethical problems for Reid, and Pelosi’s – well – conflicts in rational analysis.

Always quick to take offense, especially when they are caught red-handed like this, one may expect the Democrats to point to the pollsters, even to certain Republicans like Romney, whose own somber prognosis is getting play. First off, you might want to check out track records of those pollsters – the ones who are going out and predicting big gains for the Donks are the same ones who made similar predictions in 2004 and 2002. Charlie Cook, Larry Sabato, John Zogby, by and large have given up even the pretense of objectivity in favor of putting on cheerleader outfits for the Democrats. The professional polls, like Gallup, Pew, and Survey USA, show a range of results and are not at all quick to predict results in this election. As for those Republicans who have begun to give up, we’ve seen this before – the sad display of politicians who put a finger to the wind instead of holding fast to what they know to be right. It’s useful enough, though, to use these times of trial to see whose backbone has the metal we need for 2008 and beyond.

But enough about how; the question stands as to why the Democrats would play the campaign this way. Surely they have to know how risky it is to simply abandon the issues as they have, to play on trifles in the hope that significant matters will be ignored. Then again, the Democrats don’t have much on their side when matters of substance are considered. It’s ‘all about the economy’? Well then, with low inflation, constantly low Unemployment, a surging Dow, continued strong GDP growth and deficit reduction to boot, one can hardly blame the Democrats for hoping no one asks about the economic results of Republican leadership. Also, recent events around the world have reminded every intelligent person about how dangerous is this world in which we live, and how vital it is to have responsible persons giving the orders, not panty-waists like Kerry or Gore or Dean. Again, it is no shock that Democrats want to shove National Security behind a curtain, lest Americans be reminded about the Donks’ shortcomings there, as well. For the Democrats, strategy is born of tactics, because no feasible strategy has been acceptable yet to the Democrats. One wonders how such a party would manage to govern, but the fact is they are not at all concerned with this question, so long as they win. And that fact alone is reason enough to make sure they lose.

The tactics I refer to are Apathy and Despair. The Democrats have looked back a few years, and have noticed a salient trend, one they hope to play into victory this year. We need only look at the 1992 campaign to understand how it works.

One year before the 1992 elections, President George H.W. Bush looked unstoppable. The Democrats were putting together a largely symbolic campaign, with little hope for success. Then several things happened to change the tide. First, the economy started to tank, by some analyses cast as much worse than it actually was in order to spin against the President. Remember, in those days there was no effective counter to the MSM, and when Dan Rather lied to the camera, there was no way for ordinary people to catch him out. Next, the Republican Party was caught up in an internal fracas between moderates and conservatives, which resulted in a split as some otherwise-reasonable people decided that H. Ross Perot was somehow a good choice for President; the chaos prevented the GOP from sending a unified message and convinced a large portion of the Right to sit at home rather than vote. And the third factor was Bill Clinton – a man unsuited to the responsibilities of national office, but whose skills in political manipulation were superb, enough to turn opportunities into votes when he needed them. In two elections and one Senate trial, Clinton told enough lies skillfully and carefully to achieve the desired result. Like today’s Democrats, Bill Clinton was unconcerned at the time about meeting his duties, but only about winning the moment.

Recalling the victory of 1992 which gave them the White House and the re-election win in 1996, Democrats matched that against their losses in 2004 and 2002, and noticed a key trend – when Democrats work for high turnout, they do not necessarily win, because the Republicans can match and beat them at that game. If turnout is suppressed, however, the hard core of political activism favors the Left. If enough Republicans can be disgusted and enough Independents made disinterested in an election, the Democrats would win essentially by default. And that is the playbook for this year – the party which pretends to speak for Democracy, can only hope to win by persuading most voters to not vote.

That should make you angry, that a major political party is hoping to win not by earning your vote, but by doing all it can to convince you not to vote. But that, in a nutshell, is the modern Democratic Party – only by opposing Democracy, can the Democrats hope to win.

Candidate Qualities, Part 2 – Elections 2006

Wow, what a silence. My last article got less interest than a new record at the NYSE. Small wonder, given the meandering way of it, but there is a purpose. I mentioned some of the basics about candidates’ viability, with a thought about how the best-qualified ordinary people may one day actually be considered for the offices which now seem to be controlled by millionaires and celebrities. I mean, not that it’s a bad thing for candidates to look their best, but it’s no secret that many races overlook qualified people simply because someone else is taller, has better teeth, or is simply sexier. After the lessons in the last decade, is Sex Appeal something which should be considered a primary qualification in the nation’s leaders?

But rather than just complain about what sort of people get elected, it seems more productive to observe how the process works, and why. I read Scot Lehigh’s account in the Boston Globe about how Kerry honestly thinks he can win the White House in 2008. His number one avenue? Dredge up the War in Iraq as a lost cause, again. What is interesting about that, though, is that Lehigh’s article claims that Kerry’s speech “brought the crowd to its feet at least a dozen times, and left the Democrats I talked to impressed.”

Think about that. Iraq was clearly owned as an issue by President Bush in 2004, and for all my admiration of the man, Dubs was not all that eloquent. That can only mean that John Kerry was even worse, n’cest pas? And yet, here’s a roomful of Democrats, apparently high-ranking as such beasties go, who think this is a great idea, having John Kerry campaign largely on the War in Iraq. How, seriously, just how stupid does someone have to be to go after someone where they are strong, and where the record has never given them evidence of good odds to win? The reason this is interesting, is that there are intelligent and reasonable Democrats out there, yet over and over again we see those sort get shut out by those who want to pick a fight where they have poor chances. Remember I mentioned yesterday that to win, you need the party’s blessings? It also seems that this is a major problem for the Democrats, that they insist on blessing candidates with poor credentials. Not that the GOP has a wonderful record of listening to its people, but at least they don’t seem to begin by rejecting the people out of hand. This is one reason to have hope for the 2006 elections.

It seems to me that to win, you want the respect of the voters. Maybe the parties could focus on what the voters think. While I take issue with some of the analysis from CNN, their latest poll is intriguing, not least because the results are so contrary to the theme of CNN’s recent spin. When asked about the top issues for this election, respondents offered these top four:

Terrorism

Iraq

The Economy

North Korea

Nothing else was close. And while the Democrats could try to play the situation in Iraq to their advantage to some degree, they have not done so lately, and the other three issues clearly belong in GOP territory. Democrats have no meaningful suggestions about how to address Terrorism or Kim Spitwad Il, and with Unemployment well under 5%, continued strong GDP growth, a declining Deficit, and Inflation well under control, the Donks do not dare discuss the Economy. The Issues favor the Republicans, and in a big way. Suffice to say that the adults who vote will go Red.

Which brings us to Turnout. All this noise about Foley is not just the fact that Democrats want America to forget about their own peccadilloes, or at least to scale them down, or even to divert attention from the growing scandal around Harry “Show Me The Money” Reid. It’s because Donk Command has figured out that running a campaign on the issues is just going to lose. They know that 30-35% of the regular voters are going to go their way, and they know they can spin another 8-10 points off the old Top 10 lie, “Republicans are Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeevil” (even as they claim that the GOP runs campaigns by playing on people’s fears). The whole question of the election, then, comes down to how many Republicans and Independents vote. The Donks want those groups tired, depressed, and apathetic. Think about that, when you are choosing your activities on Election Day.

As unattractive as some of the Republicans are, it’s really this simple: Anything which is not a vote for the Republican, is a vote for the Democrat. So would you rather have a party in charge which did not anticipate the unseemly behavior of a Representative, but which made him resign when they discovered his actions and who are moving forward with criminal investigations, or would you prefer the party which not only did not pursue legal action against a Representative of their side of the aisle who actually had sex with pages, who neither resigned nor was punished for his behavior?

Would you rather support the party who still argues about the best way to stop the flow of illegal immigration, or the party which sees no need to enforce our laws in this area?

Would you rather support the party which is trying to protect America from another terrorist attack, or the party which repeatedly demands we protect the ‘rights’ of terrorists?

Would you rather support the party which demands we stay until we finished the job in Iraq and left the country only when it is stable and a success, or the party which wants to desert our allies and ignore our solemn promises?

Would you rather support the party which most active-duty troops support, or would you rather support the party which historically defunds and disrespects our soldiers?

Would you rather support the party which considers your money to be your money, or would you rather support the party which considers your money to belong to the government?

Would you rather support the party which wants you to speak your mind in places like blogs, or would you rather support the party which is happy with you speaking your mind only when it matches the party line?

That’s really what this election comes down to – one side or the other. Neither one perfect, but by all that’s true there is a great and profound difference between the two parties, what they intend, and the course they would set for America. And I think we all know that.

Election Candidate Qualities

One of the nicer compliments I have received since I began blogging, is that some people think I should run for office. While I am flattered by such confidence, I am also well aware that I would not do half so well in office as my supporters believe. This is for a number of reasons, which I mention here in the course of understanding what a mess we have in general with our elected officials.

The American system of politics is, for all its flaws, the best in the world. With an eye towards people named Foley, Reid, Schumer, or Murtha, this suggests that the world in general is really hurting for quality leadership. Part of this is due to the way the system works. Prior to, say, the start of the Reagan Administration, democratic republics were few in practice. In the past quarter-century, this has changed significantly, to such a point that even a oligarchy like Communist China feels a greater need to actually listen to its citizens than in past years. But while installing a system which listens and responds to voters is a good idea, there are always problems to be worked out due to the change in culture and the local conditions. Anyone familiar with American History between the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812 (apparently around one-half percent of the American public) will recall the chaos surrounding the development of the first political party and its opposition. While the first direct conflict began as a result of the 1824 elections, the causes were in place as soon as the Congress realized it could control the course of legislation.

Fast forward to 2006. Running for any office requires not only the desire and a reasonable belief that you are qualified, but the backing of a political party as well and/or considerable personal resources. As an example, look at the four candidates for Governor of Texas – Rick Perry and Chris Bell are backed by the Republicans and Democrats, and by that I mean those parties pretty much locked out any other candidates. This brings up Carole Keaton Strayhorn, a bitter renegade who used to be a Republican, but when she did not get the party’s support, she went guerrilla and started up her own run on the strength of her own bank account, notoriety, and ego. Then there is Kinky Friedman, a man singularly unqualified for an executive position, especially in the public trust, but because of his money and fame there he is on the ballot. Now I have made clear that many people would be better qualified to serve as Governor (including me) than these four candidates. But what these four well-dressed - and more to the point well-known - clowns have in common is that their names are recognized, they have a lot of money to invest into the race, and they have backers behind the scenes who create the marketing for the candidate, everything from focus groups for issue positions to advertising campaigns tailored to key demographics. And this, I think, is one reason why the GOTV effort is so hard for each party - people are unhappily aware that the ticket never offers the most capable person, the person with the highest integrity, or the person least likely to abuse their responsibility. We always get the less-than-excellent, and everyone knows it.

The blogosphere, I hope, can and will address this. But it will take a long time at best, and there will have to be serious reform at the grassroots level, and a willingness to radically alter the mindset that believes that only someone handed down from a national or state committee can be a viable candidate. I am optimistic enough to think this will happen, and in my lifetime. And I suspect it will be the rebirth of the Democratic Party. I say this because only desperate people are willing to try new and unproven things, and between the two major parties the GOP is relatively successful with its routine, and therefore disinclined to accept the risk of nominating ordinary people for office. Democrats continue to lose at every level however, and at some point they will be forced, at the peril of their existence as a party, to reform and regroup. And when that happens, they wil rediscover the party of Grover Cleveland, and of Harry Truman; the party willing to do the hard work to get the job done. Democrats will lose most of their lock on the minority vote, but it will force them to pay attention to the country's core values, and those are best espoused and performed by regular folks.

Why not a police officer for Attorney General?

Why not an engineer for Governor?

Why not a middle-management accountant for President?

Sure, those jobs do not automatically suggest those roles. But why in hell does anyone think that lawyers and career politicians are better fits for the country's leadership, than people who really work for a living and see the world at street level?

Before 1824, regular citizens were not "allowed" to vote directly for a candidate running for President.

Before 1865, only whites could vote.

Before 1869, no woman could vote anywhere in the United States, and before 1920 only men could vote in federal elections.

Things change over time, and we can get past some bad habits. It's time we found a way to get normal people into the jobs which most affect normal people.

Absence Makes The Mind Go Foggy

Hello again, friends and readers. I have not forgotten my blogging duties entirely, but have been swamped by my academic duties, Two Mid-term exams are finished, and I am still wrestling my take-home Accounting Exam. “Take-Home” makes it sound all convenient and easy, doesn’t it? Don’t you believe it! My answer page is up to page 13, and I am still not done.

More after I get this monster shoved out the door, but for now I want to remind you that yes, the media is still obsessed with the Foley story. You know, the creep who has already resigned and gone home, while certain other creeps – can you say ‘Harry Reid’? – not only remain in office, but catch the traditional pass from the media. But don’t anyone dare suggest they are biased!

One hint of an upcoming article – am I the only person who worries about a Nuclear Japan?

Read up on your history and think about it. More soon.

What The Coffee Says

First, sorry for not posting in a couple days. Mid-term exams and term papers have claimed an even greater share of my limited resources. As a result, even this posting is a bit rushed and scattered.

First, a gut-call prediction: The Republican Party will continue to hold on to control of both the House and Senate. I expect this for the following reasons:

1. The Republicans have been admittedly timid about pursuing a truly Conservative slate of legislation, which is the primary reason they are in trouble at all. The Democrats, however, still refuse to submit any sort of concrete and detailed plan for the issues which Americans want addressed;
2. The Democrats have thrown a great deal of effort into making this election about Representative Foley, abandoning other issues to focus on a spectacular bit of slime which they may well have timed to be released just now. This is incredibly stupid, as I will explain in a moment;
3. The Democrats have bought their own hype, thinking that large portions of the voting public can and will be swayed in a short time. In reality, just as there were always people who would never vote for George W. Bush in 2004, there are many people now who will refuse to consider changing their Congressman or Senator. For good or ill, the impetus of incumbency is a real force, and rhetoric does not sway it.

Here’s the deal. Somewhere around 35% of those people who vote are Republicans, and another 35% of those people who vote are Democrats. That’s as in they usually identify with one party on most issues. That leaves 30% of people who do not regularly support one party, and those who do not regularly vote. Now, you won’t find that in any media guides, because when people are polled they are pushed towards picking one party, and remember that more and more, people find polls intrusive and do not answer them. So, for my numbers I prefer to go see how people actually vote. Now that can and does get sticky very fast; a Republican in New York is a whole lot different from a Republican in Georgia or Oklahoma, and the same for Democrats. The thing about a national party is that they operate effectively as coalitions, even though they purportedly have a platform and leadership.

With that in mind, there are really not very many national issues which sell in Congressional races. People tend to think of America, sure, but always in the context of their state and district when they are voting on Congress. So the first blunder by the Donks in playing up the Foley story, is that it has no personal meaning to most people. Sure, no one wants to re-elect a creep, but Foley already resigned and there is no evidence that any of the people running for office this election have that same proclivity for misdemeanor.

The second mistake of the Foley story, is the way the Donks jumped off their original tacks. A reasonable person might wonder why the Donks want to go on about Foley instead of Iraq, Jobs, or Gas Prices. Of course, that would lead to consideration that gas prices are plunging, so is the deficit, the Dow just set a record high, Unemployment is at a level awfully close to that classic definition of “full employment”, and even so more and more jobs are being created. As for Iraq, the antics of North Korea and Iran have reminded Americans that our military stands for something, something important and noble, and the Democrats have not exactly done much to support their claim that they back the troops. In fact, once folks start thinking about it, they could easily decide that the Donks are using the Foley story to avoid having to discuss how well the Bush Administration is doing.

That’s the third mistake. For years now, Democrats have tried to lay every sort of nasty event at the feet of President Bush. And sad to say, it’s worked to some extent, so that the President of the United States is blamed for every failing of any department anywhere, anytime. Responsible for everything, but gets credit for none. I mentioned above that with things as they are now, the Donks want very badly to avoid Bush getting noticed. The key to Dubya is that like Reagan, the Donks fear him. To the point of panic, I kid you not. Why? Think back to 2002. The Donks figured they were about to reclaim control of Congress, but Dubs pitched in and made a few appearances and did some campaigning, and instead of a loss the GOP gained seats. The Donks don’t bring it up, but analysts later determined that the 2002 Mid-term elections were clearly won through the efforts of the President. The Democrats really, really worry about that happening again, so they are doing everything they can to make the President look bad and convince Republican candidates that they would be hurt by close connection to President Bush.

But the Donks overplayed their hand, and ignored what would happen if – as happened – Bush was right and his policies led to success and prosperity. The sudden silence about Bush will lead some people to consider why the Donks don’t want to talk about Dubya. And everyone who gives some thought to how Bush is doing, will lean just a little bit towards his party, an imperfect part to be sure, but the only one that seems to want to do the job properly.

Will this be 2002 again? Probably not, but it won’t be 1994 either. For the Democrats to win on a level that would gain them control of the House or Senate, they need to be charismatic, clear, optimistic about America and honest with the public. And the Donks of this moment simply do not rise to that level.

Something more original later. For now, I have to get back to work, get some more coffee, and figure out how to answer those EBITDA and debt ratio problems.

Poll Integrity

First Tuesday of November, 2004. Months of wrangling, haranguing, pleading and begging all came down to the bottom line. And as always happens in modern elections, the polling groups had their teams out to ask voters how they voted. Knowing how close the 2000 Presidential Election had turned out, everyone was naturally eager to see how the voters responded, and since the polls would not close until evening, the media was hungry for the exit polls.

And what a story they told. Early (and unverified) reports about exit polls not only showed a Kerry lead, they showed large leads in some of the battleground states. Kerry advocates began to openly claim they were headed for a landslide Kerry victory.

The actual vote was significantly different. The paranoid and the bitter voiced baseless claims of Conspiracy, while even more mature minds asked how such a discrepancy could happen between the exit polling and the actual results. This was not due to any cataclysmic collapse of the polling process, nor any sinister conspiracy on anyone’s part. The exit polls have always been unreliable in their raw form, but this time the rush to a story caused invalid conclusions to be drawn from the data.

The Mystery Pollster did a good run-down right after the election on the problems with exit polls. Suffice to say, exit polls are essentially the same as any other opinion poll, but since they are rushed and inconstant on numerous points, to my mind they have a much higher volatility rate – the chance they will be badly wrong – than other polls. In the case of the 2004 exit polls, early clues were present in the demographics; the early polls claimed 59% of the respondents were women, and a heavy under-30 participation was noted. This conflicted with both historical electorate demographics and observed participation in early voting and film footage – what happened was that the polls used a lot of inexperienced field personnel, who found it more appealing to poll women than men, and young people more receptive than the old. The pressure to get quick results corrupted the sample, in short.

The damage from the poor work on the exit polls has led to all sorts of collateral damage, including fueling some incredibly stupid conspiracy theories, muddying up the issue of improving election transparency, and lowering the public trust in polling institutions. Since 2004, an increasing number of people have begun to claim that they deliberately mislead pollsters in the hopes of skewing the results. While this practice cannot be confirmed in fact and is unlikely to reach a threshold of actually invalidating overall trend analysis in opinion polling, it is a salient concern that such an attitude is on the rise. This brings me, at last, to my topic of Poll Integrity.

I have discussed specific polls before, and plan to do so again. For now, it is important to consider the source when a poll is released to the public. I would be repeating myself to state the most important aspects of a valid poll, but then again, the points are important enough to deserve repeating:

- All valid polls which release results to the public will also release internal data
- All valid polls will use a consistent methodology from one occasion to the next, and will report that method in their summary
- All valid polls will weight according to Census norms and known demographic political balances
- All valid polls will make archive data available for comparison to current polls

The astute reader may have realized that in my mind, ‘valid’ and ‘integrity’ are synonymous for polls. “Integrity”, after all, simply means ‘complete’ or ‘whole’. I have been privileged to exchange phone calls and e-mails with some people in a number of polling organizations, and need to say that in the main, even those polls with which I disagree may well be professional, honest, and careful both in their analyses and their reports. That said, there are clear differences in the classes of performance, and some polls simply do not demonstrate the sort of integrity to set themselves apart from the rest.

In this final month before the mid-term elections, there will be a flood of polling reports from both well-known and some almost-unknown polling groups. In the main, polling groups may be private companies which accept contracts to perform polling for clients (Gallup is the best known of these), they may be a partisan group which clearly prefers one side over the other but whose research is released to the public (Lake Snell Perry or Zogby, for example), they may be a university which conducts ongoing research and builds on empirical samples (Quinnipiac and Pew are well-known here), or they may be associated with a news organization, usually as a sponsor (the Princeton Survey Research, for example). There are many other sorts of polling groups, but the key is to begin by noting who is paying for the survey. Most polls will be direct about who sponsored the effort. If a poll hides this information, this is a big red flag.

Demographics are a critical component to polls. All polls weight their results, because no significant sample correctly matches the public as a whole. Demographics include gender ratio as well as race, urban/suburban/exurban/rural breakdown, as well as key professional and political norms. That last piece, political identification, is the most contentious and the most common factor to be manipulated or slanted, because many polling groups insist on their own preference for political identity among voters; despite the clear trend of Republican gains in the past decade, implying strong identification growth of the GOP, many polling groups – especially those sponsored by media outlets – refuse to correct obsolete balances held over from the Clinton era. Keep that fact in mind.

The next element in poll integrity is methodology. This is both a very stable, yet controversial area. Random Digit Dialing, or RDD, is the dominant method of contacting respondents, generally at their home by telephone in the evening and on weekends. The controversy comes from the fact that fewer and fewer and fewer Americans are likely to be at home, use a landline telephone for their primary contact, or be inclined to participate in unsolicited contact from strangers. Also, both sample sizes and the randomness of the respondent poll has come into question – a poll should automatically suspect which does not show at least 1,024 registered voters as a respondent pool, or which cannot confirm that they have a method in place to prevent repeat contacts with respondents – increasingly, polls have been asking respondents if they can contact them again, a practice which can easily lead to unethical manipulation of the poll for future polls.

And any poll which only queries “adults” is garbage.

Also, if a polling group mixes methodology, as Zogby did by adding phone poll responses to online poll responses, treat that poll as you would a child predator – it cannot be trusted, ever.

In conclusion, many polls can be useful, but not all polls are equal – indeed, some should be rejected from the start. It is a critical factor to know what sort of poll is producing the press release.