Saturday, November 06, 2004Quagmire?Read at AOL: American, Iraqi Forces BattleMan, oh man, with a story like that I'm beginning to see how our imperialism really is. I'd hoped we were helping the Iraqis - liberating them - and now, just days after the election, it is clear that our nation is in over its head. It is time to stop nation building, time to stop trying to impose our notions of peace, justice and civilization on other societies. Immediate withdrawal and an apology to the U.N. are the only appropriate response to the latest horrors. Er, maybe not. Let's see how true internationalists go about things by looking at the actual story (our italics): French, Ivory Coast Forces BattleThe United States has so far declined to threaten a veto of resolutions supporting France's efforts. 
posted by gbarto at 11:01 PM Reposted from 11/4/04: Lest any false impressions be got, this blog has outlasted the election. However, blogger is not being particularly user friendly, hence a by-hand posting. In the news... The biggest scoop in our eyes is the potential that Mr. Arafat is no longer with us. When Howard, Karzai and Bush all secure power in such short order, it seems some sort of sign that heaven may be smiling upon us. Without wishing to test the old trope about speaking ill of the dead - or near dead - though, we can't help but wonder what Arafat's simultaneous passing from the scene might augur. In domestic news, not only have gays and minorities not been rounded up and taken to concentration camps, but Ashcroft is stepping down, suggesting that some of the more worrisome suggestions about what giving Bush a mandate might lead to were overblown. Stay tuned to the Turkeyblog, where the chatter will continue, hopefully arranged by blogger for the next post.
posted by gbarto at 10:58 PM Wednesday, November 03, 2004Whew. For a second, it looked like Cicero might become VinoPundit.For a thoroughly cranky take on the elections, be sure to pay him a visit.
posted by gbarto at 10:56 AM *ahem* Four More Years!
posted by gbarto at 9:28 AM Back of the envelope... Let's use round numbers. In Ohio, Bush has 2,794,000 votes. Kerry has 2,658,000 votes. Add 'em up, you get 5,452,000 votes cast. The thing is, there are supposed to be around 250,000 provisional and absentee ballots not yet counted. That would get you to 5,702,000 votes total. Bush or Kerry would presumably just need more than the other, but let's assume we're looking for 50% minimum. 50% of 5,702,000 is 2,851,000. To get there, Bush needs 57,000 votes or 23% of the remaining votes. Kerry needs 193,000 votes, or 77% of the remaining votes. Now, this is, as I say, highly provisional and without exact numbers. But still, it looks to me like if Bush breaks 25% on the remaining ballots, he'll sqeak through. Is the Kerry camp really convinced that even 2/3, never mind 3/4 of people who voted provisionally or absentee are in the Kerry camp. What does he know about these provisional voters that we don't?
posted by gbarto at 5:36 AM Hopefully my little tirade below will prove overblown. It's still striking how fuzzy Ohio appears versus states called for Kerry on smaller margins, but it's looking like the West Coast media that stayed up (folks like Slate) have written Kerry off and the now awakening East Coast media, while repeating the "too close to call" bit, has also started to speculate on how long it will take for Kerry to lose, not whether he will. Let us cross our fingers. Could it be, though, that the media at long last after blowing the exit polls too (we'll refrain from sinister speculations for now), is starting to realize that the only real question for them is whether they'll be trusted again if they push things too far?
posted by gbarto at 5:25 AM Wake up, America!Who the hell do you think you are? Are where do you get off thinking you're so smart? Some of you, we have learned, have been so stupid as to mistake what we're doing here. Get with it, people! Oh, sorry, my little chickadees. I didn't mean to startle you. But you may or may not have noticed that you went and voted for the wrong person. Weren't you paying attention when Dan Rather did the National Guard records story? And we hammered on the draft? Or suggested that soldiers didn't have armor because they used the money on tax cuts? You silly little geese, you've been acting like you're supposed to make up your own minds about this stuff. Stop it!Some of you who were foolish enough to stay up last night might have thought Bush won. He would have, if running an election were the point of this exercise. Silly, naive little morons. Where'd you get that idea? The point was to remove Bush and put a man we approve of back in place. Really, we let you have Reagan twice. Wasn't that enough? You'll notice that you've put us through a lot of trouble. This was supposed to be cut and dried. It makes things challenging when we have to argue that Kerry's got a lock on places like Michigan and Pennsylvania with margins of around 100k or 120K but say that Bush's 130K margin in Ohio is suspect. If people read the papers, and not just the headlines, we'd really be in trouble. But fear not, those of you who are worried that this process could end with anything but Kerry. We've made sure the headlines are for ambiguity. That will buy the necessary time to bring in the lawyers, decide where to challenge and make sure that the papers and telecasts are shrill with horror anyplace where the Bush team responds in kind. Election, shmelection. In times like this, the world's too dangerous to let you people run things. Once Kerry has made us everybody's friend again and we've taken enough casualties for the world to pity us again, maybe we'll let you vote again. You'd better not screw it up next time, though. Love, The Media
posted by gbarto at 4:29 AM Question: AP is reporting this for NM: Bush: 281,113 Kerry: 251,831 103% of precincts reporting You'd think with 103% (!) of the vote in, they'd have enough info to call this one.
posted by gbarto at 1:26 AM For those still up, the delays in updates from Ohio will continue till the DNC conference call on whether it would look too bad for one last precinct in Cuyahoga county to miraculously report 140,000 - 0 for Kerry has concluded.
posted by gbarto at 1:22 AM Tuesday, November 02, 2004on CNN.com:Kerry camp: 'We will fight for every vote' Has anyone told them the voting's done? Or are they going to litigate till they've used up the retainer fees on their lawyers just for the hell of it? As an awful cynic, I don't know how to feel about this. On the one hand, trying to litigate their way to victory twice in a row would probably finish the Democrats. But I'm a bit nervous that they might take the Republic with them. Not that they'd give a damn about that. Well, the political pros, anyway. The question is, how many more ordinary Dems will step up, sign on the line and announce that yes, tying up things for a couple months to try to contest OH (with a 120K vote margin) is the direction they'd like to see their party going in? And what happens to the DNC if they don't sign on?
posted by gbarto at 11:58 PM Warns Vodkapundit: Edwards is speaking, and it doesn't sound like he's setting up Kerry for a concession.Is this why they put a trial lawyer on the ticket? In any case, the numbers for Bush: FL: +360K with 99% in OH: +125K with 97% in NM: +29K with 98% in IA: +11K with 97% in AR: +89K with 89% in What are they going to contest? Wisconsin and Pennsylvania? Kerry won most of the battlegrounds other than Ohio. He just got screwed by migration to the Sunbelt. The only way I see to fight this in the courts (everybody close your eyes and repeat, "Please, God, no!") is to challenge in literally a half-dozen states and get lucky in at least a third of them.
posted by gbarto at 11:35 PM You've gotta give the Bushies credit for the way they did OH, however this finally pans out. Mickey Kaus was right. Too much exposure was potential poison for either candidate. So Bush went to MI and WI, where he was going to lose, but simultaneously got a lower profile in Ohio and forced Kerry to divert resources. I don't know, but I'm guessing that at least some level, the moves on Michigan forced the labor movement to divert resources too, a double whammy for Kerry who needed someone to make his case and needed it especially not to be Kerry. The end result? Kerry got exposure in OH and spent money elsewhere while Bush laid low and waited for the votes to be counted.
posted by gbarto at 11:04 PM It's looking like an all-nighter... not to find out who won, but to find out by how much. Will the President get the electoral blowout necessary to get this thing locked up solidly or will we have to litigate it? Iowa and Nevada are suddenly breaking his way, if barely. Toss in Ohio and New Mexico and the President passes 280 e.v., which will be harder to argue. Here are the figures as of 1:45 or so from AP: OH - Bush up 102K (2%) with 92% in NM - Bush up 23K (5%) with 92% in IA - Bush up 7K (1%) with 92% in NV - Bush up 1K (razor thin) with 49% in With OH and any one of the other 3, the election's Bush's. Without OH, Kerry would take it unless Bush got WI (highly unlikely). Fortunately, things look good for Bush in OH and while the percentages are damn narrow, the number of votes involved make it look less than ripe for a challenge. Update: Bush now up 104K in OH with 93% in
posted by gbarto at 10:48 PM That low-pitched whining sound you hear is President Chirac getting his morning briefing.
posted by gbarto at 10:19 PM Four More Years**Barring any last minute shifts. We'll have at least one or two more updates though.
posted by gbarto at 10:16 PM I see Michael Totten (at Instapundit) made the 271 call about five minutes ahead of me. But will Bush go over 280? Let's hope so, though I'm not optimistic.
posted by gbarto at 9:58 PM A.P. (at CSPAN.ORG) at 12:20 EST: Bush: 237 Kerry: 195 237 +20 (Ohio) ----- 257 +9 (Colorado) ----- 266 +5 (New Mexico or Nevada) ----- 271 If the trends and APs calls hold, I'm guessing 274: Nevada goes Kerry, thanks to the Eastern California district Washington and Oregon are no-brainers Kerry sqeaks out New Hampshire Hawaii goes Kerry with the Bush surge in last-minute polling unfounded Alaska goes Bush: 271 +3 (Alaska) ----- 274 Hope I'm wrong... Vodkapundit's sources say Bush breaks 280, and wouldn't that be great!
posted by gbarto at 9:22 PM Monday, November 01, 2004There's a new political species out there, the Keyes Republican. We suspect Alan Keyes won't be flattered...Another Illinoisian who will vote a straight Republican ticket - for the first time in his life. And yes, I'll hold my nose and pull the lever for that nutcase Keyes too.That's just one of the many wonderful comments in The Spoons Experience post, Screw it. I'm voting for Bush. (via the venerable Instapundit)
posted by gbarto at 5:36 PM Where are the Bush hits? Election season is making me nervous, so I was relieved to see no "Bad news for Bush" stories in the AOL headlines. Of course not all the media can help itself. Still, one wonders about the latest from CBS news: Rather: "Bush came back in a time machine to molest me as a child"Really, I think they're trying too hard.Actually, I haven't heard if they ever ran with the "no armor for the troops because of tax cuts" thing or if they decided to sit on it once the chatboards started making fun. Tomorrow, God willing, it will be all over. And with the incumbent reelected.
posted by gbarto at 7:11 AM Sunday, October 31, 2004On voting, referenda, etc.The TurkeyBlogger voted yesterday. Most will not be surprised to learn that I wound up voting a straight Republican slate. I also voted against most of the initiatives and would like to offer an explanation of why for those who suddenly get in the voting both and don't know what to do with the propositions. It is extremely difficult to govern a large entity by popular will. The citizenry, if the Republic is fortunate, have much better things to do than investigate such things as the most appropriate sewage plant design (local level), the fiscal impact of purchasing postcards for tourism centers in bulk from one company instead of allowing local governments to buy from local printers (state level) or whether to make an incident of the Tanzanian ambassador's deliberate spilling of tea upon our Secretary of State's shoes (national level). These are just three places where the formation of policy by otherwise busy citizens would be a bad idea. Others include anything that the city council, state legislature or Congress could pass into law on their own if only they would remove their heads from their patooties long enough to see what everybody else - everybody who votes for initiatives, that is - sees. The representative government that we have at the federal level, for all its problems, is really cool. In less than a hundred pages, we have everything the government's about neatly summarized. All the laws and codes and regulations are just details. As such, they're subject to change if the situation warrants, so long as the proposed changes are in accordance with the Constitution. Constitutions should be short. Ideally, they describe meta-structures and meta-processes - that is, they don't say what the government does or how; rather, they say how the structures and processes of government can be created, evolved, reformed and even junked by the people's elected representatives. This is why citizens' referenda tend to be a bad idea - they're usually about passing laws that the legislature won't. Those laws are either entered on the books as such, in which case the legislature guts them, or as constitutional amendments that the legislature couldn't alter even if the popular will, common sense and the legislature together agree that they should be - you have to pass a counter-amendment. It is, of course, within the rights of states to make the referendum the tool of choice for amending the constitution, and a wise choice it is since sneaky pols would amend themselves into free condos and million dollar a year retirements if they could. But the people, too, have to be discriminating about how they govern themselves. The reason Californians always have a million propositions is not because our constitution is so horribly inflexible that we have to fix it every five minutes - though the referenda could make it so. The problem is that Californians have gotten it into their heads that they can vote for whomever they want for leadership positions without weighing the consequences. Going through the propositions, there were at least two or three that, as near as I can tell, the legislature could pass as a bill and the governor would probably sign. If the people were on board and our leadership could do it, what would be the need of a referendum? Easy: the people have singularly failed in promoting those who push the government in the direction they favor and - worse - turning out on their ear entrenched incumbents who won't listen. Instead, we ignore the primaries because the party hacks control them, elect the Democrats to prove we're compassionate and pass initiatives because we'd really like to be governed by (are you listening, GOP establishment?) moderate Republicans. I'm not speaking for me here. I'm saying that most of what I see in the initiatives, in Schwarzenegger ascent, etc, is an advancing of the country club Republican world view - socially moderate (they hate confrontation), pro-business (because they own them), anti-tax (because they pay them) and mixed on immigrants (because their businesses use them but they don't like to pay taxes to look after them). A lot of Californians who call themselves Democrats fit this bill, especially outside the Bay Area (where everybody's nuts) but can't bring themselves to vote Republican. As a result, our moderate Republicans have turned into pander-bears, less to woo these voters than to make themselves socially acceptable to them, the Democrats, unchecked, have drifted left and the conservative wing of the GOP has become more focused on defeating the moderates than the Democrats. The fault, as I say, is with the voters of California. The voters who shut down bilingual ed, cut services to immigrants, changed property tax rules and such were not Republicans - there aren't enough of them to do it. Rather, an important segment of the Democratic vote put these initiatives over the top, and they're voting for the wrong party. Then they need to come to the dark side and try to shed a little light, registering Republican, recruiting candidates from the socially liberal, fiscally conservative mold and turning out to vote for them so that both the GOP and the Dems will be forced to change. Tuesday will be an important day for the state of California. A few years ago, we threw the bum out in the personage of Gray Davis. Since then, Schwarzenegger has done a pretty good job pushing his program. But the Democrats in the legislature seem to take a long time to get it, taking months to pass watered down versions of already moderate proposals that should have gone through in weeks. Even readers of the San Francisco Chronicle have been exposed to the bare facts of this, as completely whitewashing Democratic intransigence is simply no longer doable. So, will California's citizens show that they are responsible voters by electing a congress and senate that will work with our governor? Or will it be politics as usual - an ever strong Democratic presence in the legislature and another round of citizens' initiatives designed to compensate for the lousy government we chose for ourselves?
posted by gbarto at 8:19 AM |
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