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After a two-year long, grueling campaign, culminating in the historic election of their candidate, you would think that Democrats would be happy. Especially considering all the talk about bi-partisanship and changing the divisive culture in Washington. Instead, the Dems are still angry, apparently because Barack Obama didn't receive 100% of the vote (kinda like that other Hussein feller):
It's good! It's great! It's all fantastic, and I'm thrilled! Really. I do mean it. But something seems to be escaping our attention amidst the exaltation. In spite of the wars, the lies, the torture, the stacking of the courts, and the rollbacks to civil liberties; in spite of the religious fundamentalism, the fanaticism, and the utter disdain toward the population that's been expressed; in spite of the Katrina fiasco, the wire tapping, and the raping and pillaging of our economy for corporate gain (not to mention the ridiculousness and horrendous idiocy of the Republican campaign, including the Palin monstrosity) 56 million, 378 thousand, 316 Americans still voted for the other side.
To humanize that just a bit, that means that 56,378,316 individuals waited in line just as long as you did, and worked just as hard as anyone else, to try to make sure that Barack Obama would not become president of the United States. I don't know about you, but that scares the shit out of me. It means — for reasons that go way beyond any immediate financial crises — we're still in very deep trouble.
And, as I'm sure you will find shocking, those who didn't vote for Obama are pretty much just racist:
Pity the poor, Deep South, and that includes our great state of Tennessee, along with Georgia, Mississippi, Alabama, South Carolina, Louisiana and Arkansas.
For the most part, they remain deep red and hardly wanted any part of President-elect Barack Obama's landslide victory.
[...]
Oh, but Mr. Bositis, isn't the South going to rise again? I just heard Tennessee Rep. Marsha Blackburn say on a local morning TV show that the Republicans have to go back to their conservative ways. What about that?
"The problem is that she believes that,'' Bositis replied. "Remember, for much of the post-Civil War days, the South was isolated from most of the other parts of the country. And, after the civil-rights bills were passed and the turbulent times of the '60s, the South reasserted itself. But politically now, the South is in big trouble when it comes to the Republican Party.
"And, if they look, the people in the Deep South will find that among the New England states, there's not a single member of the U.S. House who is a Republican. ... People like Marsha Blackburn may be confronting a country that isn't buying into those old Southern values anymore ... values such as fundamentalist religion, militarism, anti-unionism, negative feelings about race and civil rights, low taxes and spending, except money that they can mooch off.
"The rest of the country is becoming increasingly educated, and all trends are working against the South. As long as people like Marsha Blackburn want the Republican Party to do more of the same, they're going to be in for a long run in the minority.''
Yes, pity the poor South. But you get exactly what you deserve if you don't get with the right program.
Classy. Southerners didn't "get with the right program" (i.e. "vote for Barack Obama") because they're uneducated, militaristic, and racist, so they should be pitied. I guess I should just be happy nobody suggested that they be rounded up for re-education.
Recall that just four short years ago the left dealt with losing the Presidential Election by apologizing to the world. And we were also blessed with such timeless classics as "What's The Matter With Kansas?" Staying true to form, now that they've won they're still miffed that they didn't run the table. "How could anyone NOT vote for the Messiah?"
I guess that's tolerance for you. The work's never done until there's nothing left to tolerate.
UPDATE: Thanks to Linda Morgan in the comments, we're treated to a show of class that arrogant jerks cited above can't begin to approach, much less fathom. Some of my favorites are below the fold:
There are two versions of American exceptionalism. American-American exceptionalism is "we're richer because we're better." European-American exceptionalism is "you're better because you're richer." Both sides agree on exceptionalism, and just see different causes and implications. The Europeans expect us, on account of our wealth, to live up to (their) ideals, while we think that our wealth ought to prove to them that our ideals are better than theirs. No one of any importance seems to think that the United States is a normal country.
I suppose I fall in the better-causes-richer camp, since it's always seemed repugnant to me that simply having wealth makes anyone "better" than another.
The American ideals of individualism, self-reliance, liberty, equality before the law, and governance by rule of law not the tyranny of men, are not in fact exclusive to our nation. But the fervor with which each generation places on retaining these ideals, while manifesting them in ways to suit an evolving populace, does seem to be uniquely American. And the nations that have either adopted some or all of these principles, whether following in our footsteps (as we followed in those of our European predecessors) or arriving at some semblance of them on their own, have generally enjoyed greater prosperity and wealth than those who have not. So, in my mind, those whose ideals match more closely to our own are relative "better" than those who have chosen a different path, and therefore they are also wealthier.
If it were the other way around, then the wealth would have had to come from somewhere, and it would have had to be exclusive to America. One common refrain is that America is rich because we have always had access to abundant natural resources, which we have been able to control exclusively and exploit to our great advantage over the rest of the world. Several points come to mind when I hear this:
(1) so did Native Americans and they weren't rich, so the natural resources obviously needed something else to make them valuable;
(2) Spanish, Portuguese, French and Dutch settlers were traipsing about the New World long before there was a United States of America and they established little more than mercantile outposts designed specifically to exploit the natural resources, and yet today they preside over minuscule economies compared to ours. Moreover, in none of these former European colonies is there anything remotely similar to the wealth found here in America (with the exception of Canada, which had the same benefit of British influence that we did), all of which suggests that something other than access to natural resources and the ability to ruthlessly exploit them leads to wealth and success for a nation.
(3) If access to abundant natural resources is so key to a nation's wealth (thus making them "better"), the how do you explain the phenomenal economic growth of Japan, South Korea, Taiwan where resources are extremely limited, and the comparative stagnant to non-existent growth of most of Africa where resources are quite plentiful?
The common denominator, it seems to me, is that countries where importance is placed on individual rights, a strong rule or law, and equality before that law are able to create more wealth for their citizens. On the other hand, where community to emphasized over individuals, the state holds primacy versus the governed, and the law enforces group rights, there is much less opportunity for wealth creation, and there is much less in the pot to spread around.
In that vein, some have suggested that true socialism never really caught on here because a sense of individualism simply could not be replaced with a fealty to community in a land where private property was held so dear. If so, I would suggest that this is what makes us "better" and therefore wealthier. Therefore, if the world wants to share in our success, then perhaps they should think about getting on board with the process that created it, instead of thinking of new queues to create so they can line up for handouts from it.
Well, I was wrong. I was expecting Obama not to perform as well as Kerry, especially in Pennslyvania (which Obama did perform better coming out of Philly), and for McCain to perform slightly better than Bush in those areas.
Political analysts will be crunching the post-election data for quite some time. In the end, I believe it will come down to people seeing Obama as a 'fresh face', McCain being totally inconsistent on message (when you think of Obama, you think 'change'. When you think of McCain, you don't think of a slogan). In the end, you must have people vote for you, not against another guy. McCain gave plenty of reasons to vote against Obama, but not too many to vote for him ...
Anyway, playing the contrarian can make you very right and, alas, very wrong. But if you don't play a game and make a prediction with reasons why, then what's the fun?
The bolded sentence above, I think, probably explains a good deal of why McCain lost. In the end, Obama delivered a stronger message, and the voters bought what he was selling. Whether they actually will want what they bought remains to be seen, but there's no question that Obama was the better salesman.
According to Capt. Ed, a lethal result of McCain's failed message was that some 7 Million fewer Republicans showed up the polls than in 2004:
In 2004, Bush beat John Kerry by winning 62.04 million votes. In 2008, Obama won 62.443 million, a gain of only 400,000. In 2004, Kerry garnered 59.028 million votes; John McCain only got 55.386 million. That means this election saw 3.24 million fewer votes than four years ago. Far from being more energized, the nation appeared to be more apathetic.
Using these numbers, we can see that Barack Obama succeeded in turning out his base much more effectively than McCain did his. How do we know that it's a base turnout rather than a tsunami of opinion to Democrats? For one thing, Dems didn't pick up a boatload of new seats in the House, and they may underperform expectations yet in the Senate. They did gain some strength with independents, but only gaining between 11-20 seats in the House tells us that they found votes in districts they already control, more than finding converts.
[...]
John McCain and the GOP didn't get their turnout in this race. They lost almost seven million voters from 2004, a rather stunning number. We'll be chewing on this for a while, but that's more than 10% of the Bush vote that got lost in this election. Did they stay home, or did significant numbers of them defect to Obama? I'm guessing the former. The GOP demoralized their base by acting like Democrats for too many years, and the winds of "change" proved too dispiriting this time around.
Ed may be right, but from my experience here in Northern Virginia I'd have to say that Obama's GOTV effort, and overall campaign apparatus, was much more efficient and effective. That being said, it sure didn't help that McCain offered little reason for people to vote for him than against Obama which, incidentally, is how John Kerry ran his campaign in 2004.
In any event, I hope that Malstrom's huge error in analysis doesn't dissuade people from continuing to read his other offerings, as they are quite good. He took a chance and failed, but I don't think that means he has nothing to offer. At least he has integrity, as evidenced by his mea culpa.
The claim going around is that yesterday's election witnessed the highest number of voters ever, and the highest percentage of the electorate since the 60's:
More than 130 million people turned out to vote Tuesday, the most ever to vote in a presidential election.
With ballots still being counted in some precincts into Wednesday morning, an estimated 64 percent of the electorate turned out, making 2008 the highest percentage turnout in generations.
In 2004, 122.3 million voted in what was then the highest recorded turnout in the contest between President Bush and Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.).
But the popular vote totals don't seem to add up to anything like 130 Million. Instead, from the numbers I've seen, the turnout didn't even surpass 2004, coming in at about 119 Million.
Are there other numbers out there that I'm not privy to? Specifically, where does the extra 11 Million or so come from? Anybody?
My preliminary national turnout rate for those eligible to vote is 62.6% or 133.3 million ballots cast. This number may yet rise further as absentee ballots arrive and provisional ballots are processed, particularly in some western states. Until these outstanding ballots are counted, I would like to provide a conservative estimate. This turnout rate would be the largest since the 62.8% of 1964. If we top that number, which we might, the next highest turnout rate would be 63.8% in 1960.
According to Dr. McDonald's "conservative" estimates, then, there are some 15 Million votes waiting to be counted in absentee and provisional ballots. Really?
Somehow or another, MSNBC's First Read took a look at Dr. McDonald's offering and reached an even higher number:
Provided the number stands, the turnout rate for yesterday's election was the highest in 100 years, according to the estimate from turnout guru Dr. Michael McDonald at George Mason University. Almost 137 million (136,631,825) went to the polls — 64.1% of the voting-eligible population. 1960 saw 63.7% of the populace go out to vote; In 1908, 65.7% voted. It was, of course, the most people ever to go to the polls topping 2004's 122 million. That's 12% increase from 2004. For those wondering why the current total vote in the presidential adds up to approximately 117 million, note that it's going to climb. There is still a ton of vote missing on the West coast.
Apparently, no one at MS-NBC can do math. "A ton of vote missing on the West coast"? There would have to be 20 million votes missing in order to get from 117 million to 137 million. California has reported 95% of its precincts and counted almost 10 million votes. At best, they'll get another 500K or so.
Maybe Dr. McDonald got his data from ACORN.
He also notes that absentee ballots must be received on or before election day to be counted.
Accordingly, the idea that there are twice as many votes left to be counted as the total for the entire state of California simply does not compute.
If it were true, however, that there are still two Californias worth of votes to tally, then couldn't we see the election results change? The difference in popular vote between the candidates is less than 10 Million, and fewer than 200,000 in several states. Depending on how they were to break down, McCain may have potentially won the election after all.
Psyche! Quit your dreaming. The professor's numbers are dramatically wrong and the election is over. Why the numbers are so wrong is an interesting question, but ultimately it won't change anything.
Congrats to Barack Obama. No matter how much I disagree with, well, everything that you stand for, and all the policies you will impose upon us, I can't help but feel proud of my country for electing you. It shows just how far we've come as a nation.
For those as disappointed as I am in tonight's results, here's a musical nightcap from Nora Jones called "My Dear Country":
"My Dear Country"
'Twas Halloween and the ghosts were out, And everywhere they'd go, they shout, And though I covered my eyes I knew, They'd go away.
But fear's the only thing I saw, And three days later 'twas clear to all, That nothing is as scary as election day.
But the day after is darker, And darker and darker it goes, Who knows, maybe the plans will change, Who knows, maybe he's not deranged.
The news men know what they know, but they, Know even less than what they say, And I don't know who I can trust, For they come what may.
'cause we believed in our candidate, But even more it's the one we hate, I needed someone I could shake, On election day.
But the day after is darker, And deeper and deeper we go, Who knows, maybe it's all a dream, Who knows if I'll wake up and scream.
I love the things that you've given me, I cherish you my dear country, But sometimes I don't understand, The way we play.
I love the things that you've given me, And most of all that I am free, To have a song that I can sing, On election day.
I'm a student at Carleton College who has contributed (financially and with my time) to the Obama campaign. I just got an automated call from Jeff Blodgett, the chair of the MN campaign. The text of the call was:
"Hello, this is Jeff Blodgett from the Minnesota for Obama campaign. Our initial data shows this election is significantly closer than the polls predicted. We are putting out an urgent call for volunteers... We are organized groups to knock on doors at five P.M., or earlier if you can, for our final GOTV operation." This was followed by different numbers to call based on your residence.
If Minnesota goes to McCain, where the dominant parties are the Republicans and the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Parties (but mostly the DFL), then I can't see how Pennsylvania or Ohio are going to go to Obama. It's possible, of course, but it sure doesn't seem very likely. And the same goes for Virginia, North Carolina, Florida, Nevada and Colorado.
All of which probably means that Minnesota isn't going to be placed in the Red corner. But the fact that it's close does not bode well for the Obama-in-a-landslide dreamers.
With just two days left until the election (or "coronation" depending on your view) of our new POTUS, I figured it was now OK to give a preview of Election 2012. And given this two-year-long election season, I think it's safe to say that the next campaign will likely kick off approximately twenty-four hours after the election results are finalized. So a short and succinct preview is definitely in order.
Regardless of who wins on Tuesday, the loser will be in a prime position to mount a devastating challenge in 2012. Assuming that the polls aren't completely out of whack, Sarah Palin seems destined to be the next GOP standard-bearer, and my guess is that she has a better than even chance of defeating Obama in the next election. By the same token, if somehow McCain pulls it out, Obama may actually get his electoral rout in 2012, especially considering the fact that he will have had four more years to pad his curriculum vitae. The primary reason why the next challenger will occupy such a position of strength vis-à-vis Tuesday's winner is that whomever is elected will be facing a non-stop fight for political survival starting January 21, 2009.
Just take a look at the landscape confronting our next President:
An economy in the toilet accompanied by a global meltdown which, no doubt, will be laid with much derision on America's doorstep
A belligerent and hostile Iran on the verge of obtaining nuclear weapons
the next President faces so many daunting challenges over the next four years, and both candidates have made so many unfulfillable promises, that it's a real wonder anyone wants to take the job.
A growing, and significant, pension problem with regard to state pensions and other liabilities, making the chances that federalism becomes little more than a fleeting memory all too real
An Iraqi state that is stabilizing and yet not stable
A resurgent Russian Bear, complete with expansionist overtones
An as yet still non-compliant North Korea
Social Security obligations that can't be met
Medicare obligations that make the SS problems look like a bad Sunday church collection
Rising unemployment
Significantly increased chances of deflation or stag-flation (take your pick)
Africa — it's growing more difficult by the day to find any sense of stability or normalcy on the continent
Venezuela — Hugo's not going away, but instead doing his darnedest to out-Mugabe Mugabe
China — growing more powerful in the world market and trying to spread its influence even further in the aforementioned Africa, all while holding more American debt than you could shake a forest at
Congress with a less-than 50% approval rating, typically hovering in the low teens nowadays, coupled with a complete loss of confidence in the major news media, all of which makes the ground for potentially life-changing conspiracy theories quite fertile and explosive
Need I go on?
The point is that the next President faces so many daunting challenges over the next four years, and both candidates have made so many unfulfillable promises, that it's a real wonder anyone wants to take the job. In addition, partisan flavor has so tainted the political soup that half the electorate will be left with an intolerably bad taste in its collective mouth no matter who's sworn in. With these things in mind, it seems to me that the loser of this election may actually be the winner in the long run.
Of course, there's always the chance that whomever's elected manages to make lemonade out of the lemons he's being handed. I don't think it's likely, but it is possible. And who knows what will happen in the next primaries. Maybe Hillary takes what she learned over the past two years and puts Obama out to pasture. Maybe Mitt Romney does the same. Or perhaps the next challenger chooses a VP candidate that alienates his/her respective base so badly that the incumbent wins in a walk. If Palin were to choose Mike Huckabee (or worse, Huckabee were to capture the nomination outright), then I know that ticket would cease to be an option for me personally, and I suspect a lot of other right-leaning independents. Similarly, if Obama were to add Dennis Kucinich, or some equally polarizing figure, to his ticket, there's little chance he could beat the devil-we-know, regardless of how badly the last four years had been for the incumbent.
The bottom line is that, absent a self-inflicted wound, the loser of this race will probably have an advantage come 2012, simply because he/she had not been the President over the previous term. So don't lose heart! Even of you lose on Tuesday, victory is just around the corner.
Christina Garcia, a resident of Council Bluffs IA was recently duped into signing a ballot.
According to Angela Hayes, Ms. Garcia's daughter, a Democratic canvasser visited her mother sometime mid-October. Ms. Garcia's son, Emeterio Garcia, who lives nearby was called over during the conversation at which point Emeterio asked the canvasser what was going on, the canvasser stated he was there to "register new democrats" and Emeterio responded that "his mother was not a democrat." Emerterio than asked the man to leave.
Ms. Garcia contacted her daughter and her son soon there after wondering when she could vote. Angela Hayes, Ms. Garcia's daughter then followed up with Pottawatomie County Clerk and discovered that her mother had already voted by mail.
I've raised before what I find to be the Obama campaign's disturbing attempts to indoctrinate children. Now they are encouraging those children to go out as little Obama ambassadors to convert their grandparents to The One:
Last Friday, Representative Jan Schakowsky wrote an article for the Huffington Post encouraging supporters to reach out to their Grandparent to talk about Barack Obama:
This message is exclusively for Obama supporters who: 1) Have grandparents who are planning to vote for John McCain or are undecided about their choice for President and 2) Know someone whose grandparents are voting for John McCain or are undecided about their choice for President.
...I have been overwhelmed and inspired by the passion and commitment of young Obama volunteers and supporters everywhere I have traveled as one of the national co-chairs of Barack's campaign. Harnessing that energy for the purpose of moving older voters toward Barack Obama seemed like a natural.
Rep. Schakowsky lists a number of reasons why anyone over the age of 65 should support Barack Obama, including his position on Social Security, Medicare and taxes (as well as John McCain's opposing positions on the same). But in the end, she argues, the most effective argument may be an emotional one.
The one thing most grandparents have in common is that they have the most wonderful grandchildren in the world - so clever, so handsome, so pretty, ever so precious. Even if you are still unsure of your path in life, and even if your parents and friends occasionally wonder about you, your grandma and grandpa love you and have faith in you.
That is your weapon! "Precious" needs to get on the phone and say, "Grandpa, Grandma, I am asking you to vote for Barack Obama. This is really important to me. It's about my future. It's about the world I will be living in. It's about the world I want for my future children. (They will love that one!) Please! Do it for me!"
...The really great part of this strategy is that everything you could possibly say to your grandparents about how important Barack's election is for you is one hundred percent true.
"That is your weapon"? This is a campaign strategy? Employing the emotional bonds that grandparents and parents have for the children in their families in order to guilt them into voting for Obama? Apparently neither cynicism nor rank ambition have any bounds.
What bothers me most about this is the base manipulation of kids who don't know any better. The Obama campaign is actively and aggressively encouraging the use of children as emotional fodder in its effort to elect him president. I can't think of anything lower or more craven than using children to attain one's own goals.
As a society, we look down on the overly exuberant dad who tries to relive his glory days as a football player through his son. We excoriate the mother who paints her daughter in garish hues for beauty pageants, all so she can recapture her lost youth. Why then would we find purposefully indoctrinating young children to be Obamabots to be acceptable on any level? I can't think of any reasons because, quite frankly, there are none. Using children for any reason is wrong. Period. End of story.
Considering how deep in the tank the media is for Obama, I was going to start taking bets on the first day that some "journalist" started referring to The One as the "presumptive President." Like an adolescent boy getting his first chance at doing the horizontal bop, the New Mexico Sun News decided to forgo the warm up and jumped straight to the climax ... a bit prematurely:
For The New Mexico Sun News it is either a major scoop or "Dewey Beats Truman" déjà vu 60 years later.
"Obama Wins!" is the headline of the edition on newsstands now, complete with "special collector's edition" in red bold typeface.
The Sun News is a bi-monthly newspaper and its Oct 26-Nov 8 issue had to hit the streets, and the newsstands, before the election. So the editors decided to make a leap of faith and declare Democrat Barack Obama the winner.
In an article explaining their choice, the editors unabashedly wrote, "When it comes to calling the winner of a presidential election, everyone wants to be first. The New Mexico Sun News hereby claims that achievement."
That was so ... unsatisfying. Oh well. I guess that means were all now officially fu**ed.
I was going to save this for later, but now seems as good a time as any [HT: Stop the ACLU].
As a bonus, and since someone was going to get around to it in the comments given my introduction above, see after the jump.
As a lifelong Caucasian, I am beginning to think the time has finally come to take the right to vote away from white people, at least until we come to our senses. Seriously, I just don't think we can be trusted to exercise it responsibly anymore.
I give you Exhibit A: The last eight years.
In 2000, Bush-Cheney stole the election, got us attacked, and then got us into two no-exit wars. Four years later, white people reelected them. Is not the repetition of the same behavior over and over again with the expectation of a different outcome the very definition of insanity? (It is, I looked it up.)
Exhibit B is any given Sarah Palin rally.
Exhibit C would be Ed Rendell and John Murtha, who in separate moments of on-the-record candor they would come to regret, pointing out that there are plenty of people in Pennsylvania who just cannot bring themselves to pull the lever for a black man - no matter what they tell pollsters.
White people are too prone to being racist to be trusted with the franchise according to Mr. Valania, echoing John Murtha's assessment of Western Pennsylvania voters. Is he simply joking? Well, the sarcasm is pretty thick, but the author does offer this explanation of his intent:
By this point, you either think I am joking or are calling me an elitist. I assure you I am neither. OK, maybe a little of both.
Joking or not, the basic gist of the article is deadly serious, and sounds a theme that we've seen touted before: i.e. the only reason Barack Obama would lose the election is because of racist white people.
And regardless of the humorous intent, it's clear that the author thinks that Obama should be elected primarily because he is black, which is why he states with tongue sort of hanging out in cheek:
These people are ruining things for the rest of us white people who are ready to move on.
Accordingly, per Mr. Valania, white people shouldn't be allowed to vote. How quaint.
Any guesses as to how this would go over if instead it were a humorous suggestion as to why black people should not be allowed to vote? Hispanics? Women? Yeah, you're right. Who I am kidding. That sort of editorial wouldn't ever see the light of day in a major newspaper. How silly of me.
Hemmed in by the global financial squeeze and commodities slump, Argentina's leftist government has seemingly found a novel way to find the money to stay afloat: cracking open the piggybank of the nation's private pension system.
The government proposed to nationalize the private pensions, which would provide it with much of the cash it needs to meet debt payments and avoid a second default this decade.
[...]
Argentine President Cristina Kirchner said the move to take over the private pension system was aimed at protecting investors from losses resulting from global market turmoil. Funds in the system, which is parallel to a government pension system, are administered by financial firms. The private system has about $30 billion in assets and generates about $5 billion in new contributions each year.
While no one knows for sure what the government would do with the private system, economists said nationalization would let the government raid new pension contributions to cover short-term debts due in coming years.
This sort of thing is fairly predictable since government is relatively awful at just about everything other than making rules and enforcing (some of) them. In this case, government has an abysmal record of saving (much less spending on budget), primarily because it always needs more cash to dole in out in exchange for campaign support and votes. Meanwhile, the private sector is actually pretty good at saving because, well, individuals know they need to pay for their ability to feed, house and clothe themselves when they are too old, among other reasons (e.g. the dreams of the "Joe the Plumbers" of the world). So when the successful savers amass a big pile of cash, and the spendthrifts with force of law have the big guns, a raid is inevitable.
And what will Argentinians be giving up?
The private pension system was created as an alternative to state pension funds in 1994, when conservative President Carlos Saúl Menem ran Argentina and free-market policies were in vogue in Latin America. Countries in the region followed the example of Chile, which had privatized pensions in 1981. In Argentina, workers have the option of paying into individual retirement accounts run by pension funds rather than the government.
Three million Argentines do so. They can track their accounts and have some say over how the pension funds invest the money, making the system somewhat like U.S. 401(k) accounts. After a nationalization, it's presumed the government-run system would absorb the private funds.
The Latin American system has helped create a large pool of domestic savings that can fund local capital markets and lend money for projects like toll roads. In Argentina, Mexico and Chile, pension funds are among the biggest players in local stock markets, helping young companies get access to capital.
The main Merval Argentine stock index tumbled 12% on Tuesday, largely on fears that the market would atrophy if the government used new pension contributions to pay debt rather than let it go into the capital markets.
The head of the Argentine association of private pension funds, Sebastian Palla, blasted the government step. He said that since their 1994 inception, the funds have had a 13.9% average annual return.
If Democrats are boldly proclaiming to implement the same sorts of confiscatory policies as the leftist government of Argentina before the election, what do you suppose they will do if they achieve the dream scenario of an Obama presidency, a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, and a dominant majority in the House? I shudder to think.
People are raising lots of questions about the accuracy of current polling in the Presidential race. Some are almost certainly doing so out of a sense of desperation, hoping against hope that McCain isn't as far behind as it seems. But then, some have legitimate concerns about the state of the polling process, and whether or not the numbers we hear every day have enough integrity to properly handicap the horserace.
The polls are wrong this year, very wrong. I have been saying this for months, and I have backed up my claim with both statistical and anecdotal support. The claims I have made have inspired some, caused others to laugh in derision, and brought others to test their assumptions and revisit the hard data. Along the way, there have been a lot of questions about how and why the polls could be wrong. The most common complaint, is that for all of the polls to be wrong, there would need to be some sort of conspiracy, or else an incredibly stupid decision made across the board. Well, I am not a big believer in conspiracies, but I do think that the polling groups have fallen into a groupthink condition.
DJ Drummond lays out a fairly comprehensive theory as to why polling this year is particularly unreliable, and it's not based on accusations of media bias as one might expect. Instead, he presents a logical case for why polling has become skewed, and raises some interesting issues that should cause one to question the accuracy of polling results. One point in particular that I found interesting is that, from a business standpoint, polling may often be used not to convey an accurate picture of the electorate's views, but instead to drive the current narrative being sold by the media.
That's where that whole "bounce" thing after the conventions comes from - do you really think republicans or independents got more excited about Obama because of his convention, or that democrats and independents were more likely to vote for McCain because of the GOP convention? When you think about it, it should be obvious that these bumps are artificial unless there is a clear cause to show a change in support. And when you take apart the polls and drill down to the raw data, what you find is a close race with a gradually declining but still large pool of undecided voters, which is consistent with the known facts and actions we see from both campaigns.
I've often wondered why there would be a "bounce" after a convention. Especially one that doesn't seem to last for more than a week. Could it be a self-fulfilling prophecy in that pollsters are simply finding what they expect to be there? I can't say for sure, but it does raise some interesting questions.
Even more interesting, however, is the last sentence in the quoted paragraph above. If the polling is accurate, then why are the campaigns behaving contrary to what those polls are telling the rest of us? Every news junkie knows that campaigns do their own internal polling, and that these are generally considered the most accurate. How different are they from what the media is reporting? One concrete example suggests "very" [HT: HotAir]:
Despite a double-digit deficit in polls, Sen. John McCain is throwing almost everything he can into Pennsylvania, seeking to flip soft supporters of his Democratic rival - many of whom favored Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton in the primary, with some boldly acknowledging that race was a factor.
[...]
"He's 13 points behind in the state polls, Obama's outspending him 4-to-1, Obama has a huge field organization that he can't begin to touch, and the race hasn't tightened in a week. Did I miss anything?" said Terry Madonna, director of Pennsylvania's Franklin & Marshall College Poll.
[...]
One of [McCain's] senior advisers said recently that not all is lost in Pennsylvania.
"We're seeing very different poll numbers," the adviser said. "We're not seeing double digits; we think it's much closer."
An aide on the ground in the state, meanwhile, said internal polls show Mr. Obama's lead in the "mid- to low single digits."
Getty Images Young supporters cheer for Mr. McCain at the United Sports Training Center in Thorndale in southeastern Pennsylvania. The McCain campaign sees the state as a must-win in the election.
Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell has sent two separate memos to the Obama campaign in the past five days requesting that the Democratic Presidential candidate-as well as Hillary and Bill Clinton-return to campaign in Pennsylvania, Rendell told CNN's Gloria Borger.
Rendell said the McCain campaign is clearly making a push to win Pennsylvania, given the recent visits by the Arizona senator, his wife and his running mate. As a result, he wants Obama to appear in western Pennsylvania, Harrisburg and one more "large rally" in Philadelphia. Democrats generally worry that the race is significantly closer than what recent polls have suggested. According to Rendell, there is also worry among Democrats the McCain campaign has successfully raised the enthusiasm level among Republicans in the state.
In my book, when you want to know what someone really thinks or believes, pay attention to what they do, and not so much to what they say. When both campaigns are staking out a particular battleground, you can rest assured that, whatever the media polls are telling you, there is a real battle about to take place.
Of course, even if the polls are deviating significantly from the on-the-ground reality of this election (and consummate poll-watcher, Michael Barone, doesn't think they are that far off), that does not mean that McCain is actually ahead, nor that he doesn't have serious work to do if he expects to win on Nov. 4. My best guess is that he's still behind Obama in the key battleground states, although it is probably only by a point or two in places like Virginia and Missouri, and he may even have a lead in Florida and North Carolina.
Strategically, however, it's clear that Obama has many more paths to victory than McCain, and that McCain will have to make darn good use of what little money he has over the next few weeks. Even then it may not make a difference, but if he were to base his decisions on the media polls it would be understandable if he just decided to quit now. Apparently, McCain's internals are dictating a different strategy.
The only thing we can know for sure at this point is that we won't be able to judge the accuracy of the polling until the only one that counts is concluded on Nov. 4th ... umm, most likely.
OK, so during the debate tonight I mentioned that I had a tax policy idea. This is something that I came up with on the spur-of-the-moment a few nights ago, while discussing the general ideas espoused by the candidates with a friend. In a nutshell, I would turn America into a true stakeholder society by (A) having cumulative voting, and (B) providing that everyone who is eligible to vote, has the same number of votes as the percentage of income he/she pays in taxes. Let that sink in.
The idea germinated in the fecund valley of the present debate over just how much the "greedy" should be forced to pay for the current state of financial affairs. If the "greedy" is generally defined as those who earn more money than 95% of the populace, and that 95% already pays something like 60% of the taxes, then should those 5% have something akin to 60% of the say in how their money is spent? In essence, this is a corporate model that I'm proposing, in which the voters (shareholders) have the same say as their share of taxes per income (investment) paid to the country (corporation).
First off, one of the known deficiencies with one-man-one-vote is that the tally loses any sense of intensity. By that I mean, if Voter A feels really strongly about a candidate, while Voter B feels rather ambivalent about the whole affair, and yet they have the same amount of influence on who's elected, then there is a mismatch between who is elected and who people are most excited about being elected.
Of course, there are good reasons why we would want to dampen the intensity of a vote (e.g. fairness, parity, balance), but that doesn't necessarily lead to better candidates being elected, and may actually result in worse candidates achieving office. The other side of the coin is that we don't necessarily want the most fanatical having more say-so over our collective (ugh, hate that word) future than those who employ their vote more judiciously. In short, there was genius in our Founders' method of spreading the franchise as broadly as possible (although, historically, it was only spread to land-holders), in that the vagaries of heart-felt fervor would be tempered by the sober reflections of less power hungry citizens.
Yet, when ambivalent voters are permitted the same voting power as the fanatical partisans, we seem to end up with a menagerie of candidates who are nothing more than differing variations of vote-buyers. They will promise voters the moon, and brazenly declare that the cost of the moon will be taken from the hide of just a small percentage of the electorate, as if that minority will either sit by passively or realistically be the one's paying for Luna.
So, how do we balance the competing interests? By giving each voter the same stake in an election as he/she has in the tax base. In combination with this proposal, I would also eliminate each and every tax credit, deduction, and offset. In this way, every taxpayer would have not only an incentive to maximize their taxable income (to an extent), they would also have an incentive to vote for politicians who lessen, or at least equalize, the tax burden of the entire electorate. By my estimation, the impetus would be towards a flatter tax that draws the electorate in to supporting fewer goodies and more fiscal responsibility on the part of government.
Certain objections to my plan are predictable. Some will ask whether or not my proposed system simply empowers those who already have the most power. Questions in this vein ignore the fact that a ridiculously small minority of the population pays a majority of the taxes. There are way more people paying 15% tax rates than those paying 35% rates, and those numbers drown out any perceived advantage that the upper-income brackets may be perceived to have (i.e. 50 Million voters paying 15% tax rate have much more power than 5 Million paying 35%, because it's percentage of income I'm proposing, not percentage of total taxes paid).
Another objection that will inevitably arise is that those who pay no income tax will be disenfranchised. My response: So? If you have no stake in our society, then why should you have a say in how it's governed? If you are effectively or actually a ward of the of the state, then what exactly entitles you to command how everyone else who pays for your existence is governed? There really are no good arguments in favor of non-payers having any say, other than vague and conclusory perorations about "fairness" that conveniently ignore the incongruity of expecting workers to support slackers.
However, despite my confidence in the efficacy of my proposal, I am certain there are holes in the theory that have yet to be exposed. So, take your best and worst shots, and tell me why I'm crazy. I'll respond until the idea is no longer defensible.
I definitely aspire to the maxim that if you're going to do something, you may as well do it to the best of your ability. Politico's Ben Smith provides an object lesson of that maxim and shows us how to properly frame and "report" propaganda:
In an interview with the sympathetic conservative talk radio host this afternoon, Obama offered the clearest explanation yet of how an extremely careful politician allowed himself anywhere near a former '60s radical who would become a Republican target in this year's presidential campaign.
Obama "had assumed" from Bill Ayers' stature in Chicago, he told the Philadelphia-based Michael Smerconish, that Ayers had been "rehabilitated" since his 1960s crimes.
[...]
"The gentleman in question, Bill Ayers, is a college professor, teaches education at the University of Illinois," he said. "That's how i met him — working on a school reform project that was funded by an ambassador and very close friend of Ronald Reagan's" along with "a bunch of conservative businessmen and civic leaders."
"Ultimately, I ended up learning about the fact that he had engaged in this reprehensible act 40 years ago, but I was eight years old at the time and I assumed that he had been rehabilitated," Obama said.
That may not have been an unreasonable assumption for Obama in the 1990s. Though Ayers never repented his part in the Weather Underground bombings, he had not yet become notorious for advertising them. That notoriety returned in 2001, when he published his memoir, "Fugitive Days," and reminisced about the bombings in a New York Times interview that happened to appear September 11 of that year.
Well, I suppose it may not have been an unreasonable assumption (or explanation). At least, in an alternative universe where Obama hadn't already claimed that it was just a guy in his neighborhood, and that he didn't actually know that Ayers was a terrorist. Take those facts away and, yeah, maybe it wouldn't be such a unreasonable assumption.
On the other hand, it may not have been an unreasonable assumption that Obama is telling yet another porkie pie regarding his relationship with Ayers. You know, if you were a journalist or something. Perhaps, if a reporter had bothered to notice that this was yet another conflicting account, and that it was based on the dubious notion that Obama had not met Ayers until he was oh-so fortunate enough to be made chairman of Ayers' charitable foundation sight unseen, then the reporter might have dug a bit deeper into the new story. Heck, he could have just looked on the intertubes:
Key point - Obama claims that he first met Ayers "ten or fifteen years ago" (1993 to 1998) when they partnered up
