Federalism for Beginners

I got into a big argument tonight with my parents about Federalism of all things and I was so surprised by some of the things I heard, I thought it was best to do a little more thinking about the subject. All this started because I made a pretty silly and sophomoric joke about President Bush, but it morphed pretty quickly (though I’m not sure exactly how at this point) into a debate about how we make decision in this country and, specifically, how we choose a president.

Oh, wait, I remember. First we started talking about ‘one man one vote’ in general, as in, how that concept applies to, or fails to apply to state law versus federal law. I said something that I’ve said many times, but (apparently) not to my parents before, and it turned into the topic of conversation. What I said was this: I’ve never been much for state rights. I think the only reason to have states at this point is because they serve as very useful testing grounds for federal legislation.

At that point my father hypothesized that if we went by ‘one man one vote’ and made everything important federal (a system I’d love to see) we’d be pretty much ruled entirely by New York and California. I’m not sure that that’s exactly true, but I do think it’s an interesting admission and a rather telling one. More on that later. From there we went to the most antiquated and useless system we still have left in this country.

So. The Electoral College: discuss.

I was genuinely of the impression that this institution was pretty much out of defenders who didn’t live in Rhode Island, Alaska or in one of those states in the middle, like Kansas, but as it turns out, I was wrong.

Also, as it turns out, it’s not clear that everybody in the country really understands the electoral college, so let’s start with a short civics lesson. This is what Wikipedia has to say about the what-it-is of the thing:

The United States Electoral College is a term used to describe the 538 presidential electors who meet every four years to cast the official votes for President and Vice President of the United States.[citation omitted] The Constitution gives each state legislature the plenary power to choose the electors who shall represent its state in the Electoral College. Through this constitutional authority, each state legislature also has the power to determine how exactly the electors are to be chosen (including the legislature choosing the electors). Presently, every state legislature chooses to allow its electors to be popularly chosen (by a state-wide ballot for slates of electors, who have informally pledged themselves to support a particular presidential candidate and a particular vice presidential candidate) on the day set forth by federal law for that purpose (i.e. Election Day). … The Constitution does not require the electors to vote as pledged, but 26 states and the District of Columbia have laws that require their electors to vote as pledged.[citation omitted]

The person chosen by majority of that vote is, of course, the next president. Most people know that part, or they know something like it, but what they may not know is that the electoral votes are not handed out proportionally according to state population. What’s something of a surprise for a lot of people is the fact that the electoral college system tends to favor, and in fact is designed to favor, smaller, less populous states.

How can that be, one might ask, looking at the layout. Here’s the layout, for those of you who want to look at it.

"How can that be?" one might ask, reasoning that one is pretty sure that states like California (55), Texas (34), New York (31), Florida (27) and Pennsylvania (21) are the most populous states in the Union. Also states like Alaska, Rhode Island, Montana, Wyoming and North and South Dakota (all 3s) are the leas populous. It seems like the more people you have the more electoral votes you get. But that’s not exactly true.

The number of electoral votes a state gets is equal to the total number of representatives that state has in both houses of congress. In other words, you get one for every representative you have in the house, and then two more (one for each senator). That’s why no state only has one electoral vote. The lowest number is three. So why, one might ask, would I say that a system that clearly gives more votes to states with higher populations favor states with lower populations? It’s because of those extra two votes. They just mean more to the smaller states.

Let’s look at the populations themselves. All these numbers are from Wikipedia and I assume they’re more or less accurate. Absolute accuracy isn’t important here. The gist is enough to make the point.

The Little Ones

• Wyoming: 493,782
• Vermont: 608,827
• Alaska: 626,932
• North Dakota: 642,200
• South Dakota: 781,919
• Montana: 997,195
• Rhode Island: 1,048,319

The Big Ones

• Pennsylvania: 12,281,054
• Florida: 15,982,378
• New York: 18,976,457
• Texas: 20,851,820
• California: 36,457,549

Now let’s have some fun with those numbers. The most jarring thing to look at is a simple comparison between Wyoming and California. In Wyoming 493,782 people pick three electors. That’s one elector for every 164,594 people. In California, each elector represents 662,864 people. That means that a Wyoming…an’s vote is worth 4.02 times what a Californian’s is worth. We’re not talking about subtle differences here. Everybody in Wyoming gets 4 VOTES for every Californian’s one.

Let’s look at it a different way. Take all the little guys and add them together. You get state with 21 electoral votes and a population of 5,199,174. Can you think of any other states that have a total of 21 electoral votes? How about Pennsylvania. The population of Pennsylvania is 12,281,054. That means, taken together, everyone in those states has 2.36 (think two and a third) times as much power in picking the president as everyone in Pennsylvania.

One more way of looking at this. Those states together have about 5.2 million people. Wisconsin has a few more people, abut 5.55 million. They get 21 electoral votes spread between them. Wisconsin gets 10. Roughly the same number of people. Half as many votes, just because they’re all in one state in Wisconsin.

How’s that for arbitrary lines and affiliations making big differences?

It’s interesting, too, to see how these differences boil down into real effects on who we see pulling up on Moving Day at the White House. Conversely, improbably, counterintuitively, the smaller the number on the electoral map, the bigger the influence that state has in the general election. If you can get a bunch of those little states and stick them together, you can win (easily) even if you lose the popular vote (in a landslide). That doesn’t usually happen. But it does sometimes happen. See 2000: Al Gore carries the popular vote with 50,999,897 votes to President Bush’s 50,456,002 and we still call him President Bush. Admittedly, this wasn’t a landslide example, but more than half a million more people voted for Gore than Bush and we got Bush anyway.

It’s late and I’m tired, so I’m going to have to come back to this on Sunday, when I have more time. Rest assured I have a bigger point to make here than, “Waaaaaah! That jerk stole my country!”

Iron Man: Rockin' Good Time

Iron Man kicks some serious booty. Big surprise, right? Billed as the newest in a string of seriously awesome comic book flicks, this action packed, visually stunning ride delivers everything it promises and more, beating Spider-Man II out to tie with Batman Begins as the best super hero movie ever.

There's only one thing I'd have changed: The end. (Spoiler Alert)

I'd have had the ice thing work. After flying up into the ionosphere, or whatever, with Obadiah and thumping him on his headpiece, I'd have called it a day. If they needed to blow up a building to make it an action flick, they should have done it before hand. If they needed to give the chick something heroic to do, same deal. Do that first. The ice thing was the big finisher and it should have topped there.

Why, you ask? Simple. It just fit the character better.

Now, I'll admit, I don't know Tony Stark from Adam, or at least I didn't before I saw this. I never read any Iron Man books and I never saw any of the animated movies that came before this one (though I'm seriously considering going and picking up a few of both of those now), but from what I can tell, Tony Stark is Marvel's answer to Bruce Wayne. He's rich, brilliant, flawed, and above all, human. Definitely of the Batman school of super heroes, rather than the Superman school, right?

So why not let that be what gets the job done? Sure, have the slug fest and the explosions and the skin of your teeth suspense stuff at the end. I'm all for it. But what saves the day should be what makes Tony Stark who he is: His intellect. And they almost did it. They set up this whole thing with the ice early in the movie so that it would pay off at the end and Stark sets up this complicated scheme to get Stane to follow him up there specifically because he knows what's going to happen and Stane doesn't, right? The suit was his idea. He built the first one. He improved on it. He almost killed himself testing it and he fixed the little flaws that cropped up. Stane's weakness (even in the more advanced suit) was that he hadn't done that stuff. He had the brawn, but not the brains. Why not make that count for something?

Instead, we get to that crucial point and we see Stark exhausting all his power stores trying to pull of this elaborate trick and what does he get? Nothing. Was Stane's suit even damaged in the fall? How did he survive that? Did he figure out how to reboot his suit just like Stark did? And if so, doesn't that make him just as gifted as Stark? Shouldn't the hero have at least one advantage over the villain?

It just seems like they threw all of that away for the tired cliche of having the monster pop up one more time just when you thought he was dead. Come on, guys. We've all seen the Terminator, okay? We've even seen Johnny Mnemonic and other stuff (like the Buffy episode with Dracula) where they made fun of that because it's so overdone. We don't need to go down that road again. And even if we did, even if that's a crucial part of the modern monster movie, again I say, they should have just reversed the order of those two scenes. Do the building blowing up and have Stane come back from the dead after that instead. Then do the ice thing.

Just my two cents.

The game, she's over.

Obama pulls ahead of Clinton in superdelegates. Now there's no metric by which she's ahead except for her own wishful thinking.

Senator Barack Obama surged ahead of his rival, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, in the count of superdelegates on Friday, the first time since the outset of the race that Mrs. Clinton has lost the lead in one of her few remaining trump cards.

Mr. Obama racked up seven endorsements in the last 24 hours from superdelegates, the Democratic Party insiders who are granted autonomy to support whomever they wish at the convention in August. One, a New Jersey congressman, switched his allegiance away from Mrs. Clinton, allowing the Illinois senator to pull ahead of his opponent, according to the latest New York Times count.

If she doesn't pull out of the race now, and by now I mean soon, then I think it's time to really start to question her motives.

God These People Are Unbelievable

The most recent dust-up on the campaign trail is this back and forth between Romney and Obama that I commented on last night. Now McCain’s weighing in and I’m starting to wonder if the cartoons about babies crying and shaking rattles shouldn’t feature him instead. Obama, yesterday on the Situation Room, said this:

This is offensive and I think it’s disappointing because John McCain always says I’m not going to run that politics and then to engage in that kind of smear I think is unfortunate particularly since my policy towards Hamas has been no different than his. I’ve said that they’re a terrorist organization. That we should not negotiate with them unless they recognize Israel and renounce violence. And unless they’re willing to abide by previous accords between the Palestinians and the Israelis. And so for him to toss out comments like that I think is an example of him losing his bearings as he pursues this nomination.

And, as you may remember, this is all in response to McCain’s saying that Obama was the candidate of choice for terrorist organization Hamas and that we should draw our own conclusions from that fact. Now McCain’s whining that using the phrase ‘losing his bearings’ was a cheap shot about his age.

Let’s get something out in the open here.

John: You’re old. You’re really frackin’ old, John.

If McCain got into this as the oldest presidential candidate in the history of America thinking that his age wasn’t going to be a legitimate issue, then he really is senile. But that’s not what Barack was saying, and McCain knows it. Obama was saying what a lot of us on the left (and I think more than a few in the middle) have been feeling for months now.

Remember when McCain was the Republican everybody liked? Remember when he was the maverick who didn’t just follow lockstep with the rest of them? Remember when he was the guy you could always count on to be the most reasonable of that bunch? Remember when he was the one who wasn’t going to be just like George Bush? What the hell happened to that guy? Since beginning this campaign McCain has moved way out to the right on everything from the war to economics to judicial appointments. I keep expecting him to respond to someone calling out “Hey, Senator McCain” by saying, “That name no longer has any meaning for me.” John McCain is dead and whoever this guy is betrayed and murdered him. That’s what Obama was talking about. He’s lost his bearings, his footing, his way, and himself.

But let’s get past that. Let’s pretend that McCain’s right and that this was a way of bringing his age up. What exactly is it that makes it a cheap shot? Is McCain trying to tell us that he’s not really frackin’ old? Are we not allowed to talk about it? Because, seriously folks, it’s not like this isn’t an issue. Age is the one immutable* characteristic that is actually relevant. McCain’s what, 71 now, right? He’ll be 72 before he takes office and that means that if he gets elected and reelected he’ll be 80 when he leaves office. He can’t tell us his mind’s going to be all there in eight years. He can’t tell us it’ll be all there in four years. He just can’t. He can’t know that. He’s really old. Old people start to deteriorate. They get Alzheimer’s. They get Parkinson’s. They get dementia. They get just generally more forgetful and less capable. It doesn’t happen to everybody. I’m sure he takes care of himself, and he’s probably starting off a little sharper than most people and he can afford to be blunted a bit by age, but folks, that doesn’t mean anything. My grandfather started out sharp as a tack and stayed that way till his early seventies and then went into a decline that made falling stars look lethargic. But that might not happen to McCain. I'm not saying it will or it won't because I don’t know. And neither does he. And neither does America.

The amazing thing here is, I’m also not saying don’t vote for the guy because he’s old.** I’m just saying that he shouldn’t be whining that it came up. And speaking of losing his bearings, remember when he wasn’t doing that? I don’t have any quotes for this but I distinctly remember a John McCain of just a few months ago who took on this issue straight on, talking about it, allaying fears, joking around. What happened that guy? The Darth McCain we’ve got now gives us this (through an aide):

We have all become familiar with Sen. Obama’s new brand of politics. First you demand civility and then you attack him. You distort his record and send out surrogates to question his integrity. It is called hypocrisy.

Uh… Hello? I hate to go all schoolyard on ya, but he started it!

McCain directly questions Obama’s integrity with a seriously cheap shot about Hamas and Obama makes a justified response saying he’s disappointed that the debate has gone down to that level when he expected more from McCain and it’s Obama’s fault? Did I miss something? Is this Bizarro world? Only in an alternate universe could anything Obama said in response to McCain’s comments be called an attack. When you’re responding to an attack, it’s called a defense, dude. Look it up. And let’s all flog Obama for wanting a civilized debate. Who does he think he is asking for that? And I’d like to see one example of where Obama has distorted anything about McCain’s record. And this is the part I like best. McCain sends out a surrogate to question Obama’s integrity and complain about Obama sending out surrogates to question McCain’s. There's some seriously funny symmetry in there someplace. Or there would be if these guys weren't deadly serious with this nonsense.

I just can’t believe these people.

* Okay, not actually immutable, but it only changes one way. It’s something he can’t do anything about.

** Don’t vote for him because he’s wrong on almost every issue.

Mitt Romney is a poo-poo head

Are we really gonna bring the debate down to this level this early? Can’t we act like grown-ups at least until the conventions?

Today Mitt Romney said that Barack hasn’t accomplished anything and that the presidency is not an internship. What’s next? Cartoons of Barack in diapers shaking a rattle?

Romney tells us that Barack hasn’t been a leader of enterprise and he hasn’t made a business work, or a city, or a state. I’m not a hundred percent sure on this, but I don’t think McCain’s ever been a mayor or a governor either. I also don’t know if he’s ever been CEO of his own business, but maybe he has. I guess the point is, doesn’t it seem like this criticism is just applicable to him as it is to Obama? McCain and Obama are both senators. McCain’s been a senator longer, sure, but he’s like a thousand years old--of course he has. Is Romney really trying to tell us that only former governors are equipped to handle the presidency? Because, I mean, I know the last few have been governors (or vice presidents, in Bush 41’s case) but it’s not like Obama would be the first senator to try for the office.

Let’s think about that. Who else was just a senator before getting elected president?

I’m actually surprised by how far back you have to go to find one. The last president who wasn’t a governor or a vice president before taking office was John F. Kennedy. Wow. I’d hate to follow in that guy’s footsteps. Who else had only served in one of the houses of Congress before running? Just a couple, actually. Notably among them, perhaps you’ll remember, Mitt, was Abraham Lincoln. He served two years in the House of Representatives. That's it.

Well. I’m sold. Let’s take Romney’s advice that would have cheated us out of Kennedy and Lincoln. Sounds like a solid plan.

He also defended John McCain’s ridiculous comments about Hamas saying that the US leader of that group has endorsed Obama and citing as the reason for that endorsement the fact that Obama has said that he’ll talk to Ahmadinejad in his first year. Wow. The sheer number of ways that that statement is stupid gives me goosebumps.

First and foremost, here we are again playing the old game of equating the candidate with some nutbag who’s endorsed him. I don’t know if it’s true about this US leader of Hamas (whoever the hell that even is) but let’s take it as true. Obama has no control over who endorses him. Or speaks out on his behalf. Or votes for him. If you want to start playing that game, let’s talk about the tens of thousands of Klansmen, skinheads, cultists, fanatics and bigots who consistently vote Republican. Let’s talk about the gun-toting nuts who say income tax is unconstitutional. Let’s talk about the guys who think the South’ll rise again and that the second amendment is necessary so that the people can defend themselves against the government. Let’s talk about all the hate-mongers and bigots and extremists and terrorists who’ve taken up the conservative banner since 1865. Let’s talk about Rush Limbaugh and Anne Coulter and Bill O’Reilly. And, of course, let’s talk about George Bush. Cause if they support you, you must be just like them, right?

More interesting, though, than the fact that the Republicans are already pulling out these guilt-by-imaginary-association arguments, is the reason Romney said this Hamas guy is supporting Obama. He’s agreed to talk to Ahmadinejad. Great attack point, guys. Barack, alone in the field, is saying that it’s time to at least make an attempt at bringing our enemies back to the table so that we can at least attempt to solve some of our differences with diplomacy instead of obliteration and he’s the bad guy? I thought McCain was trying to spin us an I’m-different-from-George-Bush yarn. Has he already given up on that? Is he already embracing the speak-aggressively-and-smack-them-with-a-big-stick school of foreign policy? Tell us again why it’s not just four more years, John? I don’t know about you guys, but I’m a little tired of shooting first and asking questions later or never and so, I think, is most of the rest of the world.

Honestly, I’m not as schooled on Iran as I’d like to be, so I’m going to boil this down to pretty simple terms to make sure I understand it. Iran wants to do stuff we don’t like. We’d like to stop them from doing that stuff. We can try to talk them out of it, offer them something, or blow them up. Is that pretty much it? What does that remind me of… Oh, yeah. Foreign Policy. We’re supposed to believe that Obama is weak, or soft on terrorists, or an Iran-sympathizer because he wants to engage in diplomacy with a potentially antagonistic country? We’re supposed to believe that the better plan is to rattle our saber, huff and puff and then annihilate a city in a shock-and-awe pre-emptive strike without first at least talking to them? Thanks, Mitt, but I think I like Obama’s take on this a little better. And if that’s really what this endorsement is about, you’re going to have a tough time convincing me it’s a bad thing.

Oh, and by the way, that doesn’t mean I’m a Hamas sympathizer. Or a terrorist sympathizer. It just means that I am, like the rest of the world is, a little tired of the constant violence in that part of the world and I’m willing to consider any option that might make a difference over there. We’ve tried shooting them, and you know what? That just seems to piss ‘em off. Maybe it’s time we tried talking.

The Only Fair Thing...

Okay. So the thing that actually got me posting again:

I was watching Lou Dobbs a little while ago and his stand-in was talking to a Hillary supporter and the obvious question got asked:

What the hell is she doing still in this race? (I'm paraphrasing here)

The surrogate gave the obvious, but obviously disingenuous response:

Hillary's path to victory is a three-prong attack. 1) There are still millions of people who haven't voted. Let's give those guys a chance to voice themselves, or give those guys a voice to chance themselves, or whatever. 2) Hillary's winning the constituency that the democrats will need in November. 3) Michigan and Florida, nanny nanny boo boo. (still paraphrasing)

Loyal readers... er... reader... er, hey dude who just happened by: This is ridiculous. Especially the last one, but I'll take these in order.

1) The Hillary camp has since the beginning (or at least since she started losing) been saying: Let's see what the guys who haven't voted have to say. This is just Clintonspeak for "Let's see if the Enquirer can find (or fabricate--we don't care) some evidence that Obama is actually from another planet and that he's here to conquer the earth, starting with America, and then to enslave and eat us all."

Folks: It ain't gonna happen. Remember when she was the candidate of inevitability? Funny how you didn't hear much from the Hillary camp about waiting till all the results are in back then. If she'd had her way, she'd have been given the nomination last August. But let's get real. Obama's our guy. Reverend Wright and all, we love the guy (or at least about 52 percent of us do) and he's gonna be the nominee. Short of his getting struck (God-forbid) by a bolt of lightning, that's the reality of the situation. And if he does get struck by a bolt of lightning, much like Don Corleone, I'm going to blame some of the people in this room. Er.. In this blog. I'm gonna blame some of the... Ah, screw it, you know what I mean.

I'm not saying "who cares about what the people in West Virginia think" although I don't much care what they think (since they're almost all Republicans for the love of God). I'm saying: this is the way primaries go, Hill. At the beginning, when no one's voted, you have to wait and see. In the middle when there's a front runner, you may have to wait a little longer. When the math gets impossible for the guy who's behind, the damned race is over. This race is over. If you don't believe me, ask George McGovern. Ask Dianne Feinstein. When even your oldest friends start jumping ship, it's over. And when it's over, it's time to throw in the towel, be the bigger guy and start bringing the party back together. I went to bed last night thinking that's what we were going to see this morning. Didn't everybody else? Didn't Hillary's speech in Indiana sound like a concession? Didn't everybody else think we were going to see her start setting the stage for the taking of that final bow?

Instead we get more of the same. A virtual promise that she's going to stay on the attack. That she's going to keep going after Obama with everything she's got. That she's going to get, if anything, nastier as she gets closer to the inevitable and she gets more and more desperate as a result. A promise, in short, that she's going to do what she can to destroy the party's nominee for the sake of a 0.0 percent chance of taking the nomination away from him.

And we wonder why we lose elections.

Republicans don't do stupid crap like that. You don't see Huckabee standing around waiting until McCain gets that magic num... Okay, bad example.

Buh-dum-pum-ching! I'm here all week!

But seriously folks, when Huckabee did it, McCain was so far ahead it didn't matter. And Huckabee (God love him) did with a little bit of class. He didn't go balls-out attack on McCain hoping to damage him so much he couldn't recover from it in the general election. You know who did that? George Bush. The only difference between what Hillary's doing to Obama right now and what Bush did to McCain in 2000 is that Bush still had a chance to win the nomination. Frankly, I don't want another George Bush in the White House. I don't want him if his name's John McCain and I don't want him if his name's Hillary Clinton.

We desperately need to beat McCain because we can't afford another four years of Bush's policies.

We desperately need to beat Clinton because we can't afford another four years of his politics. It's time to get past the politics of division and backstabbing. It's time to say no to a candidate who will do anything to get us to say yes to her.

So: Millions of votes left to be counted? What about Kentucky and West Virginia? What about them?! What about the millions of people who have voted? What about the 700+ thousand more who voted for Obama? The argument that we need to wait to the end and count every vote rings a little hollow from someone who's only hope of victory is that the superdelegates will overturn the will of the people and steal the nomination for her.

2) Yes, yes... Hillary's doing better than Barack at getting the rural, white blue collar vote. Hillary tells us Barack just can't get that constituency. You know who else has trouble getting that constituency? EVERY DEMOCRAT FOR THE LAST THREE DECADES, that's who. Every one, except Hillary Clinton, at least. And do you know why? Because she is, at least lately, running as a Republican. Raise your hand if you're under any illusions that she'll get those guys when her rival is McCain, rather than Obama. Raise your hand if you think she'll win the rural, white working class states like West Virginia and Kentucky in November. Raise your hand if you've been living under a rock since 1976.

But let's talk about constituencies that people can't get. Obama has some trouble getting people who are, for all intents and purposes, Republicans in sheep's clothing. Who does Hillary have trouble getting? Black voters (25% of the Democratic party and an absolute must-have for any serious Democratic candidate) are now turning out for her in whopping single digits. Who else isn't she getting? College-educated white voters. Liberal voters. Raise your hand if you think a Democrat can win without them.

But, to be fair, raise your hand if you think those groups are going to go McCain in 2008. Of course they're not. They're democrats. And the same goes for most of the people voting for Hillary. Let's give those guys a little credit, shall we? Sure, some of them might vote McCain. Some of them might not vote at all. But this year, with the economy we've got, and the war (sorry, wars) we've got, and the unbelievable 28% percent approval rating of the sitting president... Come on. Most of those people are going to vote and they're going to vote for Obama.

And if they don't, who cares? Yeah, I said it. Who. Cares. Do we really think that a candidate who's gotten more votes in a Democratic primary than any Democratic candidate in the history of the Democratic party isn't going to pick up a few people here and there who aren't in the Democratic base? Let's get serious. My mother (a conservative's conservative) has told me that he's got the most character of all three candidates (her own included). She may not vote for him, but she's never gonna vote for a democrat. If even people who are diametrically opposed to him on virtually every issue have that much respect for him, do we really think he can't win a few likely Republicans who are looking for a little change this year?

Hillary wants us to ask ourselves if he can win, when the real question is: Is it even possible that he'll lose? Again I say: Bolt of lightning. That's the only thing keeping him out of the White House this year.

And, case in point, let me direct your attention to the last debate.
Moderator: Can he win? (still paraphrasing)
Sen. Clinton: Yes. Yes. Yes. (this one's an actual quote)

Hill: We're not buying it anymore.

3) This is my favorite one. Remember back in January when everybody said Michigan and Florida couldn't count? Remember when Hillary was one of those people?

When asked how Hillary gets to the Convention, this surrogate of hers said we have to count Michigan and Florida. That of course prompted the only sane response in anybody's head: Florida's bad enough, since nobody campaigned there, but surely you can't mean we should count Michigan where she was the only person on the ballot? People, staunch democrats, voted in the Republican primaries in those states because their votes wouldn't count in the Democrat primaries and, oh yeah, SHE WAS THE ONLY PERSON ON THE BALLOT IN MICHIGAN. That's not an election.

The response: (still paraphrasing, but this is pretty close to what was said) They are elections. Votes were cast. Those votes were certified by the secretary of state (or whatever) in Michigan. We have to count those votes as is. It's the only fair thing to do.

Okay. Dramatic pause to let that soak in.

Whistling...

Twiddling thumbs...

ARE YOU FRACKIN’ KIDDING ME?!

That's the least fair thing to do. She ran against NOBODY and only won by ten points and you want to give her that whole state? You want to tell us that that's fair? She barely made double digits against the proverbial yellow dog and you want us to call that a win for her? You seriously think you have any chance of convincing us that it’s fair to seat those delegates when Obama wasn’t even on the Ballot? When he wasn’t on the ballot because he followed the rules? You’ve got to be kidding.

But you’re not, are you? You’re totally serious. And that’s what’s scary. I can’t tell if she thinks we’re just morons, who won’t notice the guy behind the curtain, or if she honestly thinks we’re as corrupt as this idea is. She tells us its about not disenfranchising people she was pleased as punch to disenfranchise right up until she realized she needed them to win. She tells us it’s about doing the right thing. It’s funny how doing the right thing only seems to matter to her when it’s advantage Hillary. Here’s a little comparison of two Hillary camp positions to illustrate that point:

Superdelegates v. Michigan

We’ve talked about Michigan already, so I’ll just touch it real quick. Hillary wants to count the votes despite the fact that the rules say she can’t. We’ve got to count those votes, and screw the rules, Hillary says.

Hillary 1; Rules 0.

What about the superdelegates discussion. Where does she stand on the rules there? She tells us that the superdelegates have the power to go whichever way they want to go and that the rules give them that power and that Barack wants to change the rules mid stream. So…

Rules 1; Hillary 2…? Hrmm… How do we tally this?

She’s a master at defining the debate. I’ll give her that. But it’s just sleight of hand. On the one hand she says, we can’t follow the rules because it hurts people. And on the other hand she says, and speaking of not following the rules, that great “I’m gonna follow the rules” guy Obama says he wants to change the rules about superdelegates and make it so they can only vote for who the pledged delegates voted for.

It’s compelling. A little sophomoric, but there’s a certain ring to that argument.

Except that it’s total BS.

The only thing that matters to Hillary is Hillary. Let’s look a little closer at the positions each of them have taken on these issues.

Hillary says that Barack should agree to break the rules about Michigan and Florida. Barack has said, over and over again, that he’s willing to do just that, as long as it can be done fairly. Hillary won’t even agree to that. The fair thing, she contends, is for results that can’t mean anything to count exactly as they are. Barack says: I didn’t campaign there. A lot of Democrats didn’t vote there. I wasn’t even on the ballot there. It’s not fair to count them as they are. Notice what he hasn’t said: He’s never said we can’t seat them. He’s never said they shouldn’t count at all. He’s only said that some sort of compromise will have to be made so that these extremely unfair contests aren’t counted as they are. Which is exactly what Hillary was saying in January. So is counting them a point for the rules? Is it a point for fairness? No. It’s just a point for Hillary.

So, on to the superdelegates. She tells us that Barack has said that we should change the rules to make it so that they can only vote for the people the pledged delegates have voted for. She’s taking the high road. Rules are rules, right? Yeah they are, when they help her. First off, Barack’s never said anything like that. He’s said that he thinks the Superdelegates will come over to him (and they are) and he’s said that he thinks he’s the front-runner based on contests won, popular vote and pledged delegates (and he is) but he’s never said anything about changing the rules defining how Superdelegates vote. The people who support him, who are saying how they think Superdelegates should vote, are just stating the obvious: He’s the winner. The people have spoken. They picked him. It’d sure look funny if the superdelegates took it away from him. And it would. What’s wrong with that? How did this become an attacking point for her?

Answer: It just did. She saw an opportunity to score points by painting him as something he's not in an effort to bolster her unreasonable argument about Michigan and Florida and she took it.

This is what Hillary has become. She went from being one of the greatest progressive voices of our time, to the joke who would do or say anything—ANYTHING—to win. I mean, don't even get me started on the gas tax thing. When 200 economists who don't have a horse in this race say you're idea's crap, maybe it's time to drop it and stop pandering. When you hit it over and over again for two weeks before the primary and you lose like you did in North Carolina and you almost lose in Indiana, maybe it's time to stop pandering. Is Hillary gonna stop? Hell no. The gas tax came up in her concessio... I mean victory speech last night. And it came up again today. Nobody thinks she thinks it'll work. Nobody thinks she thinks it'll actually bring gas prices down. Nobody think she thinks it has any chance of passing. But hell, if it gets her a couple votes, maybe no one will notice it's all smoke and mirrors, right?

I'm tired of it. I'm tired of her treating me like I don't have a brain. I'm tired of her telling me black is white and the sky's green. I can see the sky just fine on my own and I know the difference between the truth and just a bunch of crap you say to get elected. And Hillary, I expected more from you.

In the space of less than a year she’s made the journey from being, not only someone I thought I could trust to run the country, but someone I thought I could trust, to being this: a political hack with absolutely no moral compass of any kind. She’s lost her way, and what’s more, she’s lost my respect. And that, I can assure you, was a difficult thing for her to do.

All this crap just breaks my heart. It breaks it. Anybody who's interested can look down at my postings from last year and see that I started out as a Clinton-lover. I used to love Bill (like a brother!) and Hillary too. Even back in January of 07 before either candidate had declared (but not before we knew they would) I had to sit down and really think before I could really come up with a solid reason why I liked Obama better. Well, as Eric Carmen said: Those days are gone.

She’s not the right choice. Not for the Democratic party. Not for America.

I’m done with her.

Nobody Panic! I'm here.

I started this blog more than a year ago when I was bored at work and feeling inspired by the prospects of a change in the political climate after the midterms. I quit working on it when my job got more interesting and I had less time just sitting around in my office for web surfing and blogging. Now that things are really heating up again this election year, I find more and more that I have a lot I want to talk about and no one (who isn't diametrically opposed to my own views) to talk to. So I'm back to shout my insane ramblings into the void again and pretend someone's hearing them.