Category: Uncategorized

There’s conflicting reports about whether he’s clinically dead, in a coma or just closing his eyes for a brief nap, but the logical conclusion is that he’s dead and his inner circle is trying to keep the news from leaking out while they try to arrange for a speedy succession.

I still marvel at the fact that he survived to the 21st century. I have never understood why the Israelis allowed him to live, much less return from Tunisia. Their lack of resolve and inability to deal conclusively with their enemies is the one thing that gives me a modicum of hope that perhaps the more ham-fisted American approach will prove more effective in the Middle East.

In any case, if the news is true, my eyes will be dry.

LD brings this to our attention:

The Republican expected to chair the Senate Judiciary Committee next year bluntly warned newly re-elected President Bush today against putting forth Supreme Court nominees who would seek to overturn abortion rights or are otherwise too conservative to win confirmation. Sen. Arlen Specter, fresh from winning a fifth term in Pennsylvania, also said the current Supreme Court now lacks legal “giants” on the bench.

“When you talk about judges who would change the right of a woman to choose, overturn Roe v. Wade, I think that is unlikely,” Specter said, referring to the landmark 1973 Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion.

“The president is well aware of what happened, when a bunch of his nominees were sent up, with the filibuster,” Specter added, referring to Senate Democrats’ success over the past four years in blocking the confirmation of many of Bush’s conservative judicial picks. “… And I would expect the president to be mindful of the considerations which I am mentioning.”

Don’t say I didn’t warn you about this. I heard from a lot of conservatives before the election that the only reason they were supporting George Bush was because he would put conservative, pro-life judges on the Supreme Court, but Sen. Spector is wasting no time before disabusing his fellow Republicans of the notion. How surprising that he should remain silent on this until immediately after the election.

Do try to remember this four years from now, when we again face THE MOST IMPORTANT ELECTION OF OUR LIFETIMES.

While I’m quite pleased to discover I can read Eco’s latest without having to resort to a dictionary, it’s a real shock to learn how slow one reads and how long it takes to read a book when one can’t blitz through it with normal speed-reading techniques. On the other hand, there is real pleasure in being able to savor a book, especially one clearly designed to be savored.

I’ve also been reading Swann’s Way by Marcel Proust, (along with plenty of sci-fi and fantasy trash on my Dana while I’m working out at the gym), and it’s easy to see how Eco is very heavily influenced by him. This isn’t exactly news, as Eco refers to Proust quite often in his essays and devotes no little attention to him in his published series of lectures on literature, Six Walks Through the Fictional Woods. But it’s still striking to see to what extent he is influenced, as in The Mysterious Flame he uses the excuse of a partial amnesiac who has lost only his memoria episodica, which allows him to remember how to use toothpaste but not to recognize the brand and to remember Napoleon lost at Waterloo but not to recognize his wife, to experiment with diving into the depths of sensory experience in the mode of Proust and his midnight pillows.

Eco was obviously doing this to some extent in Island of the Day Before, but I did not recognize the significance of his statement that he had “been teaching himself to forget how to swim” when I interviewed him some years ago. I put it down to a perfectionist’s method-writing, but a Proustian’s sensory engulfing may have been a more accurate description, in retrospect.

This may be a love story of sorts, too, between a man and the wife he cannot remember. But it’s too soon to tell; I’ve only finished the first chapter.

Michael Totten points out a few retrospectives from Democratic bloggers:

Ezra Klein: I, like most of us, fell for the echo chamber. Daily Kos, MyDD, Steve Soto, Pandagon, and all the other blogs are run by good people with positive intentions, but if they’re you’re primary source for information, you’re outlook is perverted by an overwhelming amount of good news and a general disdain for the factual accuracy of bad news. It perverts your perspective and, because the sample group is so totally different than most of America, it begins to twist your political predictions and assumptions of what works…

Putting aside the grammatical errors and the ludicrous idea that someone like Kos has positive intentions, the point that everyone is susceptible to the echo chamber is a salient one. That’s why it is so very important to constantly remind yourself that not everyone thinks the same way you do. Look at the extreme skewing to the right on this blog, where a candidate who received less than 400,000 votes was nearly tied with the candidate who received 60 million.

The truth is that the vast majority of Americans don’t agree with me and probably never will. They like big government and they want it to work for their benefit. The idea that expanding central power only ensures that it will eventually be used against them either does not occur to them or the possibility is outside the time frame in which they think and is so not a concern. This, of course, is why people will keep getting killed by governments the world over, even those like Leon Trotsky who are not stupid, know perfectly well the uses to which government can be put and even helped put that lethal government in place.

This is also why I never think in terms of winning, I only think in terms of standing by what I believe to be right. It took hundreds of years for the apostles to have any significant effect on the Roman empire and Western civilization (unless you count serving as torches and lion food as a significant effect). That does not mean that they were wrong to stand by there beliefs, quite the opposite really.

Kevin Drum: MOST IMPORTANT EVENT….RECONSIDERED… I’ll plump for the Massachusett’s Supreme Court’s decision to legalize gay marriage. The result was nearly a dozen initiatives across the country to ban gay marriage and a perfect wedge issue for Republicans. For the second election in a row, it looks like the president was chosen by the courts.

I very much agree, as I said, I have been pointing this out ever since that fateful, legally and strategically moronic decision. Karl Rove should be sending roses to each of those justices, because without their crass foolishness George Bush does not see millions of social conservatives coming out to vote and John Kerry wins the election.

Democrats:

2-1 Hillary Clinton

5-1 John Edwards

8-1 Random Democratic senator

9-1 Barack Obama (or whatever his name is)

Republicans:

3-1 Jeb Bush

5-1 Random Republican governor

6-1 Rudy Giuliani

9-1 John McCain

Independents:

1-1 Ralph Nader

666-1 Cthulhu (of course, if he actually decides to run, all bets are off)

Libertarians:

2-1 Someone of whom you’ve never heard.

5-1 Penn Jillette

1. President Bush became the first President to be re-elected while gaining seats in the House and Senate since 1936 and the first Republican President since 1924 to be re-elected while re-electing Republican House and Senate majorities.

2. Became the first President to win a majority of the popular vote since 1988.

3. Received 57.4 million votes – more than any other candidate in history. He broke President Reagan’s 1984 mark of 54.5 million. (96% reporting)

4. Increased the popular vote by seven million votes since 2000 – more than twice Clinton’s increase from 1992 to 1996.

5. Improved his percentage in every state except four (MD, OR, VT and WY). This includes a four percent increase in John Kerry’s home state, Massachusetts.

I’m not displeased with my election predictions. The final CNN/Gallup Poll had the election at 49 to 49. If you recall, I said that you always have to add five points to the Republican, and the final results were 52 to 48 percent. (The media is rounding 51.55 percent down, surprise surprise). Unlike National Review and all the Northern Alliance guys except for Hugh Hewitt, I did not take the early exit polls seriously and posted to that effect at the time here yesterday.

The day after the Massachusetts Supreme Court created “gay marriage” I said that Bush would have an easy victory – not a landslide, just one that wasn’t subject to 2000-style recounts – and that’s pretty much what happened. Ohio, you’ll note, had a marriage amendment on the ballot which brought out the social conservatives who obviously weren’t interested in the Constitution Party. I think it was only as close as it was because the stock market has been flat throughout the campaign. Had the market crashed, Robert Prechter almost surely would have been right and Bush would have lost; that did not turn out to be the case. Timing is clearly not their strong suit, but all the same, one ignores him and leaps into the markets now at one’s peril.

I was largely wrong about the turnout, which I expected to be flat. However, the much-ballyhooed P.Diddy-MTV youth vote failed to manifest, so I wasn’t completely wrong there. And, of course, I wasn’t even close on the third-party turnout, as the LP’s Michael Badnarik didn’t hit 1 million votes or a combined 2 percent of the ballot with the CP. Clearly, the further you are emotionally away from something, the easier it is to analyze it accurately.

We are here for all your election prediction and analysis needs. And Jeanne, when you’re ready to order those books, you can do it here….

ajw308 is curious:

A couple of times now, you’ve indicated on your blog a refusal to use Paypal without stating why. I did join Slashdot.org, searched on Paypal, and founds lots of Paypal articles. Nothing that would dissuade me from using them though jumped out. Can you post a link on your blog? Others have also indicated an interest in this info.

There are a number of reasons listed here, but these are the ones that I find compelling:

2. Their customer service is horrible. They hide their telephone number, (intentionally – by their own admission) and only provided support via “form” emails: As for the customer service, Sollitto said they intentionally make the phone number very difficult to find in order to save costs.”

4. If PayPal feels your actions are questionable, PayPal is the investigator, judge, jury and executioner. “Telling your side” of what happened, in most cases seems to be irrelevant. They also refuse to provide you with the details of their investigation and withhold documents they relied upon to make their decisions.

5. If you are a bona fide, up-standing individual with hundreds of successful transactions, but someone pays you with a stolen credit card, your account (by PayPal’s own admission) is immediately flagged as being “criminal behavior” and any money in that account is confiscated.

Furthermore, as a general principle, I don’t consider it wise to give people and corporations you do not know direct access to your bank account.

Congratulations Republicans. It hasn’t been formally called yet, but it’s clear that you managed to re-elect George Bush, as I have long expected.

Now that THE MOST IMPORTANT ELECTION OF OUR LIFETIMES is over (for another four years) I’m sure that we are all looking forward to the nirvanic bliss that an all-Republican federal government will soon bestow upon us.

And, of course, we’ll find out whether your theories of secret plans to move to the right are correct or whether you too will be angry, disaffected and voting third party in 2008.

For whom did you vote?

37% (R) George Bush (276)

34% (L) Michael Badnarik (254)

14% (C) Michael Peroutka (105)

10% (N) I didn’t vote (74)

04% (D) John Kerry (27)

00% (I) Ralph Nader (3)

00% (G) David Cobb (0)

Total Votes: 739

Yep, this is about as accurate as the early exit polls saying that Kerry was winning every swing state by 20 percent margins. Keep that in mind next time before you start getting your panties in a bunch.

I’m just curious to see the difference between how readers here will actually vote compared to how they said they’d vote a few months back. If you recall, the results then were about 40 percent Bush, 40 percent Badnarik, 15 percent Peroutka and 5 percent Kerry. Unfortunately, I forgot to add the non-vote option, so the numbers will definitely be off.

Anyhow, vote once and only vote if you actually voted – or did not vote. My guess is that Bush will now be around 40 percent, Badnarik, Peroutka and No Vote will all be in the vicinity of 20 percent. Kerry as before, at five percent.

As for the real election, I stand by my prediction that Bush will win with more than 300 electoral college votes. I also predict that the Constitution and Libertarian parties will do a little better than expected, perhaps 2 percent together, and that voter turnout will not be any higher than normal.

UPDATE: Larry Kudlow posts on NRO: “The Horse Race Blog, which I know you’re all watching, has similar numbers. He expects the margin to be 51.0 to 47.3 with Bush garnering 306-327 EVs while Kerry gets 211-232.” In other words, about what I’ve been saying for six months, although I’d prefer to see the LP+CP total north of 2 percent. We’ll see.

Electoral College totals

Bush: 286

Kerry: 252

Not quite the 300+ victory I expected, but a comfortable one with the first clear majority of the popular vote in years. Not too bad, considering that I called a solid win for Bush six months ago. The Libertarian total of less than 400,000 is quite disappointing, though, and the LP+CP total won’t even reach 500,000. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that the American people prefer strong government to liberty, though, as Toqueville and Schumpeter predicted this long ago.

All according to the 2000 pattern so far. I’m calling FL myself based on the county changes from 2000 all going in the Republicans’ favor.

From NRO: 2nd round of exit polls

Kerry-Bush FL 50-49 OH 50-49 PA 54-45 WI 51-46 MI 51-47

However, In early 2000, exit polls showed: Gore +3 in Florida; Gore-Bush even in CO (Bush won by 9) Gore +4 in AZ (Bush won by 6)

Mark Steyn points out that the exit polls claiming 57-41 Kerry in NH and 60-40 Kerry in PA are not even remotely credible. Furthermore, the early polls were 59 percent female, yeah, that’s right, now the Three Monkeys are starting to see the light with regards to the suffragettes. Anyhow, the polls that scared KJL so are as meaningless as an exit poll of unregistered gay French communists.

KJL tries to hold panicked Republicans together on NRO:

bush down 4 in OH, down 4 in FL, down 1 in NM, down 1 in MI down 2 IA

Do not, again, do not take any exit poll resports too seriously. JUST GET OUT THE VOTE. Exit polls not always reliable, ESPECIALLY early ones. AND, this isn’t over until the polls close. So please get to work while there is still time.

DO NOT get depressed. DO NOT get mad. JUST GET OUT THE VOTE.

I contend this is the most important election of many of our lifetimes. I’m almost willing to make a deal and give the Dems 2008 if we can have this one.

What do you want to bet she’ll completely forget that statement by the time 2008 rolls around, regardless of who wins. Especially because it could be the Lizard Queen making it THE MOST IMPORTANT ELECTION OF OUR LIFETIME! Again. However she is right about the exit polls, as they are interesting but largely meaningless. I daresay that the ones that people are excitedly talking about have little more relevance than the one here, which shows a neck-and-neck race between Badnarik and Bush.