Recently in Politics and Current Events Category

I just wanted to add that I did indeed vote for Obama, just as I said I would a couple months ago. That didn't change.

What did change is that I've warmed up to him considerably in the intervening weeks, and I can now say that I voted for him enthusiastically. Basically, he became much more of a populist in these last few months.

Whatever the outcome of the election, for so many reasons this has been a historic campaign, one that I never thought I'd see in my lifetime.

It makes me just a bit more hopeful about the future of this country.

And now I'd better stop, or my curmudgeonly side will start to offer opinions about McCain and Palin, and I try to keep this a family-friendly site.

Nate Silver gives Ten Reasons Why You Should Ignore Exit Polls.

In a nutshell, they have wider margins of error, they overstate the Democratic vote, "leaked" exit polls may be completely bogus, and you'll know the actual results soon enough anyway!

The other day I was talking to my neighbor about the election.

Her elderly mother is in a nursing home so she obtained an absentee ballot for her.

"She's voted in every election that she could, so I thought I'd just let her pick for herself. I read off the list of nominees and she picked Bob Barr.

"I think she mixed him up with Bob Barker."

That's not a bad reason compared to some that I've heard over the years.

Anyway, Bob Barker and Bob Barr are, of course, very different.

One's an American game show icon who has become a laughing stock in his old age, and the other is Bob Barker.

So I went to my polling place early today, around 7:30am.

And I saw something that I've never seen before.

There was a line. Where there never was a line!

Not a very long line by some standards, but a line nevertheless. I'd guess about 40 to 50 people were ahead of me.

I'd have done better by going a bit later, as when I left about 20 minutes later, there were only about 20 people behind me.

There was a potential problem with the voting procedure, however.

When you arrive, you are supposed to sign in and let the voting officials verify your registration. Then you get in line.

Normally there's no problem with this because typically there are only about four or five people (at most) waiting to vote. But today the line snaked around into another room, so there was no way for the voting officials to keep track of everyone.

It would have been possible for someone to sneak into the line without signing in.

Now the folks in line were doing their own vetting ("Did you sign in?") so I suspect it would be difficult for a significant number of people to vote without signing in.

But not impossible.

Just got a call from my sister. She lives in Dover, PA. You know, the town that tried to force the teaching of creationism in its schools, which resulted in a major trial that ultimately vindicated the forces of reason (i.e., evolution and science).

Anyway, she called me from her polling place a little before 7am. She said she's never seen anything like it. Over 300 people already in line, and more people are streaming in. It sounds like a madhouse.

Who would have ever thought to be afraid of writing a letter to the editor?

At 5 a.m. on Oct. 9, the Strongsville mother of five sat at her computer and wrote a letter to the editor that she knew might enrage fellow residents. She began by recounting a recent conversation she'd had with her 7-year-old son:

"Mom," he said, "who are you voting for?"

"Sen. Obama," she said.

"Oh, no!" he said. "You can't have an evil president."

"I didn't know whether to laugh or cry," she wrote.

Hours earlier, Mahon had been driving home from the local mall with her 14-year-old daughter when they spotted some people carrying homemade political signs after leaving a Strongsville rally for John McCain and Sarah Palin. The worst of the signs called Obama a terrorist.

Mahon was stunned. She used the opportunity to talk to her daughter about the politics of fear, and race.

An hour later, her son was blurting out his alarm about Obama.

"That came from his friends," she told me, "and you know they had to be hearing it at home. I sat him down and explained that nobody who runs for president is evil, and that you can't believe everything you hear."

The whole article is worth reading: Connie Schultz: In breaking silence about hatred, Strongsville mom finds support

Paul Krugman won the Nobel economic prize for his analysis of how economies of scale can affect trade patterns and the location of economic activity.

A well-deserved award. Congratulations, Professor Krugman!

I am opposed to any Wall Street bailout that doesn't demand that the top executives of any guilty companies be neutered.

To be effective, of course, the neutering would also have to be performed on any of their existing progeny.

This is the monologue that Craig Ferguson did on Sep 10. I didn't realize it was on YouTube or I'd have passed it along earlier.

He's by turns funny, serious, impassioned. Worth a look.

Rachel Maddow begins her show tonight at 9PM on <spit> MSNBC.

Rachel Maddow is the smartest person on the teevee.

I haven't been this excited about a teevee show since, oh, the fifth season of St. Elsewhere.