Implausible Deniability

Monday, October 27, 2008 Alaska Senator Ted Stevens was found guilty on 7 felony counts.

Thursday, October 30, 2008 at a debate with his Democratic opponent for his Senate seat, Stevens proclaimed:

I have not been convicted of anything.

Umm...

Two Realities

Look at the highlighted links from Real Clear Politics this morning.

Here's a stark example of The Big Sort if there ever was one.

The CBS article outlines an ELEVEN point lead for Obama whereas the Fox News story reports a THREE point margin for Obama.

Something is screwy here. Is an 8 point discrepancy in any way reasonable, i.e., different methodologies, sample sizes, etc...?

P.S. I can't believe I just provided a link to Fox News.

Houdini Hound

Ran into this (less than 2 mins) on The Daily Dish:

Graphic Designers for Obama

This post has some cool posters and links to other Obama and Progressive related design materials.

Of particular seasonal note are the pumpkins at yeswecarve.com (seriously).

Moscow on the Iowa

Ah, Iowa City...

A place where cab drivers have Philosophy degrees and homicidal arguments erupt over games of chess!?

Wait a sec...

Isn't this the white flag of surrender that McCain and Palin have been hysterical about?

• Firm deadline for withdrawal


• NOT conditions based

So... In this weird alternate-reality, McCain is fighting not only Obama but also President Bush, Secretary Gates, and Secretary Rice.

Did the Bush Administration make a 180 degree turn on this while nobody was watching? I thought they always touted the "withdrawal must be based on conditions on the ground" position?

Interestingly, the Iraqi Parliament may stand with McCain in opposition to the agreement but, in their case, it's presumably because they want a more rapid withdrawal?

Thank You

A heartfelt thank you to Colin Powell for his push back on the smear tactics deployed against Obama in the current campaign cycle.



He straightforwardly eviscerates the "Obama is Socialist" meme from the McCain campaign by calmly pointing out that all taxes are a "redistribution of money" and are "necessary for the common good." Frankly, I wish Obama would defend himself in this manner.

I was also touched by Powell's reference to U.S. Army Corporal Kareem R. Khan which I would hope provides a frame of reference to shame (On this point, I give up on reason.) purveyors of anti-Muslim sentiment and attempts to link Obama with the Muslim faith.



The photo essay from the New Yorker that Powell references is viewable here. The picture of Khan's mother at his grave site is number 16.

Additional Khan links here and here.

Last week, Campbell Brown also had the guts to confront the "Muslim as slur" mentality.

Moving Billboards

I saw this bumper sticker in "the wild" this morning. It was on an older Honda Civic that was turning onto I-380 South from Blairs Ferry in Cedar Rapids.



I soon passed the car and saw the driver was a middle aged man with a pet carrier in the back seat.

Meanwhile, I'm now sporting one of these on my car...



Less than 3 weeks to the election!

The death knell?

As if the polls and complete lack of a coherent message weren't rough enough, McCain has received a vote of confidence from President Bush!

That's harsh man.

Earlier today, Bush addressed the American public in an effort to reassure the public about the current financial crisis. The Dow dropped over 100 points during his nine minute talk.

The Day Money Disappeared

A fraternity brother of mine writes a blog that puts the deep in "deep thinking" in the arena of finance and economics.

A post from yesterday points to specific challenges as an estimated $400 billion of credit default swaps are "cleared" through the financial systems.

Ominously, he uses the infamous Tacoma Narrows Bridge collapse in November 1940 as an example of the potentially devastating consequences of harmonics in a "tightly coupled system", i.e., the world market for credit default swaps.

Need another Province? I've got one priced to move!

Here's an interesting concept touched on by Yglesias.

With Iceland on the brink of bankruptcy, why doesn't Canada add it as an additional Province?

Perhaps this is the (ill)logical extension of globalism. Countries can be treated as investments?

You know it's bad when...

This is probably wishful thinking among Democrats and Progressives, but an Executive Branch headed by Barack Obama along with an increased majority in the House of Representatives and, most improbably, a 60 seat fillibuster-proof majority in the Senate seems to be within the realm of possibility.

Again, not sayin' it's gonna happen. Not even sayin' it's probably gonna happen. But sayin' with a straight face that it reasonably could happen.

If, by some grace, Mitch McConnell R-KY gets knocked off as part of the above scenario, I'm preemptively declaring it the greatest election in the history of the world.

I think one of the low points for the Republicans is in Minnesota where Norm Coleman is teetering. The GOP Senator, who recently held a 9 point advantage in the polls, is now trailing by 4 points. Consider also that his opponent, Democrat Al Franken is a satirist best known for his time as a cast member on Saturday Night Live.

Coleman has been dogged by questions about improper benefits and gifts. Check out the excruciating press conference where one of his spokesman runs up the virtual white flag under a barrage of steady but polite (this is Minnesota after all) questions.

Don't do this

A strange and unfortunate episode today...

On Sunday night, we had Chinese take-out for dinner and I ordered Szechuan Beef. I took leftovers to work on Monday and, while eating them, set two chili peppers aside.

Today, I pulled a plate out of my cupboard and headed to the kitchen to make a sandwich. This plate happened to contain the two chili peppers. Before arriving at the kitchen, I realized that Finance ordered pizza today! I detoured up there and snagged two pieces.

Back at my desk, I realized that I could "re-purpose" the leftover chilis to add some heat to my pizza. I tore them up with my hands, sprinkled the flakes and seeds on the slices, and enjoyed.

So far so good. Well... About an hour later, I absent mindedley rubbed my eyes and soon appreciated the fact that I had not washed my hands after handling the chilis.



There was a little burning, then a little more, then I was in the bathroom washing my eye sockets with soap and water. Sixty seconds of splashing later my condition was upgraded from serious to fair.

Although my eyes looked like I just participated in a student protest in Seoul, I was otherwise none the worse for wear.

Hopefully, the fact that I'm making a blog post about the time I was an idiot and rubbed chili residue in my eyes shows that I don't take myself too seriously.

Come to think of it, this was a little reminiscent of the time in college when I was opening a Taco Bell hot sauce packet. The tear I made only caught the very edge of the pocket so when I squeezed it, the resulting pressure and the Venturi Effect combined to project a thin stream of hot sauce a distance of 3-4 feet directly into my friend Brian's eye. What makes this story a little better is that he was driving at the time!

He did it again!

McCain is in trouble again with a rock band for using their song without permission.

This time, it's 'My Hero' by the Foo Fighters.

Fair disclosure. The linked article also points out that Obama has been asked by Sam Moore to not use 'Soul Man'. Furthermore, that might reveal a bit of a double standard. If the McCain campaign somehow used 'Soul Man' in conjunction with Obama, wouldn't they clearly be accused of racism?

That doesn't excuse the McCain campaign in any way for their increasingly negative and slimy tactics, but I'm just sayin'.

Four Corners of the Earth

Random Presidential Debate live-blogging comment.

McCain talked about the "..four corners of the earth." which I thought was odd since the earth is round.

But I just Googled it and I see that it's a Biblical reference.

My Biblical knowledge isn't what it should be.

Is it too late...

...to recast the emerging publicity about McCain's connections to the Savings & Loan scandals of the late 80's as the "Keating Four Scandal"?

I saw a link on Politico highlighting the fact that Keating Five member John Glenn introduced Bruce Springsteen at an Obama sponsored rally at Ohio State yesterday.

I don't see that Obama himself was present, but can we safely term this "unfortunate" timing?

A bit prickly eh?

Hyperbole and exaggeration are now off limits at the Canadian Broadcast Corporation in the aftermath of an opinion column by Heather Mallick.

In the words of CBC ombudsman Vince Carlin, Ms. Mallick...

...was unable to present evidence to support her suggestion that that Republican men were deficient sexually or that Ms. Palin’s supporters were “white trash.”

After mining the story for outrage, Fox News returned to judicious even-handed journalism such as linking Barack Obama (8 years old at the time) to terrorist acts committed by the Weatherman.

Keating Five

As part of the ongoing devolution of the Presidential campaign, Obama is reacting to the recent Ayers accuasations, by mining John McCain's involvment in the Keating Five scandal.

Ah, the good old days, when widespread financial institution collapses only cost taxpayers $120 Billion.



Several observers have noted that the Keating Five scandal is potentially more devastating that Reverend Wright / William Ayers type stuff if only because it dovetails with the recent financial collapses and questions about deregulation and lax government oversight.

And, of course, there are numerous instances of guilt by association on the right too.

Boys and their toys

Due, undoubtedly, to the fact that the 377ft Pelorus, 282ft Ecstasea and 160ft Sussurro were woefully inadequate, Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich has commissioned the 550ft Eclipse.

The Eclipse is 2/3 the length of the WWII German battleship Bismarck and, indeed, is under construction at the same shipyards that produced the Bismarck.

The linked article provides details on the yacht which make it sound most suitable for a Bond villian.

What's Larry Ellison going to do to one-up this? The Rising Sun is only 438ft!

Is it sexist...

...to wonder what Trig was doing at the debate?

Trig is 5 and a half months old. The debate ended just after 9:30PM. (I think that's right; please correct me if I'm wrong.) So you figure after post-debate glad handing, meeting some high profile donors, getting back to the hotel or plane, etc... that's probably another 90 minutes before he'd be put to bed.

I suppose Trig could have skipped the post-debate events if he was whisked away by a caregiver the moment the Palin family stepped off stage. But wouldn't that just provide additional evidence that an infant is being used as a prop at an event this late?

Maybe I'm just old fashioned about bedtimes but something seems a little screwy here; my 7 year old has an official bedtime of 8:00PM.

Biden v. Palin

I think my pre-debate predictions that, given the hype and expectations, the result would be inevitably anti-climactic were largely borne out.

Palin was clearly relying heavily on talking points (in written note form) to the point where she seemed to give the "answer" to questions that weren't asked on several occasions. Nevertheless, given the macabre fascination with her previous interview performances, I think it's true that her main goal last night was to survive. And she did. She started to fade in the later stages as she was forced to return to talking points she had already used.

For Biden's part, his main goal was to steer carefully to avoid appearing overbearing, patronizing, long-winded, mean, etc... And he did. I think he gradually took control of the debate in the later stages after tip-toeing through the opening.

So all-in-all, a draw? On substance I think Biden clearly won. If you were grading on a curve, Palin probably won. But it's unclear if the voting public is grading on a curve. Meanwhile, real life events continue to generate headlines like this:

Employers Cut Jobs by Most in More Than 5 Years

It's a bad sign for the McCain campaign that their victory cry this morning is "We survived!"

Here was an answer by Palin last night that I thought stood out for its incoherence:

IFILL:

Governor, I'm happy to talk to you in this next section about energy issues. Let's talk about climate change. What is true and what is false about what we have heard, read, discussed, debated about the causes of climate change?

PALIN:

Yes. Well, as the nation's only Arctic state and being the governor of that state, Alaska feels and sees impacts of climate change more so than any other state. And we know that it's real.

I'm not one to attribute every man -- activity of man to the changes in the climate. There is something to be said also for man's activities, but also for the cyclical temperature changes on our planet.

But there are real changes going on in our climate. And I don't want to argue about the causes. What I want to argue about is, how are we going to get there to positively affect the impacts?

We have got to clean up this planet. We have got to encourage other nations also to come along with us with the impacts of climate change, what we can do about that.

As governor, I was the first governor to form a climate change sub-cabinet to start dealing with the impacts. We've got to reduce emissions. John McCain is right there with an "all of the above" approach to deal with climate change impacts.

We've got to become energy independent for that reason. Also as we rely more and more on other countries that don't care as much about the climate as we do, we're allowing them to produce and to emit and even pollute more than America would ever stand for.

So even in dealing with climate change, it's all the more reason that we have an "all of the above" approach, tapping into alternative sources of energy and conserving fuel, conserving our petroleum products and our hydrocarbons so that we can clean up this planet and deal with climate change

So... On the one hand she's calling for "reduc[ing] emissions." But she's also calling for "energy independence" because relying on other countries means that we're allowing them to produce and emit and pollute.

But we also need to "conserve our petroleum products and our hydrocarbons so that we can clean up this planet."

See, this is what happens when the talking points and bullet points get mangled together.

How does she square "conserve" with "Drill Baby Drill!"?! And if we're buying energy from other countries how is that "allowing" them to emit and pollute? Doesn't the emitting and polluting (burning hydrocarbons) occur here?

Not to nitpick, but here's the problem. The US consumes about 25% of the world's oil. The US is estimated to control 3% of the world's oil reserves. (Biden brought up these facts in the debate.)

So "Drill Baby Drill!" is NOT going to provide any meaningful measure of energy independence. In fact, because petroleum is fungible, DBD won't even reduce fuel prices.

Furthermore, to the extent that DBD "works" it would have the precise effect of increasing emissions.

Sigh...

On a lighter note, I think Yglesias figured out who Palin was referring to when she mentioned the non-existent "General McClellan".

I kind of wanted Biden to point out that it's "McKiernan" in Afghanistan and McClellan was a Union Civil War General, but he probably would have had to throw a joke in there so he didn't appear snarky while doing so: "I actually attended McClellan's retirement ceremony when I was first elected to Congress."

The 12 Tribes

Here's an interesting look at how the 12 Tribes of American Politics are polling in the run up to the '08 election.

McCain starts to simmer

The admiration I once had for McCain continues to trickle away... It's sad in a way, but it looks like he's just wearing down under the strain of it all and segueing into "What the Hell." mode.

He looks like an ill-tempered buffoon in these clips tangling with, of all people, the Des Moines Register Editorial Board.

I note that uses the word "fundamental" in several cases, i.e., "I fundamentally disagree", as a bludgeon as if adding the word will intimidate anyone impertinent enough to question him and end the argument.

George W. Bush has the same habit with "strong", i.e., "I strongly urge."

Well Mr. President, in THAT case...

But I digress. The point I take from this Des Moines Register incident is that we may see McCain come completely unhinged before this is said and done.

Planning ahead

I mean seriously, who sets up a national debt clock with only 13 digits?

This is AMERICA. I think the Congresses and Presidents just took that as a challenge.