Smythe's World

Why do people pretend that the Washington Times and FoxNews practice "journalism"? The notion that they are in any way equivalent to the Washington Post and CNN, both of which have a conservative lean but at least strive, on paper, to some objectivity and balance, is loopy. The day that the head of ABC News gives secret political advice to Al Gore will be the day I can hear the term "liberal media", and not laugh (btw, if you want to read a particularly bizarre defense of the "liberal mendacity=bad; conservative lying=good, check this out).

I've always been someone for whom the day after Thanksgiving was always a happier time than the holiday itself. I got the day off when I was at school, and most of the jobs I've ever held the day has either been free or a paid "holiday", when I was expected in at work but not expected to do anything other than keep my chair warm til lunchtime, when I would take off. Needless to say, it's a much better sports day; while the Friday after always has a great slate of college rivalries and showdowns, Thanksgiving is famous for having probably the weakest selection of games of all the holidays: mediocre NFL, no good college games, no hoops or hockey worth mentioning. MLK Day is much, much better.

The appeal of the evening's feast has always escaped me as well. To put it bluntly, roast turkey sucks. I am always left wondering why my mom would always enthusiastically save portions of the turkey for leftovers; why would I want to eat something that was dry as toast when it was originally served. Was keeping it in the fridge for a few days going to loosen up the meat? Safe to say, it's the only time of year I consider putting candied yams or cranberries on my dinner plate, and I have never been a big fan of mashed potatoes. Thanksgiving, bah humbug !!

So a couple of years ago, I decided to take matters into my own hands. Rather than suffer my parents' (or one of my assorted aunts') cooking in silence, I would contribute in a more positive manner to the holiday. I invented (I think) my own Thanksgiving masterpiece, Turkey Jambalaya. It took a couple of hours to prepare, but at least I knew there would be something in the feast that I knew I would eat with a certain enthusiasm, it was a way I contribute to the family, rather than being a mere parasite during the holiday, and it killed time I would have spent sitting like a blob on the sofa watching an execrable Detriot Lions game.

It's not a hard recipe. Take some sliced turkey chunks, and submerge them in cayenne pepper. Use fresh, uncooked shrimp (one of the things that takes awhile with the preparation is deveining the creatures) and either andouille or turkey sausage. I also like to add lobster pieces; they go well with the rice. The rice and spices take a little longer to prepare; the proper way to make jambalaya can be found in the appropriate cookbooks, but Zatarain's mix is a speedy if bland substitute. Add the turkey and sausage after the rice has boiled, and add the shrimp and lobster towards the end. Stir frequently, and liberally add cayenne pepper. Bay leaves are a nice touch at the end. A minute before you turn off the heat, add salt and just a little gumbo file. Let it sit for a half hour.

Always make enough for two portions: yours, and the rest of your family (just kidding). And I tell you, there is nothing like having your host (my cousin's hubby) ask you specifically to leave the leftovers with him. When someone you hardly know praises your dish, you finally get to a chance to see why it was your mom used to slave away in the kitchen on Thanksgiving: not for signs of appreciation or thanks from others, but from a sense that you contributed something to the happiness of others.

The I.O.C. is prepared to vote tomorrow on whether to eliminate three sports, baseball, softball, and the modern pentathlon, following the 2004 Olympics. Those sports would be replaced by rugby and golf(?), although the conventional wisdom is that they won't act at this time, and they will get a reprieve. Softball is only included now as a female counterpart for baseball; outside of North America and Australia, the sport doesn't exist. When baseball was added for the 1992 Olympics, the hope was that one day major leaguers would take part, and the Olympics would represent a "World Cup" for the sport. Clearly, that hasn't happened, and the hope of many baseball fans to one day see a gold medal game with Pedro Martinez squaring off against Randy Johnson will not come to fruition any time soon.

The third sport they want to dump, the modern pentathlon, was designed originally for soldiers, who make up a disproportionate number of the participants. It's an interesting hybrid of cross-country running, fencing, shooting, swimming and the steeplechase, but it is nearly impossible to televise, and regardless of what happens tomorrow, it is inevitable that it will eventually be cut. It's too bad; there should be a place in the Olympics for events that may be boring for spectators and invisible to NBC, but still require unique athletic skills; ironically, its most famous participant in the Olympics was George Patton, who finished fifth in the 1912 Stockholm Olympics after he performed poorly in the shooting phase of the competition (no wonder he couldn't hit the Luftwaffe at the beginning of Patton).

One thing not to be thankful for...Arik Sharon is now considered a "moderate". I guess when your opponent is, for all intents and purposes, a fascist, it's not hard to look like you're middle-of-the-road.

As I prepare to start my world-famous "Turkey Jambalaya", I would like to wish all of you a Happy Thanksgiving. I will share my dark thoughts on the holiday later....

Because I care about my readers, and I consider this site to be a pleasure, not a chore, I will continue blogging through the Thanksgiving weekend. Others may abandon you for their families and their turkey and their lame-ass football games involving Dallas and Detroit, but I will never leave you....

Absolutely brilliant put-down of George Will in TPM. I am always going to have this picture of Mr. Will in the back of my mind giving "backrubs to power", kind of like Sydney Bristow in last week's Alias episode.

Political Correctness Run Amok: It's not like what this person said was false, but someone's sensitivities might be hurt, so she had to go.

Yesterday's interminable brief on the topic of permalinks was originally intended to comment on this other Jim Capozzola post. Since he subsequently published something even more interesting, I put it aside, but now that most of the bloggers have opined on that issue, I would think that a better solution than simply de-perming a blog that links to LittleGreenFootballs or any other hatesite, would be to find out why people link there in the first place. Appropriate reasons for currently linking to LGF include: 1) I link to every political blog on the web that I know of, regardless of politics; 2) Charles Johnson saved my life, and permalinking LGF is the least I can do; 3) I linked there awhile back, before the Remulaks took over the site, but I will soon de-perm, as soon as someone teaches me how to use the delete key; or 4) I fervently desire to see the extermination of every Arab on the face of the planet. Any other reason puts you beyond the pale of rational political debate.

There is still one Senate race to be determined: the runoff in Louisiana between Democratic incumbent Mary Landrieu, and Republican Suzanne Terrell. As I have said before, this is a race that liberals should feel no stake in whatsoever. Landrieu voted for the Bush tax cut, the authorization to invade Iraq, and the Homeland Security Bill, she has indicated that she will not filibuster right wing judicial nominees, she doesn't appear to have too many African-American friends in her home state, and, in any event, it doesn't really make a damn bit of difference if the Democrats have 48 or 49 Senators, if one of our Senators won't come through at crunch time. This isn't Al Gore being knifed in the back by Ralph Nader, mind you. The defeat of the Zell Miller philosophy within the party has to be one of the few bright spots for Democrats in the last election, and I can't help but be amused at the irony of all those Democrats who kissed W's rear end on the tax cut and Iraq discovering, to their horror, that he couldn't care less.

This next post will probably be of interest only for the blogging-obsessives out there, people who spend way, way too much time, at work and at home, crafting their own posts and scrounging for hits, hopping from blog to blog in search of that moment's zeitgeist; nevertheless, I'm going to write this for those of you who either visit this site regularly, but no other blogs, or those who have visited here by accident, in a forlorn attempt to pursue a Google search for "Nude Hayden Christenson" references.

As many of you notice, off to the side is a list of other web sites, predominantly bloggers, that I have sorted according to a very loose categorization (Politics/Humor/Misc). Those are called permalinks, and they serve a number of functions here. I visit each site at least once a week, and in effect, those sites get free advertising here. I do not endorse everything that gets posted on those other websites, but my criteria tends to be that if I consistently like what I read, and I agree with the blogger's politics, that site gets permalinked.

If I don't agree with the politics, but I find the blogger to be interesting, informative, and respectful of the opinions of other people, well, the same thing goes; they get included. I am still naive enough to believe that the most important political activity a free people get to participate in is the dialogue, where men and women of good will can debate issues and share insights developed from different experiences, without name-calling and slurs. Right now, just a little bit more than half the people in this country disagree with most of my views; two years ago, a little bit more than half the people in this country seemed to share my opinions, for all the good that did. Of course, such a belief has not dissuaded me from occasionally shouting when I should be arguing, but hopefully I limit my choice of targets in that regard to public figures who have access to much wider media than I have, and who can defend themselves.

Another reason for setting up permalinks is convenience. Just by visiting my own site, I have ready access to a few dozen favorite links, even when I'm away from my home computer. Moreover, a few months ago, I installed a code (called "Sitemeter") on my computer that allows me to track how many visitors I get each day, and how they were referred here. Wherein I discovered that many visitors were bloggers who had discovered my website from their own version of Sitemeter, or another related program, when I (or someone else) had visited. Instant Karma !! Permalinking another blogger's website was a darned effective way of advertising this site without having to spend a dime. I could also see whether other bloggers were permalinking my site; my philosophy in that regard is to link to anyone who links to my site first, just out of common courtesy.

So what's the point, you ask? Late last week, there was a blogging conference at Yale Law School, featuring many of the rather minor celebrities of this field, including Joshua Marshall, Mickey Kaus, and Glenn Reynolds (ie. Instapundit). From what I can gather, it was a largely uneventful seminar, but I was struck by a comment that Mr. Kaus made, to the effect "that among bloggers there is a 'Darwinian self-interest in being nice to each other and maintaining a civil discourse.' He may disagree with Andrew Sullivan but he doesn't really want to piss him off; it's about links; it's about traffic; it's about -- gasp -- community." (Sullivan, for those of you who don't know, is a former New Republic editor who has a popular, but increasingly erratic, far right blog) [Link via Eschaton]

While I have no doubt that such an attitude is all-too-common, being terrified myself that if I ever publish my true opinions of Bruce Springsteen, I will lose my hallowed position on Altercation's list of permalinks, I have to ask what the hell difference it makes how much traffic I get. Is there anybody out there who thinks he or she can make money off their blog if they get more links. Who cares if you have fifty hits a day or fifty thousand? Isn't your obligation to tell the truth still the same? In any event, what are you selling to your visitors, if not your own individuality? There might come a day when someone is able to do a blog for profit, or even make a living at it, but we haven't reached that point yet, so there isn't really a point to selling out.

So having said that, why do I even care if anyone links to this site? And I do care. I visit Sitemeter every couple of hours, just to monitor who's visited. I try to time my posts for the fifty-second mark each minute, so I am more likely to be listed on the Blogger.com role of recently updated sites, a dependable source for unique visitors. It does matter to me.

Well, as it turns out, it's all about high school. The same social hierarchies that existed in high school remain with us to this day, in the blogosphere and elsewhere, as James Capozzola brilliantly points out here. One of the ways these social cliques revisit themselves on us years later is our need to be popular, and the consequent need to make others less popular, lest we lose popularity ourselves. One can see signs of this behavior in the way Al Gore is covered by the media; the former Veep is an intelligent, handsome, and decent politician, who committed the unforgivable sin of having been born into some degree of privilege and being a person of substance. Having attended an all-male prep school, I knew guys like that, people who were rich, well-connected and intelligent, possessing an ease with the opposite sex that I never had, and who were nice guys to boot. I hated people like that, since it forced me to squarely confront my own mediocrity: I realized that no matter how hard I might work, I was always going to be a step behind those people, and that they actually might deserve their success.

Hence, we get to read article after article about how Al Gore "claimed" to have discovered the Internet or the Love Canal, or how he's constantly reinventing himself, all of which is bullshit. Pundits have the same view of Gore that Nixon had of the Kennedys, that it was so unfair that the Kennedys were born into privilege, and were so beloved for their public service, while he had to fight and scrape for everything he got. Doesn't Al Gore realize how intelligent they are, how worthy they are to be popular; unlike that rich idiot, George W., who gives them nicknames and goofs off on the campaign plane, Gore speaks in complete sentences, and treats the public like adults, truly insulting behavior for a well-born politician. And so, pundits quickly realize that the best way to get ahead is not to challenge the conventional wisdom, and to not do anything that would jeopardize their popularity.

To look at one example, take the case of Christopher Hitchens, aka Mr. Samgrass, self-proclaimed English "contrarian". For years, he was a respected if controversial columnist for The Nation magazine, and penned occasional screeds for leftish papers in the U.K. No cow was too sacred, and he wrote scathing pieces about Kissinger, Mother Teresa, the Royal Family, and just about every political figure in the US and Europe. As he got older, he began writing bi-monthly pieces for Vanity Fair, the unofficial journal of nouveau riche America, and became a fixture on the Washington social scene. Once he became more of an establishment figure, his obsessions changed, and his targets became easier. During the Clinton years, he became a one-man conduit for wacko Arkansas conspiracy theories, and has the distinction of being among the few people who still believe Dolly Kyle Browning, Juanita Broderick, and Kathleen Willey. He made the execution of a mentally disabled murderer in Arkansas in 1992 a cause celebre, but has never offered even a word of condolence to that person's victims(who were killed before the convict lost his mind). He testified against one of his best friends at the Clinton impeachment trial, because of a minor difference in recollection about whether the President had referred to Ms. Lewinsky as a "stalker"(as it turns out, accurately, albeit unfairly) . He later spoke at a rally hosted by a white supremacist website, FreeRepublic.com, and became chummy with an historian who denied the Holocaust. Today, he is as sycophantic to George Bush as he was to Kenneth Starr, and in the immortal words of I.F. Stone, will never need to worry about dining alone.

And, so it goes among bloggers. Mr. Kaus' point is that it is human nature to sell out your opinions, even on a form of communication which stresses individuality, and doesn't pay any money. The fact that he may not generate income from his site (which is a part of Slate, a much larger website) has little bearing on whether he is willing to publicly disagree with one of Andrew Sullivan's rants accusing liberals of being treasonous, or (more famously in Kaus' case), refusing to criticize or de-link Ann Coulter from his website after she published a book with fabricated footnotes, and jokingly supported the bombing of the NY Times. If you want the acceptance of your peers, you keep any non-conforming opinions to yourself, and spout the conventional wisdom. I hope that I will have the strength of character to quit publishing this site rather than follow that path, but I doubt it. Please keep me honest.

Today is the 21st birthday of the Bush Twins. Happy Birthday, Barbara and Jenna !!!

I'm surprised this sort of thing hasn't happened before. This morning, a Bankruptcy Trustee got indicted as part of an investigation into the bribery of city officials in Carson, California. The Trustee, Robert Pryce, was one who I had appeared before at creditor meetings about a half dozen times, and he always struck me as being a decent, conscientious chap, one who ran his hearings expeditiously. So far, the prosecution hasn't leaked any evidence that he did anything to harm any of the estates he administered, or did anything other than line the pockets of himself and his cronies, so even if he turns out to have been a crook, I will withhold judgment on him as a person for the time being.

One of the things he is accused of doing is diverting estate business to a real estate broker, in exchange for the broker hiring his daughter in a no-work position. That quid pro quo struck me as interesting, since one of the few bright ideas I had back when I worked for my late father, who was also a Chapter 7 Trustee, was for him to do something like that for me, sort of a wink-wink arrangement with a large bk firm downtown or Century City, in which they would get more business, and I would get an associate position. My dad, being the only person in the room that moment with integrity, politely informed me that such an arrangement would get him booted from the panel, and that if I wanted a high-paying job so badly, why didn't I study harder at law school, etc. I guess, from an ethical, legal, and technical standpoint, he was right, even if it took years of therapy for me to deal with that fact.

For every Mike Piazza or Barry Bonds, Michael Douglas or Gwyneth Paltrow, the Kennedys or Nelson Rockefeller, there are dozens of George and Jeb Bushes, idiot children of the wealthy who attain their positions through nepotism and cronyism, not through merit. This excellent piece by the Leader of the Opposition (Krugman for President in '04 !!) devastatingly reveals the Bush White House as a sanctuary of white affirmative action. (Link via TBogg). Not even mentioned in the column was the travesty of the US Senate approving the nomination last year of Strom Thurmond Jr. as U.S. Attorney in South Carolina; he must be an exceptionally gifted son to attain a post like that in his late 20's, after an unexceptional legal career to date.

BTW, why is it somehow a character flaw for Barbra Streisand (or any other celebrity, for that matter) to occasionally be outspoken about political issues: she may not be the sharpest tool in the shed, but she's not as much of a moron as Richard Perle or Paul Wolfowitz, and she's infinitely more qualified for public service than the children of Antonin Scalia or William Rehnquist.

Good piece in TAPPED today about the breathtaking dishonesty of Beltway "journalist" and Bush shill Howard Kurtz. Anybody who seriously believes that Rush Limbaugh is not a hatemonger probably believes that Julius Streicher was only an opinionated journalist with some "politically incorrect" views.

True story about this year's Sexiest Man Alive, involving a Project GreenLight bash at Joxer Daly's. After he and his companion picked the future director of "Stolen Summer" (thanks for sharing!), they went on the Tonight Show, and afterward wanted to see the East Coast feed. So they threw a big party down at Joxer's, which has a remarkeably sophisticated satellite system, and brought literally a busload of their pals and cronies down to Culver City to liven up a dreary weekday at the pub. His companion was down-to-earth and friendly, chatting up the regulars at the establishment and cementing his rep as the nicest man in the biz. Mr. J-Lo, on the other hand, was a genuine a-hole. Because the bar had an unexpectedly large crowd, one of the part-time bartenders was brought in to tend, and decided to share anecdotes about his other career, as a public school teacher, with the "actor". That didn't please the Great Man, who yelled that he just wanted a vodka tonic. The bar owner, sensing a possible disaster on his hands, decided to take the drink order instead, and asked him what sort of vodka he preferred. Mr. Affleck, showing the class and lese majesty he is famous for in the Industry, politely explained, "I don't give a fuck--just give me my goddam drink !!" He then threw a 20 at the owner's face, and walked away. Nice guy.

I think you can write off the Lakers' chances this season. I know Shaq is set to return Friday, but a 3-9 record without him is not consistent with what you would expect of a championship-caliber team. Tonight's loss, to San Antonio, was typical of this season; it is becoming increasingly clear that in winning their third consecutive title last season, L.A. had to make a deal with the Devil, and he's now come to collect. All those aging role players (Horry, Fox, Shaw, etc.) who needed to be replaced before the team could rebuild, were instead invited back, for sentimental reasons. The young players who were expected to emerge this season out of the shadow of Kobe and Shaq (George and Fisher, to be precise) have tanked. The last two drafts produced nada, which was to be expected considering their draft position, but the team also did nothing to improve themselves through free agency, and the trades Mitch Kupcak attempted haven't panned out (although at least he didn't trade away their future to acquire the Human Defeat Machine, Andre Miller, like their crosstown neighbors did). Sad to say, Shaq's return will not help as much as the fans might hope; I think it will be a struggle just to qualify for the playoffs.

Sorry for discovering this little gem about two weeks late, but here's an interesting profile of one Marshall Mathers for you to chew on...in twenty years, he'll either be dead or a sitcom star.

Blogger T.Bogg has started a contest to name the upcoming memoirs of Justice Clarence Thomas, to be published sometime next year. My fave: Oliver Wendell Holmes, John Holmes, and Me.

Is there some earthly reason we're supposed to care who wins the Senate election in Louisiana next month? I shouldn't have to remind people that this isn't a team sport, where it matters if you have one more point than the other team, or in this case, one more Senator. Principles are supposed to count, too, but unfortunately, the junior senator from Louisiana thought it more important to win reelection than to keep mercury out of children's vaccines. BTW, what the hell was Ted Kennedy thinking when he missed this vote to attend...a fashion show in Paris ??

UPDATE: As it turns out, to get this measure passed required a deal with three moderate GOP Senators, Chafee of Rhode Island and Collins and Snowe of Maine, who forced Trent Lott and Dennis Hastert to agree to remove some of the more egregious pork from the bill, including the provision concerning the pharmaceutical waiver, at the beginning of the next Congress. Wouldn't it be nice if one or two members of the contrarian wing of the Democratic party had some backbone as well?

The NY Times should know better than to expect Tiger Woods to develop a social conscience over the membership policy at Augusta. Woods' modus operandi during his career has been to skirt controversy, like his friend and mentor, Michael Jordan; if he were any more of an Uncle Tom, President Bush would nominate him to the Supreme Court. Those who expect a celebrity to stick his neck out when it's his paycheck that is being threatened are too hopelessly out of it to matter.

In any event, I just don't see why Augusta National's policy should be such a cause celebre at this time. Exactly why we should eliminate barriers for women or African-Americans to join a club in which they can then turn around and discriminate against others on the basis of class is not clear to me. In a way, it would be similar to the state of Mississippi having a law in 1850 prohibiting Jews or Catholics from owning slaves. I know that its wrong for private clubs to discriminate against women, and I can see the argument that it puts those who don't have access to membership at a disadvantage when it comes to business opportunities. But it is the fact that such opportunities only exist for country club members, no matter what racial, sexual or ethnic group they belong to, that is the real outrage. So let us criticize the bigots from Deliverance Country and their hoary golf tournament, but let us place this issue well down on our list of priorities.

But of course, not everything can be filibustered. Efforts to make the tax giveaway permanent, and other matters that involve expenditures, can't be filibustered, and according to this article, even something like the move to allow Arctic drilling may be defined as such. In that case, all proponents would need is a simple majority to allow drilling, which they probably have (link via TAPPED).

Bankruptcy Bill Dies in Senate: What is it that Nelson says on the Simpsons: Hah hah !!! While it is hilarious that this odious piece of legislation failed this time due to language pertaining to the dischargeability of abortion clinic protesting, I doubt that we'll always be this lucky. There is a case to be made that this is a bad bill, period, one that punishes consumers, including those who protest outside abortion clinics. It was a case that the late Senator Wellstone made, sometimes by himself, and Senate Democrats, now that they are in the minority and have no obligation or duty to be cooperative, can pay no better tribute to him than by continuing his battle against the credit card companies.

And in the end, there is always the filibuster.

It's too bad that the Justice Department's new-found interest in enforcing the Sherman Act is only limited to alt-weekly newspapers, but this comes a few weeks too late to save NewTimes, an oft-interesting fishwrap that was in direct competition with the Weekly, but was shut down when their respective publishers made a pact not to compete in the LA and Cleveland markets.

The War on Terra (cont.): While W. plots a war against an imaginary foe (albeit one who did try to kill his dad), our real enemies meet somewhere in South America, as Adam Felber reports.

Principal Rooney Gets Busted !! I suppose there's good reason to be sceptical of these allegations, in light of the exaggerated charges the same DA's office leveled against Wynona Ryder and Paula Poundstone, as well as the fact that the search where all this evidence was supposedly found took place exactly a year ago; not exactly fresh evidence to base a charge. Still, I'll never view Ferris Bueller's Day Off the same way again.

Well, thank kobe Congress is back in session. Today, it passed a law outlawing the "unauthorized placing of pornographic materials in packaged food items". Whether this will also encompass such items as edible lingerie remains to be seen. Coming as it does on the heels of the recent defeat of the "Bankruptcy Reform Act", on account that it risks burdening anti-abortion wackos with a lifetime of debt should they get get sued for violating someone's civil rights (as opposed to imposing a lifetime of debt on anti-abortion wackos who incur high medical costs just after they lose their jobs), and the noble effort to use the Homeland Security Bill to sneak through a liability waiver for pharmeceutical companies, it is evident that the next two years are going to be a blast.

From the creator of Condredge's Acolyte's, America's Greatest Collaborative College Football weblog, comes a to-be-determined blog devoted to college hoops. Details later, but any and all who are interested should contact me ASAP.

The funny thing about political primaries is you sometimes see signs of moderation in even the most extreme politicians. Now that he has to battle with someone even more reactionary than he, Sharon is now sounding almost statesmanlike when it comes to Palestinian statehood, saying things that would have been almost unthinkable for a Likudnik fifteen to twenty years ago.

It's now official: the Lakers suck !! Without Shaq, L.A. is as imposing as Tom Daschle.

Mr. Samgrass has now joined the Sonny Liston Brigade, making the same disingenuous argument about "chickenhawks" that every other warblogger has proferred in the last month. Note to Snitch: 1984 is supposed to be a dystopian tale....

And of course, the Onion has its take on last Tuesday's election...btw, on an unrelated point, whatever happened to Don Meredith?

Bay Area residents should be alerted to the fact that the greatest character actress you've never heard of, Phoebe Nicholls, makes a rare TV appearance Friday on your PBS station at 10:00 p.m. The woman behind the world's most perfect English accent plays a greedy sister who gets in over her head in "May and June". For everyone else, you'll just have to rent Persuasion for a glimpse of the only thespian besides John Malkovich (and maybe Crispin Glover as well) who can singlehandedly change the complexion of a film by just appearing in a few scenes.

I didn't have an opinion one way or the other when the battle for House Demo Leader was between Nancy Pelosi and Martin Frost, b/c I don't think it's all that necessary to have a person in that position with the right ideology; as long as Frost can crack some heads and take the fight to George Bush, Tom DeLay, et al., he would be just as good as anyone else. Harold Ford Jr. is altogether different. I think there is a real question as to whether or not he has a pair. Twice he has backed away from running for Senate seats in Tennessee, including this last election, when he would have been a frontrunner for an open seat. Any doubts I may have had as to his lack of fortitude were resolved when I saw him get his ass kicked by Mr. Samgrass several months ago on Hard Ball. Future of the Party? Hah !! He's our version of Dan Quayle.

Dept. of Corrections: Last week I noted that if everyone who had voted for Dan Lundgren in 1998 had voted for Bill Simon this time around, Simon would have been elected governor. As it turns out, that was based on a count which didn't include some absentee and provisional ballots, so according to the revised total, Davis is now ahead of the '98 Lundgren vote by some 50,000 ballots, or just over 7/10ths of a percentage point.

UPDATE: As of Wednesday evening, '02 Davis now leads '98 Lundgren by over 170,000 votes, which is just over two percent. It just goes to show that sometimes it pays to await all the evidence before pronouncing a verdict. Still, the implication is basically the same; this election could have easily been much closer had Simon run anything resembling a competent campaign.

Is there any doubt that the Bush Administration is the most dishonest to hold power since 1974? This article presents an unbiased yet devastating case on that point. Again, it's the difference between lying about sex and lying about policy. Lies about sex, whether under oath or not, only hurt the family of the liar, but they sell newspapers; lies about policy corrupt the body politic, and make democratic choice impossible. If there is one enduring legacy of the conservative resurgence that began in this country following the 1968 election, it has been the not-so-subtle manner in which the Right has used falsehoods and mendacity to sell their agenda, smear their opponents, and taint the language: from the bombing of Cambodia to Watergate to the fraudulent investigation of Whitewater to the coming invasion of Iraq, conservatives have chosen the path of lies as the first option, even in cases, such as with Iraq, where an honest case for their position can be made. Nor is this a problem simply with politicians: it comes up every time a right wing pundit pretends that all supporters of affirmative action are the "real racists", or that those who disagree with the domestic policy of the Likud Party are "anti-semitic", or that people critical of the hypocrisy of gay bigots in the blogosphere are "homophobic".

But of course, Clinton lied about blow jobs, and he lied about, eh, mmm, errrr, blow jobs, and I'm sure he lied about something else as well, although history does not note what else he lied about. And some obscure academic got into trouble for fabricating some evidence about gun ownership in the early 19th century. In the meantime, Fraulein Goebbels has a bestseller in which there are lies on almost every single page (but they are "footnoted" lies!!), and Rush Limbaugh has one of the top radio shows pushing a political agenda of hate and bigotry somewhere to the right of Father Coughlin, and the President has a new line almost every day about why we should go to war with Iraq.

But I will never lie to you, my sweet....

Provocative piece by Matt Welch about a possible Gray Davis presidential run. Why couldn't Nader have been the spoiler in that election? I need a drink....

One good thing about Republican control, of course, is the fact that there will be more bankruptcies in the future, which is always a good thing when you are a bankruptcy attorney. The Bankruptcy Reform Act presently before Congress (also known by my compatriots in the field as the "Full Employment Act for BK Attorneys Act") will now almost certainly pass.

I wonder if any blogger on the left who wasn't critical about the lack of substance of Democratic Party candidates before Tuesday can be taken seriously on their criticisms afterward. I seem to recall a lot of cheerleading in the weeks leading up to the election, a lot of talk about how our "GOTV" effort would lead us through, etc. It's disingenuous to start blaming Terry McAuliffe now when he had so many enablers last week. We certainly can't blame Ralph Nader for this one.

Having lived in the "Valley" my entire life (so far), it was with a sense of melancholy that I noted the defeat of the secession effort at the polls this past Tuesday. I voted in favor of it, mainly because I knew it had no chance of passing, and I feel it might one day be beneficial to pursue this course. They allowed you to vote for Mayor and Councilman for the mythical city, as well as its hypothetical name. Since my tax attorney was running for council, I voted for her, and she actually "won". I wrote in my own name for mayor, and now must wait for the tabulation of absentee and provisional ballots before I know how well I did; if I beat out "Tupac Shakur", I will consider that a moral victory. Of the five potential names for the city that never was, I picked Mission Valley, which of course finished dead last, well behind the winner, San Fernando Valley, and even the fourth pick, Camelot.

Notes for next time: Although secession narrowly passed within the Valley (it lost b/c it got wiped out in the rest of LA), it really only did well west of the 405 Freeway, which splits right down the middle of the Valley. Woodland Hills, the affluent area where I used to live, and where I was still registered to vote, voted for it overwhelmingly. Secession did miserably not only in the less affluent East Valley, which has become heavily Latino, and which backed away from the movement once it became clear that it would do nothing to create an autonomous school district, but also in the area between Valley Vista and Mulholland, which is one of the most affluent areas of the city. As this article points out, the reason for the opposition here was quite different: residents tended to feel more tightly connected to the rest of Los Angeles than their brethren in the West Valley did.

South of Valley Vista, one was more likely to see one of those ubiquitous lawn signs opposing secession, with its WE LOVE L.A. in purple and gold, quite a nice touch in a community where the Lakers are one of the few common touchstones. When secession seemed a possibility, those opposing originally sought to run a negative campaign, with stupid arguments that secession was little more than a racist plot to deprive South Central LA of property tax funding from the suburbanites, as if Sam Yorty was plotting the whole thing from beyond the grave. In time, once it became evident that no significant Democrat was going to support the movement, and its passage became less likely, the anti-secessionists were able to pursue a more positive campaign, focusing on the benefits of keeping the city together, united. Subconsciously reminding voters that LA wasn't simply a monolithic entity downtown that eats our taxes and shorts us on services, but a community that many of us still view with some degree of affection, with its beaches, its culture, its art and museums, its symphony, and yes, its Lakers.

The backers of secession weren't able to craft a positive message that really resonated with voters, not bothering to convince people south of the Santa Monica mountains that an amicable split might be beneficial to all, and in the end showing only that there was substantial sentiment west of Reseda Blvd. to break away. Secession supporters are now promising that it was unfair for the rest of the city to vote, ignoring the fact that east of the 405, the movement was just as unpopular, and that in a democracy, people have a right to vote on an issue that's going to effect them for years to come. If this ever comes up again, we are going to have to do a much better job convincing ourselves that we can create something as good and as unifying as the Lakers.

The Alabama governor's race may well make Florida 2000 seem like a D.A.R. social, for those who feel nostalgic.

Tom Daschle has apparently found a job more suited for his talents....

As expected, the Appeasement Wing of the Democratic Party weighs in, insisting that keeping to the middle of the road is the way to win elections, in spite of what happened Tuesday. The example that is always used is Bill Clinton, who triangulated his way to two terms, as opposed to George McGovern, who was destroyed thirty years ago. That, of course, misses the point: moderate Presidential candidates who know how to pick their fights is a good tactic for any political party, since in order to win, you have to pick up disparate states, like California and New Hampshire, Texas and Ohio. But this wasn't a Presidential election; it was a congressional election, where the potential base of voters for each candidate was much narrower, and where voter turnout is much more contingent on getting the base out. The Democratic Party did spectacularly well in state and congressional races during the last period of Republican dominance (with the exception of 1980), by running candidates who appealed to the base. What may work at the national level isn't going to help locally, and vice versa.

But with all the recriminations, I think it all comes down to one key fact: we ran by trying to hide our beliefs, and lost. It always sucks to lose, but it's better to lose fighting.

For poli-sci students with an interest in California politics, or for amateur campaign consultants: this is a county-by-county map of the vote percentage in the race for State Controller, which is essentially tied. Use it as a template for estimating future races, or whatever....

Amazing, isn't it, that in California, a dispirited, unenorgized Democratic Party, with little in the way of a GOTV effort, an unpopular incumbent at the head of the ticket, and low turnout, still had the greatest night in its history. Take a look at the comparison here between the 1998 and 2002 votes: if all of Lundgren's voters had cast their ballots for Simon, he would have been elected Governor.

Well, it didn't matter to me: I voted for the Green candidate in that race, and I would not have lost a minute more sleep had Simon won by a single vote. The drawback of living in a one-party state....

The Red Sox have hired stat-man Bill James to be an advisor to club management (link via WarLiberal), which will be to baseball fans what Pauline Kael's hiring by Paramount in the late-70's was for cinema buffs. To those of you who have never heard of him, he popularized a form of numbers-crunching about twenty years ago called "sabermetrics", which looks at baseball from an objective standpoint, rather than the subjective drivel that usually comes from sportswriters. He was also a great writer, who used to have an iconoclastic edge that shone in his Baseball Abstracts of the 1980's. He lost most of his edge when he decided to capitalize on the "Fantasy Baseball" fad in the '90's, and he tends to flip-flop on his opinions nowadays: he must have changed his mind in print about a half dozen times on whether Don Drysdale belongs in the Hall of Fame. But no baseball fan who even has pretensions to being a freethinker can be without his Historical Baseball Abstract, or his book on the Hall of Fame.

The double whammy of Shaheen and Bowles losing having occurred early in the evening, I was in less of a celebratory mood when I got home from the job. As such, I have an undrunk case of PBR at the homestead, which I am sure the "contrarian" now known as the "Mr. Samgrass of the Left" would happily down in my stead.

Of greater significance than whether the GOP is now in full control of the federal government is that the centrist, appeasement wing of the Democratic party, the so-called "New Democrats" or "neoliberals", is dead. Their candidates all lost. Their non-confrontational philosophy was tried, and found wanting. Among liberals, only Mondale lost, and that was entirely due to the unusual set of circumstances by which he entered the race; if Wellstone had lived, he would have won.

And that's characteristic of his type; fighters either win, or give the other guy a bloody nose. There's no point mincing words: even if the Democrats had retained control of the Senate, it is highly improbable that they would have used their power to any effect. During the 18 months following the Jeffords split, can one name a single area where they took the battle to the GOP? With a tax cut in place that will act like a lymphoma on the economy for the next decade, was there ever a serious effort made to challenge it, much less repeal it? Did anyone, besides the late Paul Wellstone, take up the fight against US imperialism in the Middle East? At the end of the campaign, the only reason given to vote Democratic was "prescription drugs" and the threat of a federal judiciary made up of neo-klan whackos from the Federalist Society, ex-prosecutors with fantasies about executing minors and the retarded, and Uncle Toms of whatever color. As scary as that might sound, it's not enough to motivate your base to get out and vote, or to lure swing voters in sufficient numbers.

But then again, it's only a two seat loss in the Senate, five in the House. We still have large enough numbers to commit some mischief. Go get em....

Maybe California should secede. An excellent analysis of yesterday's elections can be found here, although it still doesn't deal with the reality of this election, which was pretty much fought in states won in the last election by George Bush. For all the jeremiads we will be hearing about what the loss of the Senate means, we should remember that from a similar position, the Republicans were able to defeat President Clinton's health care plan and tie up most of his economic plan in the first two years of that Administration. Think filibuster. A single motivated Senator can tie up the government for days at a time. If the Prez tries to nominate right wing nuts to the federal courts, demagogue. Show no mercy. And quit worrying about whether Zell Miller is going to switch parties; for all intents and purposes, he already has.

The votes haven't all been counted, but it is becoming increasingly apparent that tonight is not our night. The Democrats will lose at least two Senate incumbents, maybe three, plus the Mondale race isn't looking too good, while the GOP has captured all of its open seats, and will probably hang on in Colorado as well. When we wake up tomorrow morning, the Republicans may have a 52-46-1 edge in the Senate, and Trent Lott may not give a rat's ass what Lincoln Chafee does (the other seat, in Louisiana, will be determined by a run-off in December). It's possible that the losses the Democrats will suffer in the House will be even greater; the one bright spot, albeit a very faint one, is that the party managed to do well in governor's races (hey, Wyoming, Oklahoma, and maybe Alabama--just great, the new base for our party). It appears the "GOTV" effort was a joke, and African-Americans decided to sit this election out.

The Great Party Purge of 2002 begins tomorrow. Goodbye Daschle. So long Gephardt. Don't let the door hit your ass on the way out, McAuliffe.

By now, you've probably heard that the VNS exit poll service the networks use has caught a bad case of the measles, and will not be able to give us general exit poll data about the opinions of the voters, etc. It could still be used for projections, but in all likelihood, won't be, due to the general lack of credibility those numbers now have. No reputable news service (well, maybe Fox) would dare call the governors race in Florida, or the US Senate races in New Hampshire or South Dakota, based on those numbers (besides the controversy last time in Florida, in 1996, some networks incorrectly called US Senate races in Maine and New Hampshire for Democrats based on VNS numbers). So just sit back, relax in front of your computer or TV, memorize the various Secretary of State websites, stick with one TV channel (CNN is the best bet, then FoxNews, then MSNBC--if your only choice is CNBC or the networks, turn on 24 and get the results in the morning paper), cook some popcorn, maybe order a pizza, crack open a case of PBR or Old Mil (better the cheap stuff, since you may be drinking a lot), and see history develop.

Drudge and TalkingPoints have two different sets of exit poll numbers out, but both have Democrats easily taking GOP Senate seats in Arkansas and Colorado, Kirk losing in Texas, and Carnahan and Cleland both losing (BTW, you might like to put the following sites [most of which I have permalinked] on a sort of Net spincycle for the rest of the day: MyDd, DailyKos, RealClearPolitics, TalkingPointsMemo, Drudge, KausFiles, and, of all places, the National Review, which has a real neat, minute-by-minute take of today's happenings.)

Here's someone who's memorial service will be a particularly joyful one for the nation: Tom DeLay, who decided to use an election eve rally to make fun of Paul Wellstone.

A good breakdown of what the conventional wisdom may be like tonight, hour by hour, can be found here, along with a typical Beltway howler. The writer mentions that this year the networks may be more hesitant to use exit polling to call races, after the "blunder" they made in calling Florida for Gore early in election night 2000. Pardon me, but GORE WON FLORIDA !! Well, at least he did, if you tabulate a) the voters' intentions on the day of the election; or b) the actual votes, hanging chads and all. The butterfly ballot, votes that were never counted, a Jim Crow-style purging of close to 100,000 black voters from the rolls, a politicized Supreme Court: all of those factors combined to give W. a narrow victory.

So, in any event, the exit polls nailed Florida dead to rights in 2000. Where the networks blundered is when they called Florida for Bush later that evening. And don't be surprised if you read about miscounted and uncounted ballots, "felons"(ie. non-whites) being turned away from the polls, etc., in the next few days. If there is one thing that the GOP is good at, it's following a winning strategy.

Since there are fewer Senate and governors' races tonight, they're pretty easy to keep track of, so political junkies probably already have their checklists prepared in that regard. For critical House races, DailyKos and MyDD have set up a pretty handy list for your use and enjoyment. And keep watch on the early results from Kentucky and Indiana; the polls close there at 6:00 EST/3:00 PST. Lastly, for hardcore junkies, this is the one day you actually have a good excuse to visit the Drudge Report, where he posts semi-accurate exit poll data during the day.

If you're registered to vote, you might as well go out and do your patriotic duty today. I mean, it won't kill you.

If there's one thing I don't understand, it's why Democrats can't put up a decent, well-financed candidate for statewide office in Ohio.

If you want a good reason to vote tomorrow, check out the new election blog run by Jesse Taylor, which scrupulously details efforts by the far right to intimidate voters at polling places across the nation. Of course, Florida stretches the envelope in that regard. Check out somr of the attempts in Missouri and Arkansas by the GOP to encourage African Americans not to vote, a far subtler approach than simply i.d.-ing such voters as "felons".

Tomorrow's election day, and like all election days, the media and the pundits are all over themselves calling this the "most important election in __ /since 19__". Whatever. It kind of reminds me of the old Duane Thomas line about the Super Bowl, that if its such an important game, why do they have to play it again next year. In retrospect, the election of 1998 was far more important than this election: the results crippled the efforts to remove Bill Clinton from office, while assuring that most of the large states would have GOP governors when redistricting took place. Even if the Republicans win back the Senate, it will be, in all likelihood, a narrow majority, and much can still be done by a member of the minority party if he wants to obstruct, thanks to the filibuster. Furthermore, in that event, any further weakening of the economy will be blamed solely on the Administration, and Bush will lose in 2004.

The focus this time is mainly on the Senate: if the GOP picks up a seat, that party will control all three branches of the federal government for the first time since 1933. The latest Gallup poll suggests they will do it, as well as increasing their majority in the House, which would be unprecedented; the Republicans have never gained House seats in a mid-term election during a Republican Administration. Said poll gives that party a six percent edge in the generic party preference battle, reflecting a CBS/NY Times poll showing the GOP with a seven point edge. Other polls, including Zogby and the Washington Post/ABC, indicate that the Democrats have a slight edge: for what its worth, Zogby and CBS were the only polls last time showing Gore winning the popular vote. MyDD has a good breakdown of why these polls differ so dramatically; the key variant is Gallup's propensity for viewing Republicans as being more likely to vote, which skews their results to favor the GOP and tends to ignore Democratic skill in getting its supporters to the polling place. We'll know who's right tomorrow, but my hunch is that the GOP has too many close races to defend to capture the Senate, and will have to settle for the consolation of increasing its majority in the House.

Another good way to get instant horse race news is to use the News-Google search engine.

Sorry for sharing this with you, but yesterday I had my blood work done, in preparation for my semi-annual "physical" next week. My HMO, Kaiser Permanente, pretty much zips you right through. I was in and out of there in less than ten minutes, which is only slightly longer than what I anticipate the physical will be; at Kaiser, it's pretty much a blood pressure check, a testicular tug, and an admonishment that I should quit smoking and take up exercise.

Anyways, the first needle the nurse tries to stick in me breaks in two as she's taking it out of its case and putting it on the syringe; she claimed that was the first time it had ever happened. That was reassuring. The real annoying thing, though, was when she bandaged the needlemark after the shot. Rather than just sticking a Band-Aid on the prickling, she dabs a cotton ball on it, and attaches it to my arm with what has to be industrial-strength tape. To make matters worse, the ball got moved slightly when she applied the tape, so the tape ended up covering the scar, which caused immense inconvenience when I tried to get some sleep last night. The pain of removing the tape exceeds ten-fold the momentary inconvenience of the shot. It's so f-----g stupid !! For the last two days, I have had this piece of tape stuck to my arm, knowing that if I pull it off, I will lose a substantial amount of hair, and all because Kaiser didn't want to spend money buying Band-Aids in bulk.

Sorry about the light blogging the past couple of days, but the dictates of the job necessitate.

With the election just four days away, I am going to spending more time obsessing about polls, trends and other horse race minutiae before Tuesday. Three blogs I wholeheartedly recommend for those of you who view the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November with the same reverence that most people find for the last Sunday of January, are MyDD, DailyKos, and RealClear Politics. The latter two have very clear political viewpoints, and come at races from opposite sides, but both leave their opinions at the wayside when it comes to prognosticating. The best site, MyDD, does have a strong liberal bias, and seems to be picking the races through an ideological lens, with a view that Tuesday is going to be a huge night for the Democrats. However, his hypothesis is that the polls and media have consistently underestimated Democratic strength in recent elections, and that the very real advantages Democrats have had in getting people out to vote on election day will lead to some unexpected victories, particularly in House races. As a hardened pessimist, I'm not sure I buy his hypothesis, but in any event, his is an informed opinion, and well worth reading.

Still plenty of time for interested contributors to my collaborative college football blog, Condredge's Acolytes. Any Rutgers fans out there? SMU?