Bachmann collapses both nationally and at home

After reading this story on HuffPo about Bachmann's collapsing campaign, I started to wonder where she would go after it all fell apart.

It's possible that she could make it to NH, but very unlikely. She's not attracting the SuperPACs, and her small-donor base must be getting tapped out. The Tea Party has been waffling about their support for her, and evangelicals seem to be looking "someone else". That's pretty weak, when she is the head of the House Tea Party Caucus and has always been the one willing to say exactly what the most irrational Tea Party adherents want to hear. And her image has always been about as evangelical as anyone can get. I mean, Jesus told her to run for office, after all. Of course, she is also (ostensibly) "from" Iowa, and it's not as if there in no "cross-pollination" in politics between Iowa and Minnesota.

The thing is, Bachmann isn't very popular in Minnesota, either.
Here are three polls from Public Policy Polling on Minnesota voters:

• Obama in Minnesota
• Klobuchar favorability
• Dayton favorability

These polls cover far more than the shorthand titles I have given them indicate.
On the first link, Q12 is a match-up between Obama and Bachmann for President.

Q12 If the candidates for President next year were
Democrat Barack Obama and Republican
Michele Bachmann, who would you vote for?
Barack Obama................................................ 56%
Michele Bachmann ......................................... 35%
Undecided....................................................... 9%

Okay, she'd lose by twenty points in her home state. But Minnesotans still like her, right?

Q5 Do you have a favorable or unfavorable opinion
of Michele Bachmann?
Favorable .............. 33%
Unfavorable........... 59%
Not sure ................ 8%

I guess they don't like her.
Note that the percentage that would vote for her is almost the exactly the percentage who consider her favorably. In this case, people would be voting for her, rather than against Obama. If she is the "anti-Obama" then why does she not draw a huge number of voters who may be willing to overlook their opinion of her to defeat the "reviled" Obama?

Of course, he may not be:

Q1 Do you approve or disapprove of Barack
Obama’s job performance?
Approve .......................................................... 51%
Disapprove...................................................... 44%
Not sure .......................................................... 5%

If Bachmann gets 35% of the vote, but 44% disapprove of Obama.... Then there's 9% of Minnesotans that dislike Obama, but who would still prefer him to Bachmann. Even winning them over wouldn't keep her from losing.

Let's look at the second link, where we see a match-up with the incumbent Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar and Michele Bachmann:

Q7 If the candidates for US Senate next year were
Democrat Amy Klobuchar and Republican
Michele Bachmann, who would you vote for?
Amy Klobuchar ............................................... 57%
Michele Bachmann ......................................... 37%
Undecided....................................................... 5%

Okay, so Bachmann would lose by 20 points in statewide office. So it's not just that Minnesotans don't consider her "Presidential material", it's also that they don't want her representing the State at all. As a Representative, Bachmann doesn't represent the entire State; only her district.

And that district is a gerrymandered R+7 . That Cook PVI rating of R+7, means that the district tends to vote 7 points more Republican than they do Democratic. Yet it took Bachmann three tries to get a majority (rather than a plurality), and even then did not hit the expected 57%. That is not a strong showing.

But that's not all. The crosstabs are revealing. Bachmann only wins 77% of those that voted for McCain in 2008. And only 66% of those Minnesota McCain voters have a favorable opinion of Bachmann.
That's the base of the Republican Party, and Bachmann isn't scoring that big with them in her home State.

On top of that, the gender gap is appalling in her "favorables". 62% of women have an unfavorable opinion her, compared to 28% favorable. Well over two-to-one. Only 32% of women would vote for Bachmann over Klobuchar, down around her base support of 37%.

The third poll shows that Minnesota is 31% Republican, and "very conservative" voters are only 15% of the registered voters. That's a small base of "very conservative" potential votes, and only half of her own Party. She wins election because these "very conservative" voters are concentrated, not because she has statewide support.

We don't know yet how the redistricting will go in Minnesota. Some say she could lose her district. Others see her as merely weakened. Remember, she only got 46.41% against Tinklenberg. 52.5% against Clark doesn't leave a lot of breathing room. Aside from that, if her campaign collapses, There can be no more pretense that she is wildly popular for "speaking the truth", nor of any hidden Tea Party cavalry that will sweep in and win the day, nor any vast evangelical army that will hold out for the purest candidate and support her to the bitter end.

Basically, the rest of the Republicans in the country don't particularly care for her, and her hard-core supporters seem willing to "settle" rather than go down with her. She's seen as a joke, within her own Party, not just in "elite media circles" and decadent urban liberals as she would like everyone to think. Although it would be nice to see her lose in NH and SC, just so her supporters can't try to resurrect a myth of her hidden staunch support in other areas of the country.

Even if by some political miracle she stayed in past Super Tuesday, that would be ultimately worse. She would have lost then. Losing is the ultimate sin for Republicans, but more so for Minnesota Republicans. The last time the MNGOP gave a loser a second chance was Boschwitz against Wellstone part II. They won't make that mistake again.

The basis of Bachmann's "popularity" in her district, in cultural terms, is like a thumb in the eye to the metro area. Bachmann was supposed to "blow the minds" of all the urban liberals with "the truth", and leave the Twin Cities sheepishly admitting that they had been wrong all along by voting Democratic - even worse, for a Muslim. A lot Bachmann's support comes from "white flight" urban refugees, and anyone who dumps all over the "urban hellhole" they fled from and the mindset that maintains it, is all right in their book.

The collapse of Bachmann's campaign creates doubt in the minds of her district supporters, who are far more accustomed to certainty in thought. She's suddenly not the gorgeous girl that everyone wants to dance with. Instead, she's ended up serving punch and watching the coats. Could it be that those decadent urban libs are laughing at us, instead of being terrified by our awesome heroine Michele? Did we really vote for, and donate so much of our money to, a punchline? Uh-oh.

So what is her other option? To drop out and endorse someone else, throwing her fickle evangelical "supporters" and hesitant Tea Party "masses" over to a winner.

The question, then, is where does she throw that (largely insubstantial and possibly fictional) support? Romney's probably out of the question, but it could help to prop up his "evangelical cred" to have Bachmann's endorsement. It would symbolically sever her from the Tea Party, however. If it didn't, it would de-fang the Tea Party by showing them to be just another Republican constituency that "goes along to get along" and falls in line on command from the "Party elite".

If not Romney, how about Perry? The two constituencies overlap somewhat, but Perry isn't doing considerably better than Bachmann on the national scale. She might be a useful tool for the Perry campaign in the early States, but not so much in the Super Tuesday sweep. And Bachmann's proclivity for saying "interesting" things wouldn't lend gravitas to a candidate that already looks like a lightweight.

Santorum is sinking as badly as Bachmann, and Gingrich doesn't seem like Bachmann's cup of tea. So maybe Ron Paul. She could bolster Paul's evangelical cred and push that Tea Party line forward. On a symbolic level, it could counter the co-option of the Tea Party narrative.

Nationally, Bachmann is doing only marginally better than Paul in the latest polling.
Paul loses 46/41 with 13 undecided when matched up with Obama. Bachmann loses 50/41 with 10 undecided. It's not just about Iowa, after all. Perry also breaks 50/40 with 10 undecided. Seeing a pattern there?

However:

Q11 If the candidates for President next year were
Democrat Barack Obama and Republican Mitt
Romney, who would you vote for?
Barack Obama................................................ 45%
Mitt Romney.................................................... 47%
Undecided....................................................... 8%

So Romney can peel off an extra 6 or 7% that the other candidates can't. And that margin of victory is within the margin of error (3.7%) for the poll. That's not a compelling case for "electability" over Bachmann, Paul, or Perry but it's better than nothing.

What those match-ups show is that Bachmann, Paul, and Perry all are drawing from pretty much the same well as far as the general Electorate goes. Among strictly Republican primary voters, Bachmann draws 39% of Perry supporters as a second choice, and only 12% of Paul supporters. Among those that self-identify as Tea Party supporters, Bachmann has 58% favorables, compared to only 29% for Paul and 53% for Perry. And 59% of those Tea Party supporters say they "might end up supporting someone else".

While nationally (primary voters only), Bachmann gets 53% "favorable" from the "very conservative" bloc, Paul only gets only 27%. Both are about evenly matched for the "somewhat conservative" bloc. So it looks as if Bachmann might give Paul a boost from the most conservative segment of the Party, as well as the Tea Party, with minimal redundant support. PPP doesn't break down the evangelical vote in these polls, unfortunately. Bachmann also has a comparably attractive 42/36 favorable breakdown among female primary voters, when looking at Paul's dismal 28/53 numbers. So Paul could maybe get some more female supporters if Bachmann latched on to his campaign.

Unfortunately, Bachmann is the "kiss of death" to Paul's much touted "youth vote" in the primaries. Bachmann is despised, 24/57 unfavorable in the 18-29 age group. Paul pretty much breaks even at 43/38 with that age group on his own. With seniors, it's almost the reverse.
Senior primary voters (65+) hate Paul (25/58), while Bachmann breaks even (41/41). Senior primary voters essentially split between Gingrich and Romney, so Bachmann would be a solid contribution there with her 5%. Bachmann's weak 10% support with the youth vote is not much of a prize for any campaign.

Still, Paul's support is cult-like in its devotion to him. A Bachmann endorsement would hardly scare off support, and would probably bring in Tea Party and "very conservative" voters. Both of these demographics are relatively immune to fallout from Bachmann's "interesting" remarks.

Dare we even dream that Paul goes with Bachmann as his running mate? Paul's campaign has a strong chance of "going the distance", while not necessarily winning the nomination. The same Party apparatus that froze him out of the process in 2008 is still in power, but he has the bare minimum of money and support to make it to Convention....though he will die there.

This would raise the stakes considerably for Bachmann. If she becomes the next Palin and goes down to rejection by her Party, that's a lot worse than dropping out early and being credited with a pat on the head for being a "team player".

She certainly couldn't bring much support in Minnesota in terms of crossover votes in the primary, and her shine with Minnesota Republicans is faded. Only 26% of MN Republicans think she should run for President in the first place, and a relatively few (43%, considering it's her own Party) think she should run for the Senate. Even worse, only 10% of her home State's Republicans think she should run for the House. And 46% of the State's Independent voters think she should run for no office at all. Likewise, 48% of the white Minnesota voters say she should not run for any office. Among all age groups, she ranges from 44-49% saying the same thing.

51% of Minnesota women voters say Michele should not seek any office (including her House seat). Only 10% of the State's "very conservative" voters think she should run for the House. Instead, 44% of the "very conservative" bloc think she should run for the Senate - though she'd lose to Klobuchar by twenty points, as indicated earlier. Delusional? You bet.

2012 could spell the end of Bachmann as an elected official.

Play It Again, Sam

You may or not know this, but I play bass in a band. It's fun, but it's not fun talking to people about it. The first question always is, "What kind of music do you play?". People ask this as if it were relevant or simple. I answer with one word: "Rock". It explains nothing and satisfies no one. If I say, "original free improvisational rock with a four-piece combo", of course, I get a blank look.

There are only two reasons that 90% of people ask the question.
First, it is simply to be polite and feign an interest. The second is that they want some kind of pigeon-hole to put your art into so that they can make invalid comparisons or less-than-astute assessments of commercial success.

Basically, what we do is make up songs on the spot. It's pretty hard to make it work, and even harder to sound "polished". You don't get "points" for being creative - only for being easily relatable to another established group. If you say, "We play Aerosmith covers", then the person knows exactly what you are talking about and they now have something convenient with which to compare your music against.

Playing covers is, however, mostly a dead-end for any band. Sure, you can get gigs in crappy bars for $100-200 a night (which you then divide between four people), and you can do that for a decade or so until you work your way up to $500-600 a night gigs. You probably will get caught not paying royalties to the original artist long before that, however. The other reason it is a dead-end is because it's artistically empty: you are judged by how much you sound exactly like the original artist, not by how well you do interpreting the original song or how well your ability stacks up against the original group.

People like covers not because they are really, really great songs, but because they are familiar. They remind them of some other time, or other experiences, hopefully pleasant. They also give the listener some frame of reference to compare against, so that they can tell if the band is "good" or "bad".

It's also a losing game because the original song is recorded in a studio with multiple "takes" and multiple tracks. "Multiple tracks", for those who don't know, means that you record your guitar or whatever, and then you go back and play more on top of that. So, unless you happen to have an extra musician for every track on hand, you will never sound exactly like the original song - which means you are "bad".

It's a situation in which you can never win. You can never be "better" than the original song; you can only make a Xerox copy of it - at best - and come out equal.

Your original song will never remind anyone of other times or other experiences, because it is new. No one will be able to compare your original song with another version, because it is new. The best you can hope for is that the brainless consumer can link that song in their minds to a song that they already know - e.g. "It sounds kinda like that Bon Jovi song".

What brings this up is that we had a guest at the jam last night. After listening to three or four songs, this guy had an incredible insight: why not play songs that he has heard before?

Yeah, we never thought of that. Wow.

So we picked a song and ran through the chords in about thirty seconds. We then played it, and it sounded rough and raw - probably how the original band sounded the first time that they played it. Yet, to our guest moron, somehow it was supposed to sound exactly, note-for-note, identical to the original artist. He even mentioned that the guitarist didn't sound 'right', because the original guitarist used an effect pedal that we didn't have. So now we are supposed to not only duplicate the original artist note-for-note, but duplicate all of their equipment, too. That's how you would know that we are "good", after all.

I've dealt with this idiotic attitude all of my life as a musician. You can play a fantastic pattern at blinding speed and with impeccable precision, but the average moron will just shrug at that and "helpfully" suggest, "Play that song by Bryan Adams!". Yeah. I'll play that song on the bass. Sure. I'll make it sound exactly like a guitar, a keyboard, and a second guitar all in one. I spend my days memorising every note of every hit song in case somebody asks me to play it, too. Why would I write my own music when there are so many popular songs out there that I can copy? No matter what I play or how well I play it, I will never be "good" unless I can play that one song ...and the next one after that, too.

Painters figured this all out over a century ago. As a a painter, you are "good" if you produce something that is exactly like a photograph. Okay, so you spend two weeks and a hundred hours working on a painting that looks exactly like a photograph. You ask $500 for the painting ($5 an hour!), and the "customer" just laughs because they can get the photograph itself for free.
But they will say that you are "really good", though. Hooray!

For the musician, the proposition is even dumber. You memorise two dozen Aerosmith songs, you get to buy all of the equipment that Aerosmith has given to them as an endorsement, and you turn yourself into the equivalent of a player piano. Not good enough, because you don't look like Aerosmith. Your vocalist doesn't even sound exactly like Steve Tyler, much less be able to pass as his clone. You lose, loser! You impress no one! We yawn at you! We want Aerosmith, only with no cover charge if don't mind. Why would I pay a lot of money to hear an exact duplicate of Aerosmith when I have the CD at home, right?

Even more infuriating is this mindless belief that a song gets on the radio because it is really, really good - and that if your band can only play something really good, then you'll get on the radio, too! A song gets airplay because the music label pushes it and bribes the stations to play it, dumbass. It could be a recording of one guy vomiting while another plays a kazoo with his ass, and it would get on the air - if a record label put up the cash. And the average music consumer would love it, because they are supposed to. It's on the radio, isn't it?

What the run-of-the-mill "helpful" moron does not know is that you don't get to be a "successful" band (i.e. making a good living doing nothing but playing music) by going down the moron road. That path leads to the being a "tribute" band that gets a gig every four months in scattered states and in dingy clubs. And the "helpful" moron is unlikely to even show up to see you, because it's too far to drive, or the venue is dingy, or a TV show is on that night, or they don't want to actually pay money to see a band.

You get to be successful band by playing original music and developing a 'following' of people who appreciate what you do and actually show up for gigs when you get one. If your band can draw 30 paying customers to a bar, and if they actually spend money on food or drinks, then you just made the venue manager some money that they wouldn't have made without you there. You'll get called back. You'll get noticed by a booking agency, and you'll get steady gigs. You'll get good reviews and more people will check you out. Maybe you'll get an record deal with an independent label, which won't make you money but will allow you to get free studio time.

The question is, why does the average "helpful" moron have this standard when it comes to music that they don't apply anywhere else?

If a plumber shows up to un-clog your toilet, do you judge his ability based on how much his plumber's snake resembles one used by a "more-successful" plumber? When you take your car to a mechanic, do you judge their ability based on how much they resemble Mr. Goodwrench? Even more to the point, would you suggest to a mechanic that they try to more closely emulate Mr. Goodwrench's appearance in order to convince customers that they are a good mechanic? Would you propose that the mechanic replace your alternator for free so that you can decide if maybe they are "good enough" to change your oil? Would you be stupid enough to tell the mechanic that he should change his garage to look exactly like a Jiffy Lube so that people will know that he's "good"? Would you try to find out if the mechanic had ever fixed Bon Jovi's car? When they put the new alternator in, would you ask them to take it out and put it in again, just so you can find out if they do it exactly the same as the first time?

No. And the reason people apply this kind of warped reasoning to music is because they know nothing about it. They don't know if a musician is doing a good job or just faking it. They don't understand the structure of a song, or the principles of musical arrangement, or even what a chord is. They don't know what an overdub is, or compression. They don't understand why a live performance can't be the same as a studio recording. They don't even really care how much talent or skill you might have. If you can't exactly mimic a familiar-but-less-skilled musician, then you are worthless.

Last is the ridiculous standard of musical "success". How much money do you make watching TV? Well, you must not be doing it very well, then. How many people show up to watch you fish? Oh, so you're a lousy fisherman, I guess. Nobody pays you to jog? You must not be doing it right. Try jogging in the same outfit that some rich person wears, and then you'll automatically make as much money as they have.

Burger King makes way, way more money than a gourmet chef toiling away in a tiny restaurant. Does that mean that Burger King has the highest quality of food, or the most charming décor, or the finest service?

Take the average top-ten pop hit. It's got music played a sequencer (a computer programmed to play notes in a certain order to a certain rhythm), and a vocalist whose voice is corrected by Auto-Tune. They probably didn't even write the song themselves, but paid someone else for it. An engineer takes their work and hones it down into something highly-polished. None of it has anything to do with talent or musicianship. Yet, to the average "helpful" moron, this is the apex of musical skill and all that someone like me can do is try to copy it.

People play music, or make any kind of art, because they like it and because it does something for their soul. A very, very tiny percentage of those who engage in artistic endeavours make enough money to earn a decent living, and those people are more of a marketing success than any kind of stellar talent.

What's the deal with retired people?

Tonight I went to the pharmacy to pick up a prescription while on my way someplace else. It should have been quick. It wasn't.

When I got near the counter, there were six people ahead of me. All were visibly annoyed. I saw why: an elderly man was taking a very long time.

The guy was mostly deaf, which meant that he was answering questions that no one had asked him, and he was answering them at length. They were also questions that no pharmacist would ever be asking a customer. The pharmacist was yelling, trying to be polite, while the retired guy just sat there grinning and babbling. His prescription was on the counter. We all were waiting for him to pay for it, a captive audience. He was told that he needed to pay $27.94, but he had other ideas and other unasked questions to answer.

So we all found out that his sister had been there earlier in the day, and had picked up three prescriptions. We also learned that she had been feeling poorly for about a week, maybe six days, but the guy couldn't be sure. And we stood there as this grinning fool tried to figure out exactly how many days his sister had been sick, by way of reciting virtually everything that had happened to him in the past six days.

"That'll be $27.94," the pharmacist once again stated, pointing at the figure on the receipt.
The idiot instead held forth on his theories of the cause of his sister's ailment.

None of this had any bearing on the elderly guy's prescription whatsoever. We were all waiting for this man to pay his $27.94 and let us conclude our 90-second transactions. Some scowled, some rolled their eyes, others audibly sighed.

"$27.94", the pharmacist said for the third time.

The grinning fool just blinked. "I've got Blue Cross", he said.
The pharmacist explained that there was a co-pay of $27.94 that was his responsibility.

The elderly man shook his head, turned to the rest of us, and announced apropos of nothing, "I worked at Wal-Mart for fifteen years".
Unsurprisingly, nobody was intrigued by this revelation.
In some mysterious way, elderly people perceive a lack of interest as an invitation for greater exposition. We all got to hear about every damn job this fool ever did at Wal-Mart, and the jobs he wasn't considered for. We were subjected to his story of how he got his nephew a job there - a good kid, in case anyone was wondering. Wasn't much good at cutting keys, though.

I'm not at all sure how someone gets the idea that a pharmacist needs to know your detailed employment history before you can pay for a prescription, much less how they imagine that people waiting in line would need to know these things. Or how your nephew stacked up against other employees.

"$27.94", the pharmacist said for a fourth time, waving his hand to distract the babbler's attention from the contents of a woman's cart, lest it become the next topic of his rambling and pointless speech.

"The doctor said this would fix me right up," he said, pointing to one of the bags of his yet-unpaid-for prescription.

"I'm sure it will", the pharmacist said.

"That's what he said!", as if someone was arguing with his statement. "Fix me right up!".
We then were privileged to hear his detailed description of his primary care physician, and his evaluation of the physician's skills. The babbling fool then announced that he had walked to the pharmacy, and he detailed his exercise regimen. And more babble about irrelevant stuff, including the condition of sidewalks.

Three minutes after this last grinning expose into details of his life that nobody cared about, he paid his $27.94 and shuffled away. He had wasted ten minutes of seven peoples' time with inane babble, and he behaved as if he was doing us all a great service.

I have a retired neighbour who buttonholes me as I'm leaving for work frequently. Even though I say that I'm ten minutes late for work, he'll just nod and launch into another tedious story of someone that I don't know and the minute trials and victories of their life. He's retired; time means nothing to him. Today, a friend of a friend of his bought a lawnmower. This is apparently supposed to be deeply important to me, though I don't have a lawn.

"Gotta go," I said, moving toward my car.
"Suuure. You should see this lawnmower!," he said, as if I had just asked for more details on the amazing lawnmower - which he then divulged at length.

Now, I am not some kind of anti-social jerk. If I have time, I'll willingly sit and pretend to be mesmerised by the mundane details of almost anyone's life. I'm an excellent listener.
But courtesy does not allow someone to demand your time whenever they please, and it kind of compels the person engaging you to at least make some kind of feeble pretence that the topic is in some way of interest to you.

I understand that a lot of retired people don't have anyone to talk to, and that is both sad and pathetic. Some will wring their hands and bemoan the loss of simpler times when people would sit around and babble about anything that crossed their mind. Maybe in those simpler times your boss didn't care if you were fifteen minutes late for work because you just had to sit and listen to someone tell you about an amazing lawnmower. I doubt it, though.

Where in the social contract does it say that someone can demand ten minutes from seven total strangers (eight, if you include the pharmacist) with absolutely no consideration of their schedules? Who are these people to decide that your time is less valuable, or that your lives will be enriched by hearing about their sister's illness, their work history, and their opinion of their physician? What mysterious clause in the social contract releases the babbler from any relevance or brevity in conversation?

Note to you retired people: You are not making the world a kinder, gentler place. You are selfishly imposing yourself on others. You are undermining the rules of conversation by completely ignoring the other person with inane babble that absolutely no one else could find interesting. You are making people less willing to talk to you, because you are inconsiderate.
Yeah, it sucks that you're lonely. It's sad that these tedious recitations of disconnected facts are what compose your life. I get it. But really, nobody cares about any of the inane blather you are "sharing". And you don't care that other people have places to go and things to do, either. So drop the pretence that you are upholding some kind of societal benefit or lost rules of etiquette.
I certainly didn't set aside an extra ten minutes to hear a stranger talk about his mundane life, and the people waiting for me didn't, either. How awful of us.

Also, here's a tip: get a goddamn hearing aid if you want to talk to people. The guy in the pharmacy had Blue Cross, as we all learned. He could get a hearing aid and have it paid for. Don't force people to yell. We don't find your hearing loss to be charming or endearing. If you aren't willing to listen to the people you are talking to, then you aren't meeting your obligation in a conversation. But you aren't really interested in a conversation anyway, are you? You just want an audience and some attention. In simpler times, people like you were called "boors".

Medical marijuana moves through committee in MN

Medical marijuana bills are moving through the State House and Senate.
The usual stupidity is coming from the Right, of course. Tom Prichard, president of the Minnesota Family Council, had this illuminating remark:

“This bill would allow marijuana dispensaries to set up shop across the state, in homes and storefronts on main streets and neighborhoods and apartment buildings. Why? The only reason I can see is that it is to legitimize, frankly, the broader acceptance of marijuana in the community’s eyes.”

Why, Mr. Prichard? Why would anyone set up dispensaries for marijuana if the bill passed? Perhaps, and I'm just throwing this out there, so that people who have prescriptions for medical marijuana could get those prescriptions filled.

You see, Mr. Prichard, there are operations known as "pharmacies" that "set up shop across the state", even in "storefronts on main streets and neighborhoods", in order to allow people with prescriptions to obtain their authorised medication. Insidious, isn't it?

Yes, virtually every neighbourhood has these outrageous operations (known commonly as "pharmacies") that contain inventories of powerful stimulants, barbiturates, pain-killers, and other narcotics - and they brazenly sell these highly-addictive and readily-abused substances to anyone with the cash and a prescription.

The only reason, as surely a man of Prichard's keen insight can plainly see, for these "pharmacies" is to legitimise the broader acceptance of narcotics in the community's eyes.

The arguments by these loons like Prichard begin and end with "it's illegal".
Yes, and that's why the State is considering legislation to make it legal. Duh.
I guess it's only acceptable to try to legalise things that are already legal.

Let's be clear here. The proposed legislation is not a bill to legalise marijuana and make it available to everyone. It is a bill to allow those with a prescription to be able to fill it. It's no more insidious than allowing someone with a prescription for codeine to be able to fill it.

Does allowing someone to buy codeine with a prescription "legalise" codeine? No, it doesn't. Does it say to the community, "Hey, go ahead and abuse opiates all you want. No problems. No dangers. See, we even sell it out in the open, so it must be great stuff."?
Not really. No, it doesn't. It's illegal to buy, sell, or even possess codeine without a prescription. And there's that word again: prescription. The word that keeps vanishing in the Right's conversation of the issue.

So, yes, if medical marijuana does get approved, there will, in fact, be "dispensaries" to provide those with a prescription to purchase it. Perhaps these nefarious "dispensaries" will even be included in the so-called "pharmacies" that dispense Oxycontin legally. Shocking to consider, but true.

So the major reason for opposing doctors' issuance of medical marijuana prescriptions seems to be that someone could actually fill their prescription. Did anyone at the hearing laugh out loud at Mr. Prichard? If not, they should have.

But the crazy testimony doesn't end with Prichard:

James Stinziani, who said he was part of the “LaRouche operation,” said that the push for medical marijuana was simply a conspiracy drawn up by billionaire George Soros. “What is happening here — if anybody is familiar with George Soros — he is pretty much supporting and funding the major drug operations in the United States.” He accused medical marijuana supporters of being in league with Soros.

Yup. A doctor who may prescribe medical marijuana for their terminally-ill patient is really only trying to push Soros' murky agenda. It's so clear that I won't even attempt to deny it.

It's far better to have terminally-ill patients obtain their marijuana from black-market sources, where the quality is dubious and uncontrolled. At least then we have a shot at putting cancer patients in jail where they belong. And recreational users of marijuana will obviously stop buying it if terminally-ill people can't get a prescription for medical marijuana, because then they will just know that marijuana is Not A Good Thing. Prescriptions mean abuse, but not for narcotics. Marijuana is some kind of special case where prescription sales equate with non-prescription abuse, because we don't have a problem with people abusing prescription medications, right?

It's like saying the State shouldn't issue car titles because people steal cars, and it sends the message that car theft is somehow okay. All of those auto dealerships are pumping more cars out there on the streets every day, just inviting people to steal them. I'll wager George Soros is making millions in auto loans every year, besides. Let's tackle car theft at the source: the cars themselves and the people who profit from them.

The idiocy of tax cuts

Having just done my taxes, I thought I would look at the "stimulus" effect of the proposed Republican tax cuts. It isn't much.

I paid $5840 in federal taxes for 2008. That's just with-holding, not including my refund.
So bear in mind that the "stimulus" I will calculate here will actually be less.
The with-holding works out to $112.30 per week. Let's say the Republicans won me a 10% cut, which is far more than they are proposing.

This would put a whopping $11 (and change) in my pocket each week. Wow. All of my problems are solved, right?

Of course, the real figure once my refund is included is $9.50 each week. Now consider that most of the Republican plans would afford me about a 5% cut in federal taxes, and we see that this wonderful conservative solution would pump the staggering sum of $4.75 into my pocket each week. That isn't even gas for my scooter or a six-pack of cheap beer where I live.

Republicans love to conflate all taxes into the discussion, but the federal government can only cut my federal taxes. They love to combine FICA, Medicare, state and local taxes, and property taxes when they talk about the huge windfall their tax cuts would mean to an ordinary person. The reality is, however, that federal tax cuts produce a "trickle-down" effect of increased taxes down the line. Less federal aid to states means higher state taxes or reduced aid to cities. In my state, with a loony Republican governor, it means the latter. This means cuts in aid to cities, which means my property taxes go up. There goes my $4.75 a week.

Of course, we have already had eight years of tax cuts, which has brought us to this glorious situation. The wealthy have flatly refused to hold up their end of the bargain. They don't invest in job creation; they off-shore jobs instead. They don't invest in small businesses; they buy them out to reduce competition and lay off the workers. They don't invest in capital improvements (updated equipment and machinery, expanded facilities) or worker training; they instead squeeze out a few more pennies from what they have already. They cut workforces, impose hiring freezes and pay cuts on staff, and increase the workloads of those already employed.

In short, it doesn't work.

The wealthy are essentially on strike for a better deal, and the entire economy is being held hostage. What they want is basically a redistribution of wealth from the poor to the wealthy.

Lies, condemnations, and shame

Today, Israel's invasion of Gaza was condemned by Qatar, Turkey, and Mauritania.
Qatar and Turkey host large American military bases, while Mauritania is one of very few Arab League nations that have chosen to maintain diplomatic relations with Israel.
Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Morocco are all under heavy domestic pressure to back away from Israel.

story from The Daily Star:

Erdogan blames Israel, Hamad charges 'war crime' and Mauritania pulls envoy
By Agence France Presse (AFP)
Compiled by Daily Star staff
Tuesday, January 06, 2009

Regional leaders have stepped up their criticism of Israel's blistering assault on the Gaza Strip, as Mauritania withdrew its ambassador to the Zionist state in protest and Turkey's premier accused Israel of provoking the outbreak of fighting. For its part, Qatar continued to push for an emergency Arab summit over the Gaza attacks, which the nation's emir described as a "war crime."

"The Israeli aggression against our people in the Gaza Strip is a war crime," Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani said late Sunday in a televised address. He also renewed an earlier call on fellow Arab leaders to hold an extraordinary summit in support of Gaza.

"The mobilization on the Arab street and several peace movements in the world have proven that this is the least the people expect from us. I believed and still do that we can do something," the emir said.

Sheikh Hamad said that "calls for a mutual cease-fire treat the culprit and the victim as equal and justify the aggression."

Mauritania, one of only three Arab League countries that has full diplomatic ties with Israel, has withdrawn its ambassador in protest over the Gaza offensive, a Foreign Ministry source said on Monday.

Since Israel's offensive in Gaza started 10 days ago, Mauritania has seen daily protests, mostly from students who demanded that Nouakchott break all ties with the country.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Monday blamed Israel for the ongoing conflict in the battered Gaza Strip, saying it "provoked" the Islamist movement Hamas, which controls the enclave.

The premier noted that Israel had continued a stifling blockade on Gaza despite pledging to lift it under the terms of an Egyptian-mediated truce, which Hamas had complied with by reining in fighters launching rockets into Israel.

Erdogan told Al-Jazeera: "A return to the situation before the truce happened because Israel continued the blockade, so I consider Israel the one which provoked and incited, not Hamas." - AFP, with The Daily Star

And for what? Apparently to remove Hamas from power. From The Guardian:

Livni's determination reflects a growing confidence in the upper echelons of the Israeli establishment that the assault will fatally damage the foundations of Hamas's control and, in time, drive it from power. Intelligence and military officials have told the cabinet that "not much" remains of the Hamas administration in Gaza and that its ability to take control again has been undermined by the destruction of a large part of the physical infrastructure of administration, including the parliament building and many government offices.
The intelligence services also told the cabinet that they believe the Israeli bombardment is turning Palestinian popular opinion against Hamas and that terms can be forced on the Islamist party that will further weaken its control.
Israeli officials have generally been reluctant to say that the attack on Gaza is intended to force Hamas from power out of concern that it would undermine the international support they have won by portraying the assault as a purely defensive measure to stop Hamas rockets.

So, much like the strategy the U.S.-sponsored "contras" employed in Nicaragua, the idea is to make life so abysmally miserable and the task governing so impossible that a "good" government takes over. We also see the Israeli government is employing sham justifications for public consumption, while promoting a hidden agenda that their allies would be ashamed to support.

Looking back, looking forward

As I see it, this year the bottomless arrogance of the Republican Party was tested and came up wanting.

The Party selected McCain as a candidate in an attempt to win over the centre. Of all the possible nominees, McCain was the one who least represented Republican "core values" and had even made a nominal reputation opposing his own Party. It was a fairly smart move on the part of the Party to distance itself from Bush.

From there, it all went wrong.

The Party pushed McCain to the right, forced 'advisers' on him who were really little more than smear artists, and turned their man into the "anti-Obama" rather than a candidate with superior policies and qualifications. Resting on their laurels, they utterly failed to create state organising efforts or conduct voter registration drives in the period between McCain's nomination and Obama's nomination. Chronically behind in polling, the Party then selected Palin in a horribly misguided belief that women will vote for another woman regardless of their policy positions. And thus, any hope of winning over the centre was lost.

Beyond that, the Party arrogantly took for granted that any state that voted for Bush in 2004 would do so again. By "energising their base", the McCain campaign further repelled the centre. To seal their fate, they then pinned all their hopes on racism.

Now they are left with a Party firmly convinced that the new President is a Muslim radical with a secret agenda, bent on destroying America. Early indications seem to be that the Party intends to move further right, and deeper into the artificial reality created by their media voices. With no capacity for self-reflection (that's for wimps and those who don't understand God's Will), they once again arrogantly believe their own spin. And even more importantly, they believe that the vast majority of the country also believes it. This is not the path back to power.

We still have the same punditry that cheered on the McCain campaign and dutifully passed on all of the Republican smears as truth. In 2009, we can continue to count on the pundits to wring their hands in public over Obama's "excessive liberalism", to second guess every decision, and to constantly point to signs of Obama's "fading popularity". Any policies that do not come straight from the wingnut realm will be portrayed as "divisive". The economy will not improve overnight, and most people realise this. The majority also see that what passed for a "plan" from the Republicans will only make things worse.

The Republican Party lacks the ability to win the electorate over to their side, but they have the ability to make Obama look unpopular. We have to keep asking where the Marxist hell that these people predicted would emerge from Obama's election is. We have to keep making clear what the Republicans would do if they were in office. And we have to stand up to those who insist that not continuing Bush's policies is "divisive".

Republican post-mortem

Well, here we are, post-election and nearly post-holidays.
Apparently the nation has "been defeated", as McCain put it before it the election. Socialism is now to be the order of the day, if the weak and desperate spin of the McCain campaign is to be believed. Let's pause to look back at what the Republicans offered to the nation in their defeated effort.

They offered FEAR, and lots of it. Obama has something to hide, and "questions remain". The "questions" were, of course, answered, but the Republicans simply didn't like the answers or didn't believe them. Thus, these 'questions' remained. And there never really was any way to "answer" these so-called 'questions', because they weren't really questions at all; they were slanders designed to induce vague doubts that could not be proven or really disproved. All that was clear was that Republicans were completely convinced that Obama was some kind of Marxist radical who had a diabolical (but absolutely vague) scheme to destroy America. There was no evidence, merely associations backed up by an incredible amount of exaggeration, speculation, and wild leaps of logic. Republicans believed in the validity of these 'questions', largely because other Republicans believed in their validity, and that was good enough for them.

One of the biggest (and stupidest) gambles the Republicans made in the election was in believing that their Party still had credibility. Thus, if the Republicans said Obama was a Marxist radical bent on destroying America, then the electorate would believe it. The Republicans had spent so much time in their echo chamber, isolated from the rest of the world, that they had really come to believe that those outside of their artificial world agreed with them. Anyone outside of the bubble could have seen that the Republicans stopped trying to persuade anyone over to their beliefs years ago. Instead, they wrote off the non-Republicans as some tiny core of "far-leftists" who were universally despised as traitors, defeatists, and degenerates. Their messages were drenched in circular logic and the premises of those messages were only accepted by the "faithful". Apparently, everyone "knew" that the typical Democrat really longed for a Soviet-style state, cheered on terrorists, and rejoiced at our nation's every troop casualty. On top of this, the typical Democrat was "known" to have no "values", and they celebrated every abortion, engaged in promiscuous and dangerous sexual acts, were addicted to hard drugs, and would probably kill you if you didn't have several guns already.

Thus, it was inconceivable to the typical Republican that Americans would embrace a Democratic candidate. It was "obvious" that the Democratic party stood for Satanism, Stalinism, and the Sixties. The Republicans merely had to point this out, and McCain was guaranteed to win.

The truth is that Republican credibility suffered a mortal blow in 2005, and never really recovered. Katrina showed the inept and incompetent Administration lackeys, who were given jobs solely based on loyalty and their ability to parrot talking points. As Iraq became a quagmire, the Decider made wildly upbeat and optimistic statements on an almost daily basis, backed up by his Party. Expressing doubt or scepticism was clearly a sign that one was a traitor or a terrorist sympathiser who wanted America to "lose". The nation saw a Party that not only demanded blind obedience and faith, but that also put on a bizarre Tinkerbell-like performance: if we all clap loud enough and believe in the Decider, then we will win the War On Terror. In general, the nation saw an Administration that chose the outcome it wanted and then believed that the outcome was guaranteed simply because they envisioned it, with facts and arms twisted to conform with that vision. The economy began a slow slide that ended with a sharp drop off the cliff just before the election, and the Republicans continued their sunny, logically-deficient optimism until it was far too late to back-pedal.

And yet they still believed that they had credibility.

The GOP had essentially turned itself into a religion instead of a political organisation. They were the Believers, in more ways than one. No dissent was tolerated, for that would be a sign of Doubt. If one did not believe, completely and blindly, in the Party, then one did not believe in America and one wished for the nation's demise. Just as fundamentalist Christians dismiss all other religions as cults, idol-worshipping, or just a variation of good old-fashioned Satanism, so too did the Party set up a false dichotomy in the political arena. There were only Patriots and Communists, and the only way to be a good Patriot was to be a good Republican. To believe otherwise was contrary to the "religion", and since the majority of Americans did not want to see the country destroyed, then they would surely vote Republican.

This is why we see the promulgation of the "centre-right country" myth. It is a feeble and desperate attempt on the Republicans' part to preserve their "religion". The country still believes in everything that the Party believes in, per this myth, but the electorate failed to cast their votes for the Party. Thus, if a Marxist hell is avoided, it will be because the electorate firmly believes in the Republicans' ideals, not due to anything that the Obama Administration does or does not do. If Christians are not persecuted and hunted down, it will be because the vast majority believe in the GOP and will not permit the Democrats to carry out their Satanic schemes. And so forth and so on. The religion of the Republican party is thus preserved among the Faithful.

Aside from ramming fundamentalist Christianity down the nation's collective throats, what else did the Republicans offer in the McCain campaign?

War, and lots of it. There are always unfortunate situations that require military action, especially when this is the only permissible tool in the policy toolbox. Thus, the only way to be safe is to bankrupt our economy in more quagmires, which we can never disengage from lest it be seen as a sign of weakness. To do anything less is the equivalent of lining up our nation's children and shooting them - which is probably one of the Obama Administration's secret plans, anyway.

Police-state powers, and lots of them - to preserve our freedom, of course. Total, absolute secrecy is regrettably required, because the "terrorists might be listening". Scapegoats must be created and identified, with guilt presumed beforehand. Some will not confess immediately, in order to make our leaders look bad, but eventually it will become clear that we were right all along to suspect them if we are allowed to "take the gloves off". Who really knows what torture is, anyway? The Party with blinding moral clarity and simplistic answers at the ready is oddly philosophical here, isn't it? Suddenly, "moral relativism" can be embraced in this situation.

So we have fear, war, and paranoia as the primary campaign themes. The only real policy issue that was covered by the McCain campaign was health care. In reality, the Republican scheme would have caused millions to lose their coverage, since employers would drop their health plans in response. Certainly, nothing in the Republican plan requires the employer to do so, but it seems obvious that if the government is providing a deduction for individuals to buy their own health insurance that the employer can safely get out of the health care business. And somehow, simply giving people $5000 to buy insurance is not socialism, though it is a refundable tax credit. And giving everyone $5k doesn't cost any money, because it's just taxes the government wouldn't be collecting in the first place, right? Really, though, you would never even see that money. It would go straight to the insurance company. And McCain promised that his Administration would "work with" insurance companies on the issue of pre-existing conditions. What does that mean, exactly? It means nothing, except that you would not be covered for pre-existing conditions, meaning that only the healthy would have health coverage. What a step forward. Likewise, any idea that a "high-risk pool" would ensure coverage under the $5k limit was abandoned as 'regulation'.

In states where auto liability insurance is mandatory, there is a "high risk pool" mandated to be maintained by the insurance companies. This means that if you have had seven accidents in the past year and a DUI on your record, you can still obtain insurance at an astronomical cost from the "high risk pool". You cannot be denied liability coverage if you are a licensed driver.

Now, suppose you are a sick person with leukaemia and require about $15k a year in medical treatment. What insurance company will provide you with coverage for only $5k a year? None of them. Either that, or they would sell you coverage and deny all claims based on a "pre-existing condition". How would a McCain Administration persuade an insurance company to lose $10k a year when they "work with" them on coverage for pre-existing conditions? The answer is, they don't. The likely result is that our hypothetical patient would get $5k of the $20k needed to obtain health insurance, meaning they would still pay as much for health care as they did when they were 'uninsured'. This is how the insurance industry would "work with" the Administration on pre-existing conditions.

Meanwhile, the loss of $5k per taxpayer in revenue is a definite "cost", isn't it? Is there a real difference in the bottom line between the federal government paying a certain amount of money and not getting a certain amount of money to begin with? Only in ideological terms.

Republicans argue against "single-payer" not only on ideological grounds, but also on cost.
"If you think health care is expensive now, just wait until it's free", is the glib mantra. The problem is that, under the McCain proposal, more people would have coverage than they do now and costs would go up. The only way to limit cost is to deny treatment, or provide treatment in a pro-active manner. The latter method costs money up front, and saves money in the long term. The former method means that more uninsured individuals show up in the emergency room with avoidable conditions at a greater cost for treatment. It is notable that one of the McCain "advisers" on health care policy claimed that everyone is "insured" under the current scheme because they have access to emergency room care. Likewise, the idea that the average person is going to "shop around" and contest payments is absurd. Who has the time to "shop around" for the lowest price on an office visit, then "shop around" for the lowest price on a certain lab procedure, then search out the lowest price on follow-up care, and then "shop around" for the lowest price on a prescription? Is there transportation to get you to the slightly cheaper lab, doctor, or pharmacy 40 miles away? What happens to continuity of care when you spread your medical treatment out between a dozen different providers? Mistakes are made, efforts are duplicated, links are missed, and costs go up. But we manage to avoid the ideological hazard of 'socialism', so it's okay.

So we see that the McCain campaign was not only peddling very, very few actual ideas, but that these ideas were bad in practical terms. By and large, they were trying to sell fear and doubt, with a side of jingoism.

But what really killed the Republican effort was the economy.
This was not some magical mishap that befell the Party, but rather the logical result of their policies. The real collapse of the "mortgage industry" was not in making bad loans, but rather in the sale of insurance for those bad loans. Insurance on mortgages was traded by institutions that had no idea how risky those loans were, to people who had no idea that they were on the hook if those loans failed. They were merely pieces of paper that gained value every time they were traded, as if by magic. We allowed institutions to act as banks without the regulations governing banks. And the Republicans pointed to the money being made by these institutions as "proof" that regulations were bad. At the same time, those tax cuts that were supposed to be invested domestically in the creation of jobs were, once again, ploughed into offshore ventures or kept "within the family" by way of huge bonuses. Just as with Reagan's supply-side economics, the wealthy once again failed to step up to the plate and instead took the money and ran. Pointing this out, of course, is "class warfare" to Republicans. Republicans are fond of putting their shills on parade and parroting talking points, such as "I've never been employed by a poor man". You know what, though? If nobody has money to buy what the rich man is selling, that shill won't get employed in the first place. History has shown that the wealthy have repeatedly balked at employing that shill, when they can move their operations to China and employ people at less cost. Then Wal-Mart sells the wealthy person's products at a lower price, killing off local jobs. The end result is we all end up working for Wal-Mart, looking over our shoulders at some poor desperate sap who is willing to take our job for ten cents less an hour, while our government has less money to invest in infrastructure or training to improve the economy, and the wealthy get a bigger pile of cash which they refuse to risk by lending to us.

But we avoid those terrifying ideological hazards of 'socialism'. Instead, we work harder for less money and no benefits, with no job security, while every means to better ourselves is eliminated by budget cuts due to declining tax revenue. That is the economic vision the Republicans offer. We keep more of our "hard-earned money", while making it ever more unlikely that we will see it to begin with and working even harder to earn it.

I would respect the Republicans more if they were willing to take the wealthy to task for failing to hold up their end of the supply-side "bargain", but they won't. Instead, they abjure the middle class to spend more, while berating them for accumulating the consumer debt that enables them to do so. Oddly, the solution is always more tax cuts for the wealthy, because this time the wealthy will use it to our benefit. Really. We really, really mean it this time. And if that doesn't work, well, there's always more tax cuts for the wealthy. It can't fail now. And so forth and so on.

And so, the last defence for the Republicans is the Culture War.
Yes, re-fighting the Sixties is completely relevant to people who never lived through it, right?
It turns out that it really isn't. Not only that, but the people who did live through it aren't at all interested in re-visiting it. Ward and June Cleaver are dead. We aren't going back to the Fifties, which was a time of widespread poverty that is glossed over in nostalgia. Besides, a case can certainly be made that the worst excesses of the Sixties were in response to the heavy-handed repression of the Culture Warriors to begin with. The "values" that the Republicans are really pushing are bigotry, conformity, unquestioning obedience to authority, and "knowing one's place" in the social order. It doesn't matter who you are, it matters who people think you are. All of the other "values" preached by the Republicans are readily sacrificed with pride in the name of preserving the values I just mentioned. Thus, beating someone up that doesn't conform is your sacred duty, not some aberration of "values", for example. If the police arrest someone for a crime, obviously it is because they were guilty, so let's not "second-guess" authority. Any violation of the Republican's putative "values" is also acceptable if nobody finds out about it. It's an ugly paradigm that guarantees that those on the bottom will stay on the bottom, as part of God's Will, or something.

Now that a Democrat is soon to be in the White House, we can expect that the Republican concept of "criticising a sitting President during time of war is tantamount to treason" to conveniently disappear. Once again, dissent will be one's sacred duty, and not something that only whiners and traitors engage in. Republicans who presided over Bush's record debt will now be very concerned about fiscal restraint. We also will be admonished about the limits of Executive power by those who once asserted that those limits did not exist. Government "intrusion" will soon be something to be terrified of, not at all like the warrantless wiretaps, data mining, and rampant use of 'security letters' that the Bush Administration was so brave in carrying out. We can also look forward to the very odd phenomenon of criticising foreign policy as part of 'supporting the troops', when just yesterday it was 'undermining the morale of the troops'. Magically, criticising the Bush Administration and it's policies will suddenly become "divisive" by those who will showed no quarter in employing the basest of slanders against their opponents.

Because, you see, the Republicans are "the good guys", and anything that the good guys do is okay. When the bad guys do the same thing, however, it merely proves how bad they really are. For example, if Georgia attacks Russia and gets slapped down, that is disproportionate and evil. If Gaza does the same thing, anything goes in the name of self-defence. It's not so much that there are two standards as that there is one standard that is only applied in selected cases. For all of the talk about "American Exceptionalism", the bottom line is that it really means that America is excepted from the rules it applies to to other nations, and Republicans are excepted by virtue of being the voice of "true Americans".

So watch for that.

Nine days out

I just had to get this McCain quote up for posterity.
If Obama wins, McCain says "the nation" will be defeated, and he's got Obama right where he wants him. Hilarious.
From the BBC:

"I will never allow this nation to be defeated ... my friends, we've got them just where we want them. We love being the underdog and we're going to win!"

Nine days to go.
Fivethirtyeight.com has Obama projected to win 348 electoral votes. 270 are needed to win.
McCain's "master plan" is tragic in its hopelessness. He is going "all in" in Pennsylvania to get its 27 EVs, which will serve to partially counteract some of his other expected state losses.

The problem is that McCain has never led in any reliable polling in that state. The closest he ever got was a tie on Rasmussen 9/14, which looks like an outlier in retrospect. Subsequent Rasmussen polling showed a steady increase in Obama's PA support:

• 9/21 Obama +3
• 9/24 Obama +4
• 9/28 Obama +8
• 10/6 Obama + 13

Bear in mind that Rasmussen has generally been showing lower levels of Obama support in PA than most other pollsters. For example, SurveyUSA (whom I consider to be a Republican-leaning pollster) showed Obama as +15 on 10/6 when Rasmussen showed +13.
On 10/22, SurveyUSA placed Obama ahead by 12%.
Yet this is where John McCain is making his final stand, and this is right where he wants Obama to be.

Even if McCain wins PA, he must win Florida or it is all over. That scenario is not supported by the polling, either. Rasmussen polled McCain ahead by 1 point 10/21, well within the margin of error. Other pollsters show Obama 3 or 4 points ahead.

Missouri is another must-win state for McCain. Rasmussen polled it in Obama's favour by five points on 10/19.
If McCain loses North Carolina, Obama moves in to the White House. Polling there is mixed, with Rasmussen giving McCain a two point lead (within the margin of error), while other pollsters show Obama with a single-digit lead in the state.

Indiana is a state that McCain cannot afford to lose, either. Like the others mentioned, if McCain loses it, there is no way he can reach 270 EVs. SurveyUSA polled Obama ahead by 4% there on 10/22.
Ohio is another must-win. Rasmussen favoured McCain by two points (again within the MOE) on 10/19.

There is also the western option: Colorado, Nevada, and New Mexico all favour Obama (19 EVs right there) , while ND and MT are toss-ups (6 more).
Georgia, with her 15 EVs, is three points away from going to Obama.

McCain now has to get very lucky multiple times in order to win. It's like flipping a coin seven times in a row and calling it correctly.

But the truth is that these polls under-estimate Obama's support. Rasmussen relies on a tight "likely voter model" that excludes a lot of Obama supporters. If you are first-time voter in this election, Rasmussen would not count you as a "likely voter". Even though statistics show that newly-registered voters turn out to vote nearly 90% of the time, Rasmussen would not consider a newly-registered voter to be "likely". Even if you voted in the primaries, but not in previous general elections, Rasmussen would not count you as a "likely voter". That hardly seems realistic. And Rasmussen is not alone in maintaining this tight model.

Consider the massive registration drives conducted during the Democratic primaries/caucuses, in which new records were set in registering new voters. Consider the massive turnouts in the primaries. Consider the truly unprecedented ground game of the Obama campaign in mobilising voters to turn out this election. None of that is being taken into account by any pollster that uses a common likely voter model. In fact, in comparisons between "registered voters", and registered voters who self-identify as likely voters, Gallup has shown very little difference (about 2%) between the two groups. And the Democrats hold a huge registration advantage in these seven crucial states.

Many of the pollsters seem to simply be assuming that Democrats won't turn out this year, despite the historic character of this election. They are far off the mark.

Republicans are looking back to 2004 for reassurances, but that was a pre-Katrina world, a world in which the Decider was still popular and Iraq was not yet judged a miserable mistake, and the economy was not in a state of disaster. Republicans have completely ignored 2006 and the mid-term elections that brought them sweeping losses. No, it's still 2004 to them, and they are relying on imaginary 2004 voters to rally and save the day.

And, in spite of Obama showing higher "favourables" than McCain, the Republicans are still pushing Obama as a scary candidate. People simply are not afraid of Obama. They have seen him at the debates, the Convention, and in campaign stops, and they have seen a reasonable, well-spoken, and intelligent man. The more McCain pushes his wild terror of Obama, the more rabid and un-hinged the Republicans appear to the public.

So Obama is leading the national tracking polls by about eight points, and he is leading in the states he needs to win 270 electoral votes, with the chance to pick up a few more.
And this is, apparently, right where McCain wants Obama to be.

Devilishly clever of him, isn't it?

My prediction is that Obama wins with 349 electoral votes. The second most likely outcome is 375 EVs, in my view.

Bachmann's "politics of the false dichotomy"

Michele Bachmann has a putative "apology" making its way onto the airwaves here in Minnesota.
The video is here.

In this "apology", she never apologises for anything. This is as close as she comes to an apology:

"I may not always get my words right, but I know that my heart is right, because my heart is for you - for your children, and for the blessings of liberty to remain for our great country."

Nothing in those words apologises for her remarks accusing Obama or fellow Congressional members of being "anti-American". She is instead sticking with her line that she never said what she said; that her remarks were merely misconstrued. Bachmann seems to be saying that she tends to say a lot of crazy stuff, but her heart is in the right place.

And, coming from someone who works for the government, this is bizarre:

"Once again, our nation is at a crossroads, and it's a time for choosing. We could embrace government as the answer to our problems, or we could choose freedom and liberty."

It's hard to see how this fits in with her previous characterisation of Democrats as "anti-American". She questioned Obama's allegiance to the country based on his weak association with Bill Ayers, not because of some "Big Government" agenda. She has always been one of those Republicans that condemns as "treasonous" anyone who criticises the President or the Iraq occupation. She has consistently voted to retain the most onerous parts of the Patriot Act, and has strongly defended the illegal wire-tapping programme. Bachmann has never seen any legislation promoting a police state that she didn't like. And she has seldom failed to impugn the patriotism of anyone opposing more government intrusion and surveillance.

This has always been the basis of her "anti-American" thesis: that "liberals" are, in effect, working for "the enemy". Now, however, she has made a radical shift and claims that 'liberals" are "anti-American" because they want Big Government and are opposed to "freedom and liberty". This isn't an apology, it's a distraction.

Many people have seen Bachmann on television and wondered about Minnesota voters. How could Minnesota have elected this crazy woman?

The answer is her made-to order, gerrymandered district and the weak Democrat who ran against her in 2006.

Bachmann was elected in 2006, at the same time as Keith Ellison was elected to the House and Amy Klobuchar was elected to the Senate. These were both Democrats, and both won by large margins. Ellison is notable for being a Muslim-American; the first in the House. So the idea that Minnesotans are crazy wingnuts should find a full stop right there. Bachmann's district is a long and fairly narrow swath to the north of the Twin Cities metro area. This mostly exurban and suburban district has undergone a profound change in the past twenty years. The long-time rural citizens have seen a massive influx of "refugees" from the urban core. They were fleeing pretty much the same thing: minorities, crime, and the ordinances of the city. They were also attracted by much lower prices for land and much cheaper housing, and the chance to raise their children free of "corrupting influences". They bought themselves long commutes into the urban areas as part of the bargain, and were hard hit by the increase in gas prices.

Mostly, however, these refugees brought all of those "corrupting influences" along with them into their new Paradise of liberty. Huge housing developments crammed people into treeless refugee zones that were not much more spacious than the urban yards they left behind. Property taxes went up markedly as localities had to expand waste-water treatment, roads, parks, landfills, etc. The new residents found their neighbours' proximity distasteful and begin to demand ordinances to deal with the problems of sharing space with farms and with the activities of their fellow "freedom-seekers". Police departments expanded. Strip malls moved in. "Big box" retailers squeezed out the local businesses. What were once friendly communities became mere groupings of individuals jealously guarding their tiny fiefdoms, screaming for the local government to simultaneously "do something" about their neighbours and to "get off our backs".

The inherent contradiction with exurban development is that it requires strong regulation to avoid massive inefficiencies and steep tax increases, while the people you are trying to attract are fleeing increased regulation and high taxes.

The metro area was facing a wave of communities further and further away demanding increased amenities without increased taxes. The Metropolitan Council at last put its foot down and drew a boundary for waste-water and water services. These exurban communities would have to find local solutions to get rid of their sewage, dig local wells, and lay their own water lines. This meant that these "enclaves of freedom" had to enforce ordinances covering septic tanks and drain tiles that simply dumped the refugee's filth into local streams. The alternative was severe contamination of the drinking water. Environmental regulations stopped people from simply dumping waste oil on the ground or draining their radiators into storm drains. Treatment plants had to be built to deal with a massive local increase in waste from the new residents who wanted an urban lifestyle in a rural infrastructure. Landfill space became scarce, and developments were being built closer and closer to them; regulations were demanded for noxious odours and vermin.

Thus, the influx of "liberty-seekers" became their own undoing.

And local politicians were simply not up to the task. These refugees moved into local politics, bringing a simplistic libertarian view and a visceral hatred of taxes. Thus, precious lead time was squandered with stop-gap solutions that made no one happy and merely made more expensive options inevitable. This made it even easier to frame "government" as the "problem". And the interests of the long-time residents consistently lost out to those of the new refugees.

Culturally, the district was a seething battleground of people unable to come together for the common good due to the "get off my back" ideology of the refugees. Evangelical churches made big inroads, due to the refugees' desire to raise their children in an uncorrupted environment. And so the stage was set for Republican domination of the district. The evangelical church communities were organised into political influence groups, and the Republican message of less regulation and "traditional values" found fertile ground. The one thing everyone agreed on was their profound hatred of the "other": racial minorities, immigrants, non-Christians, and those "communist" city folk.

Into this breach stepped Michelle Bachmann.

Strongly evangelical, she claimed that God chose her for Congress. Who can argue with God, after all? If one didn't vote for her, you were then voting against God. Jumping fully on the fading Bush Bandwagon, her election was seen by Party officials as some kind of rebound in a year when Republicans were generally kicked out of office. In spite of a fairly narrow win margin, she behaved as if she had been crowned Prom Queen. She proudly tied herself to the national neo-con agenda and forgot all about her little backwater district. She said all of the right things, sucked up to all of the right people, and voted as she was told to by the Republican Party masters. Bachmann was the perfect drone for movement conservatives.

The voters in her district were completely taken for granted. When gas prices hit these refugee commuters hard, she had a typical and grossly simplistic solution: drill, baby, drill. Regulations were the problem, not her constituents' choice to live an hour away from their jobs or their lifestyles' complete dependence on multiple vehicles. When foreclosures threatened the dreams of these urban refugees, it was the damnable regulations that were to blame. And when the economy crashed, it was again "hyper-regulation" of banks and investment firms that caused it. Meanwhile, she made regular appearances on local Christian radio programmes to keep up the drumbeat of hatred against gays, Muslims, and "baby killers".

While many see her remarks on "Hardball" as her downfall, the truth is that the handwriting was on the wall with the Petters' scandal. Bachmann endorsed a con man with a shady history, and on the strength of that voucher many Christian charities and churches were fleeced on a large scale. Pastors lost their homes, charities shut down, and churches were in a financial crisis.
Bachmann did some public hand-wringing for evangelical consumption, but this was one case where she could not blame regulations for the situation. If Michelle was truly guided by God, how this could immense lapse of judgement have occurred? Faith was shaken, angry people wanted answers, and so Bachmann did what movement conservatives always do: created a distraction.

Never mind about Bachmann's links to the con man Vennes - the real thing we all need to fear is the "anti-American views" of Obama and other members of Congress. She creates another false dichotomy similar to her endorsement by God: if you don't vote for me, people who hate America will gain power. Bachmann is on the job, folks, guarding against excessive regulations and the treasonous elite out to destroy us. That makes you trust her again, right?

Bachmann really said nothing different on Hardball that she hasn't said before to neo-con audiences, or that movement conservatives don't say on a regular basis to each other. It's the Party line narrative: Democrats hate America, they want us to lose in Iraq and in the GWOT, they are guilty of treason, they have a socialist agenda, they hate Christians and God, etc.

Bachmann's real mistake, the one for which the GOP has taken her to task for, was to speak those internal talking points to the masses. To the Republican faithful, Bachmann is merely a big-mouth, not a crazy McCarthyite.

And so she claims she was taken out of context. She claims she never said what everyone can plainly see in the video she said. She denies saying that she thinks "liberals are anti-American", when nobody ever said she did. She said Obama is anti-American due to his "associations with Ayers", and she said that members of Congress should be examined for potential anti-American views - not "liberals".

Then she announces an "apology" in which she frames the issue as a struggle between "liberty" and "government", which has nothing to do with putatively "anti-American views".

If Bachmann loses this election, it will mean that movement conservatism cannot prevail in a district tailor-made for that philosophy. It will mean that her "politics of false dichotomy" are not strong enough to prevail in Minnesota. And it will mean that the neo-cons will lose another pawn in Congress.

Bachmann bites

Michele Bachmann did an interview on "Hardball" in which she said, regarding Obama, "Absolutely, I'm very concerned that he may have anti-American views".

Not content with that, she called for a McCarthy-esque witch-hunt on members of Congress, to determine if they are "pro-American" enough.

"The news media should do a penetrating expose and take a look. I wish they would, I wish the American media would take a great look at the views of the people in Congress and find out are they are pro-America or anti-America."

Chris Matthews gave her repeated opportunities to back down and moderate her remarks, but she continued to stand by them. She was just repeating the standard far-Right talking points, after all. She fully expected a pat on the head from the Party for being such a good parrot. Apparently "everybody knows" this stuff, so who could take issue with it?

Now, however, the media is just a bunch of Big Old Meanies who "misunderstood" her.
The video is here. See for yourself.

"I think the people that Barack Obama has been associating with are anti-American, by and large."

How can you take that any other way than what it says? Especially when you also say, in reference to Obama:

"Absolutely, I'm very concerned that he may have anti-American views"

Michele, you just said that Obama has anti-American views. You said that you were concerned about that. You can back-pedal about his "anti-American views" and say that they just aren't your views, but why would that make you "concerned"?

One can only wonder what Bachmann's proposed "investigation" of Congress would be like.
It doesn't take a genius to see that she is "concerned" about Bill Ayers. So we would likely see an investigation into everyone that each member of Congress has ever worked with, along with PTA boards, charities, and maybe even church choirs. Then we would have to look at everyone that every member of Congress has ever visited, because one of the scary things about Ayers is that Obama visited his house. We could then look at college professors, legislative aides, donors, neighbours, and of course, friends.

Since Obama has clearly and repeatedly expressed his love for America, such declarations will mean nothing to the investigators. Obviously, the truly "anti-American" among us would simply lie. Such an investigation would have to rely on others to "rat out" these traitors, possibly in exchange for clemency. Sadly necessary, if we want to ally Bachmann's "concerns", though.

How else are we to get to the bottom of what has Michele Bachmann so "concerned"?

Sure, it's an ugly job. But can we really afford to have someone in Congress who once went out to dinner with a college classmate without doing a thorough examination of their political views? Surely no "real American" would show up at the home of someone who, for example, thought that the Iraq War was a mistake, even if it was only to drop off a graduation gift for the traitor's child. And wouldn't we all like to know, if it were possible, that the woman who runs the checkout at the grocery store our Representative shops at once failed to put their hand over their heart at a baseball game? Or that one of their old college professors was married to a Muslim?

Seriously, the Republicans have already said that things like failing to wear a flag pin on your lapel is a suspect sign. They have already said that anyone who criticised the Iraq effort was a traitor and a terrorist sympathiser. These are the kind of criteria that would be applied to Bachmann's investigation.

But perhaps I just "misread" her. Perhaps she should clarify what qualifies one as being "anti-American". But I bet she won't.

Bachmann knows that the "base" agrees with her. Her mistake was simply in saying it out loud and on camera, not in believing it. The public isn't supposed to know that, unless you are a loyal Party member and an evangelical Christian, that you are considered to be a cowardly, despicable traitor in the eyes of the far-Right. Bachmann failed to keep that secret.

This is the American equivalent of the Taliban. They think they are the "real Americans", and they get to write the definition of what "American" is.