Alaska's strategic voters

Hans and I went to the Blue Loon because we wanted to be in the company of the like-minded when the election results came in. And it was a wonderful thing. Both McCain's concession speech and Obama's victory speech were moving. And I was intensely relieved that Obama won.

It was frustrating, however, to sit there watching the election returns and not hear about the Alaska races. We went to the Eagle, in case they had news, but no, still the national stuff. At this point, it appears that both Stevens and Young have been re-elected, thereby proving that Alaska voters aren't thinking too clearly, yet again.

As one local Republican down at the Eagle put it (at top volume), "I'd rather vote for a felon than a Democrat!" But, of course, now both of those Republicans are going to be in the minority party and Stevens won't be able to be on any committee positions, due to the Senate rules. Said Republican shouted that it wouldn't matter if Bush pardoned him. Of course, it will still be up to the Democrats as to whether Stevens is accepted. He's not going to be the powerhouse he was.

So Alaska will be relegated to backwater status, politically speaking.

But somehow it doesn't it matter to me right now. Obama won, and for the right reasons. This country has a chance to redeem itself now--has already begun to do so.

Whew.

Obama raised twice as much as McCain in Alaska

This is a peculiar little tidbit, from CNN's Politics Tracker: as of October 20th, McCain earned $261,715 while Obama earned $580,019 in the 49th state. Interesting, no?

Best Halloween costume of the election

Hands down, it had to be Terry Koltak's perfect sendup of the Republican ticket: he came as one of the Living Dead. Complete with a name tag: McCain-Franken-Palin-Stein. And a price tag on his designer dress: Nieman-Marcus. And bloody red lipstick all over his teeth and lips and (green) face. He lurched around the bar, yelling, "Nnngggh!", "Graagggrh!" and "Urrrggggh!" His red (wig) hair was extremely well tousled, and stuck up in the back (all over, actually).

Really, it was a stellar imitation of the brain-eating behavior, erudite elocution, and stalwart ethics of the actual Republican candidates. Couldn't tell the difference.

The latest from Ivan Moore: Palin's popularity slipping

According to the latest press release from Ivan Moore Research, "Sarah Palin's positive-negative rating in Alaska [is] taking a real hit, for the first time since Palin was elected in November 2006." Moore has a margin of error in this poll of 4.4%, but shows a drop as of his most recent survey (Sept. 20-22nd) down to a 68% approval rating (from 82% in January). He breaks it down by ideology and party, showing the most significant drop among progressive voters (-28.5 points) and a small but still notable drop among conservatives (-5.5 points). Republicans show a -2 point drop, but this could be off because of the margin of error, so Moore counts it as basically unchanged and exceedingly positive (around 88 to 89% approval).

What is important here, however, is the drop in no party/other party and moderate numbers: 17 points downward. Palin is not pleasing the middle ground.

And it's pretty clear why: obvious, repeated lies; a negative campaign with little of substance; polarizing rhetoric. Interestingly, I never hear news about McCain anymore--it's Sarah this, Sarah that, and then news about Barack Obama, who certainly sounds like a sensible, thoughtful man who might actually weigh the consequences of his decisions rather than charging into them and then thinking about them. Or, as Bush and McCain both appear to do, rationalizing them after the fact.

Nope, Palin is making McCain look worse and Obama look better.

Observed on Politiker

An alert cartoonist for the Republic notified me of this delightful development in the continuing national Palin agogment: two (count them) two cartoonists for The Ester Republic have been featured in a Politker article on Alaska cartoonists' reaction to John McCain's appointment of Sarah Palin as vice-presidential candidate: Dan Darrow and Jamie Smith. AND the Politiker includes cartoons by them--both of them delightfully rude, of course, and the one by Jamie an (ahem) advance of a cartoon slated for the next issue. (Not exactly kosher practice, there, Jamie, releasing a cartoon for the paper before it's published...ah, well, can't complain on this one—and we know the News-Miner wouldn't do it!)

A contrast in Veeps: Cheney, Palin, and Biden

Okay, so think about it. We know what Cheney is like: advocate for torture, shill for the oil companies, George Bush puppet master, Mr. Secrecy himself (always flitting back and forth from the infamous Undisclosed Location). Despite his disdain for things like the Constitution, liberty, and civil rights, you gotta give the man one thing: he'd know how to run the country if George dropped dead. (Of course, that's because he is running the country, but that's another issue.)

And there's Obama's selected running mate: Senator Joe Biden. He's got experience up the wazoo, with thirty years in the Senate and loads of foreign policy and national security knowledge. He knows how to campaign, and he's got the savvy to be a real asset to the president, and to take his place if need be.

But then we have Sarah Palin, recently Wasilla mayor and now Alaska governor. She's young and healthy and intelligent, and so far has proven a capable governor. But suppose McCain kicks off? The question that must always be asked of the suitability of a vice-presidential candidate is, "Could they serve as president?"

Yep, politics is the Great Sport of modern America. A better comedy nor scarier horror show you cannot find.

American politics just got weirder: Sarah Palin and John McCain

And the "dick vote", as my spouse puts it, is apparently ruling the country these days. Thinking with the gonads is evidently the rule for the Republican party: Sarah Palin has been selected as John McCain's running mate.

Good god, I thought it couldn't get any worse. Apparently this is how the Republicans plan to split the Democratic party: go after the Hillary Clinton supporters. From the Guardian:

The move is a bold play for the potentially millions of disaffected Hillary Clinton supporters who yearn to vote for a woman candidate in the November election and who have remained impervious to Democratic pleas for party unity....

She was sworn in December 2006, making her one of the least experienced people to run for vice-president in recent memory. Alaska is one of the smallest states in the US, with only 670,000 residents.

Before taking becoming governor, Palin served two terms as mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, a town of 9,800 people, and was on the city's council before that.

So much for Palin's wanting to stick around and help the state as governor.

Clever of the McCain campaign, though.

McCain: a liberal conservative

A local conservative described John McCain this way tonight, saying that this was why most conservatives hated McCain: he was a liberal conservative. In other words, he was too dang liberal. I laughed myself silly. John "Bush Lite" McCain has long since ceased being "conservative" but he was never a liberal, least of all now.

An oxymoron, indeed. Of course, most conservatives are not, these days, at least in this country. They're either neocons (as in, the "new con game") or rightwingnuts (missing any bolts to hold them down to earth). McCain panders to the both of them, thereby, apparently, pissing off both segments. And he's certainly raised the ire of Democrats who were pleased with his "maverick" qualities so long ago.

I was playing cribbage with Kate, but was sitting too close to the rather loud and exuberant political discussion at the right wing of the bar, and just couldn't keep my mouth shut on the more egregious statements (Kate's valiant efforts to distract me ["Shut yer piehole and play!"] notwithstanding). But mostly I managed to keep out of it. Not very well, but I did.

Anyhoo, now I'm home and for some reason I keep thinking of the seven deadly sins. These are, for those of you not familiar with the Church's views on the world, lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy, and pride. Of these, the ones that pop into my head with relation to tonight's political discussion and cribbage game are:

• gluttony: the overindulgence and overconsumption of anything to the point of waste.
• greed or avarice: a sin of excess; disloyalty, deliberate betrayal, or treason (especially for personal gain, for example through bribery); hoarding, theft and robbery; simony.
• wrath: inordinate and uncontrolled feelings of hatred and anger; vehement denial of the truth, both to others and in the form of self-denial, impatience with the procedure of law, and the desire to seek revenge outside of the workings of the justice system (murder, assault, and in extreme cases, genocide).
• envy: sorrow for another's good.
• pride: the original and most serious of the seven deadly sins: love of self perverted to hatred and contempt for one's neighbor; a desire to be more important or attractive than others.

I wonder how my neighbor and I can be so far apart on political issues. It seems to me crystal clear that the Republican favorite (indeed, the Republican party) has degenerated into representing the worst and most sinful and most fearful of the United States and its character; I fail completely to see how good people can fall for their lies, or think that continuing so many of the failed policies of the past three Republican administrations can do anything but fail us and the country, again, thoroughly. Yet, people keep voting for them. Stevens won the primary again. Many of my local conservative neighbors voted for Bush. Twice.

And they seem to be amazed that I can vote for "wackos" like Nader, or a Democrat (any Democrat).

There's this tremendous, vast, uncrossable chasm between us, and not only can I barely see my neighbors on the other side, I can barely hear them—and they me. We can't seem to communicate. We can wave, and shout, but there's no real discussion, or understanding. I just don't get it. Neither do they. And this just doesn't seem right.

Surveillance state

From the abstract of Jack Balkin's recent paper published in Minnesota Law Review, "The Constitution in the National Surveillance State":

The question is not whether we will have a surveillance state in the years to come, but what sort of state we will have. The National Surveillance State poses three major dangers for our freedom. The first danger is that government will create a parallel track of preventative law enforcement that routes around the traditional guarantees of the Bill of Rights. The second danger is that traditional law enforcement and social services will increasingly resemble the parallel track. Once governments have access to powerful surveillance and data mining technologies, there will be enormous political pressure to use them in everyday law enforcement and for delivery of government services. Private power and public-private cooperation pose a third danger. Because the Constitution does not reach private parties, government has increasing incentives to rely on private enterprise to collect and generate information for it, thus circumventing constitutional guarantees. Corporate business models, in turn, lead companies to amass and analyze more and more information about individuals in order to target new customers and reject undesirable ones.

There's been some interesting discussions on Balkinization recently on surveillance and FISA. For those of you wondering about voting for McCain, he's right there with ol' George on invasive powers undreamed of by kings of yore: the guy voted to give the telecom giants immunity from prosecution for flouting the law and now says he'd do exactly what George did. Bush III, anybody?

Yet another reason for Truth Through Action (although I'm not a Democrat, this is a damn funny site). Check out their premier film, Blue Balled: