What's Wrong with America

They cancelled the reenactment of Washington Crossing the Delaware. It was too windy with strong currents.

On Wednesday, President-elect Barack Obama also asked the country to look to Washington's improbable crossing of the Delaware River on Dec. 25, 1776, as inspiration to get through current tough times.

If in modern times with readily available rescue boats, helicopters, and treatments for hypothermia we are too scared to merely reenact the crossing, how the heck are we going to be bold and daring enough to perform the crossing, march on Trenton and defeat the Hessians? Can't do that, we're to scared of injury (and presumably lawsuits)

The historical crossing happened shortly after Thomas Paine wrote the following. Here's hoping that Obama can really use it to inspire greatness, instead of today's bickering over who should steal our bailout billions.

These are times that try men's souls; the summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.

Silly Letter to the Editor #1

In a letter to the SF Chronicle, Dec 3 2008,(scroll down to the letter "S.F. didn't wait") Emily Murase, the Executive Director of the Dept. on the Status of Women, (a well paid city employee) argues that the USA should ratify a women's human rights treaty. She points out that it has been ratified by Afghanistan, Iraq, and North Korea.



Well, we all know that they are liberated paradises for women. Just ignore those Acid attacks, honour killings, and starvation. This treaty must really work! Glad to see San Francisco tax dollars funding such astute analysis.

SIlly New Republic Article #1

Michelle Cottle writes about the Redemption of Barney Frank. Now, what would one expect to find needs redeeming?

Could it be, er, his long relationship with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac? Maybe with some explanation as to how he has learned from his errors, what he did wasn't so bad, he is working to fix things, etc???

Bzzt. No. Cottle claims that his error was his affair with a male prostitute. Cottle wont even mention his affair with a page and with an executive in Fannie Mae. Let alone Frank possibly helping contribute towards the current financial meltdown.

Whether or not you think Frank had much responsibility for the Fannie / Freddie mess, it should be addressed in an article about Barney Frank! It would be a perfect place for the leftist New Republic to address the charges against Frank, and present their case that he had little or no culpability. Sadly, New Republic is intellectualy incapable of even mentioning the history, let alone making a case for Frank's innocence.

As you can see from the comments on the New Republic site, I'm far from the first to notice this asinine article. I'm trying to understand (and balance my center-right tendencies) with leftish thinking, and thought that New Republic was one of their more capable outlets. But this is just stupid. Why should I believe any future article by them?

Minnesota Senate Recount

Minnesota NPR has many examples of challenged ballots. The first thing that should be obvious is that neither side gives a crap about the will of the voters. Just win baby.

For example, on the left is a pretty clear vote for Coleman, but the voter may have left an identifying mark (blacked out) which is invalid by Minnesota law. Franken is challenging.

Lawyers must be running this, cause they are cheerfully arguing both sides on separate ballot. For example, Franken is arguing against the ballot on the left, while arguing for the ballot in the right. (Coleman's side isn't any better from what I can see)





















If this gets really tight, do we really want somebody who voted for "Lizard People" for President to determine whether or not the Democrats obtain a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate?


Some voters who flippantly voted are now showing regret.


dailykos has a good analysis of a few of the "suspicious" vote changes, showing that at least two of the three "oops, we mis-transcribed" corrections are very reasonable, and the third one is reasonable.

A Dartmouth Study suggests that undervotes will favor Franken.

Surely there will be tons of suits and ranting over a few hundred votes here and there and the "intent" of some undercount ballot. But nobody will mention that a huge 15% of the voters chose an independent, Dean Barkley. Shouldn't we wonder about their intent? How would their votes have gone with no Barkley? This is an argument for some sort of "instant-runoff" system. In Oregon, the independent got 5%, and the winner only 49%, another candidate for an instant runoff. Especially since the independent very probably took more votes from the loser than the winner. Or at least a normal runoff as is happening in Georgia.

California Bond Propositions

I noticed something about most of the 2008 California Bond Propositions.

Prop 1A: "Provides for a bond issue of $9.95 billion..."

Prop 3: "Authorizes $980,000,000 in bonds..."

Prop 6: "Requires minimum of $965,000,000 each year to be allocated..."

Prop 12: "This act provides for a bond issue of nine hundred million dollars ($900,000,000)..."


Notice anything? Like they try to deceive you about the cost? Just like that nice house on the corner listed for $999,000. Geez, I'm sure glad it's not a million, that would be out of our price range! Of course, just like a mortgage, the true cost of the bonds is roughly double the up-front cost.

For the record, Props 5 and 10 did not try this shenanigans.

Silly New York Times Editorial #2

The prize goes to Frank Rich for It Still Felt Good the Morning After.

For eight years, we’ve been told by those in power that we are small, bigoted and stupid — easily divided and easily frightened. This was the toxic catechism of Bush-Rove politics. It was the soiled banner picked up by the sad McCain campaign

Bush, Rove and McCain think we are bigoted and stupid? Or was it Democrat John Murtha? Or Democrat Al Sharpton? Rich cites zero examples of Republicans calling us stupid bigots.

If I had a dollar for every Democrat who told me there was no way that Americans would ever ... elect a black man named Barack Hussein Obama president, I could almost start to recoup my 401(k).

Rich cites democrats thinking us bigoted, not Bush or Rove.

and it was often abetted by an amen corner in the dominant news media.

Agreed here. But, ever since no WMDs were found in Iraq in 2004, the dominant news media is hardly a mouthpiece for Bush / Rove. Anybody claiming otherwise is delusional.

While there are still bigots in America, they are in unambiguous retreat.

And which press enabler of Bush / Rove said this? Frank Rich himself!

It's a remarkable editorial to complain about Bush / Rove thinking Americans are bigots, then documenting only democrats and the press calling them so. Topping it off by the author himself calling Americans bigots.

To their great credit, on an historic election day the American people showed that they are not racist bigots. Rich provides good statistics proving this. One final example: my dad, who grew up in the 20s and 30s in a small town in a former slave state, voted for Obama.

A Followup on Media Coverage of the Campaign

In an earlier post, I used data from the Pew Research Center to show that Fox News was surprisingly "Fair and Balanced" in their coverage of McCain and Obama, and MSNBC wasn't. Here is a followup with the numbers from some of the other media outlets. Note that in some cases the numbers come from me squinting at the charts, so they may be slightly off. What I call "Pro and Anti", Pew called favorable and negative. Pew's "Neutral" was ignored. Pro and Anti are shorter and fit in the chart better. :-)

The definition of "Bias towards Obama" is straightforward:

(Pro Obama% / Anti Obama%) / (Pro McCain% / Anti McCain%)

A value of 1 shows no bias, values significantly greater than 1 show a bias towards Obama, and values less than 1 show a pro-McCain bias. For the VP Debate, substitute Biden and Palin for Obama and McCain. The CBS "anti" numbers were not given in the data, but were said to be "similar to overall", so I put in the overall numbers.

Conclusion: other then Fox, the media was seriously "in the tank" for Obama. Which is why the Saturday Night Live spoofs ring so true.