When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.
Mark Twain
Multiple Posts Tomorrow
As my regular readers know, I usually publish my daily posts in the late evening; tomorrow I'll probably publish early and late editions, the early edition, with a final Election Watch and after I vote, probably around noon or early afternoon EDT, and then a late evening edition reviewing available election results.
Election Watch
There has been a flood of poll results over the weekend; it reminds me of the classic quote from Heraclitus ("You can never step into the same river; for new waters are always flowing on to you.") So things are fluid and the reader looking at RCP themselves may find totals have changed by the time he or she reads my post. So the following is based on projections available as of early evening today.
The RCP House head count of lean/likely/safe show the Republicans stretching their lead by 7 today, regaining the 3 lost Saturday to toss up: 224-167, as 4 more lean-Dem seats switched to toss up. A reminder is that all but 2 of the 44 toss up seats are Democrat. I really think that the projections may be understated. There are whiffs in the air of the Scott Brown victory in January. Recall, Brown was 30 points behind the Massachusetts Attorney General and beat her on election day by a comfortable margin. I think if you're a Democrat whom is polling at or below the margin of error of 50% with less than a double-digit lead, you could be in serious trouble tomorrow.
For example, even with polls showing Brown and Boxer with up to 4 to 6 points leads may be deceptive; I think California is in such dire straits that Democratic groupthink incumbents or quasi-incumbents (like twice-elected Governor Jerry Brown, looking for a third, noncontiguous term) are in trouble; they have a massive financial mess, caused by Democrats making unsustainable, unfulfillable benefit packages to state employees, without making provision for a rainy-day fund. You have over a 10% unemployment rate; for the first time in decades (if ever), California is unlikely to add a single seat to the House after the census. Companies are relocating to greener pastures. I think Whitman has a difficulty not only in being a political novice but following another Republican political novice, whom is currently deeply unpopular. Will California, which prides itself as setting standards for the rest of the country, really turn its back on two independently successful female CEO's in favor of stale professional politicians? I hope not...
Washington State Class Warfare Income Tax Going Down: THUMBS UP!
I really think it's unconscionable: make the upper-income taxpayers pick up the tab (on education or for whatever purpose) for everybody else; what could possibly be more morally hazardous? If it's not your own money, what motivation do you have to make sure it's being minimally, efficiently, effectively used? Where's the sense of shared burden? Bill Gates, Sr., Daddy Warbucks to Junior, the Microsoft co-founder and initiative supporter, is leading the charge for the initiative, losing in the most recent poll, 54-43.
A favorite tactic of progressive rich people, e.g., Bill Clinton, is to assert their alleged moral authority to volunteer the property of other rich people; never mind the fact that Clinton's material success is largely due to his having been a successful professional politician for a quarter-century versus success in the private sector producing new goods or services; he thinks because he is willing to pay extra for his progressive policies, say, conservatives, who happen to have been economically successfully and have little control over how their own taxes are deployed, including inefficient, ineffective operations of government bureaucracies and every ineffectual progressive Big Government program ever devised, should have to pay for the expanded government Bill Clinton wants.
No, I don't think the more than half of Washington taxpayers are voting against this because they're worried about how highly-paid individuals are going to make their ends meet; I think they understand that increased taxes to the job creator/investor class are counter-productive, but more importantly they understand the taxpayer variation of Dietrich Bonhoeffer's famous quote:
First they came for the Communists, but I was not a Communist so I did not speak out. Then they came for the Socialists and the Trade Unionists, but I was neither, so I did not speak out. Then they came for the Jews, but I was not a Jew so I did not speak out. And when they came for me, there was no one left to speak out for me.Is Bush/GOP-Bashing Working?
I have to comment that the Bush-bashing White House and Congress may want to rethink their counterproductive policies and excuses in a remarkable series of recent polls I'll briefly summarize here. Remember Bush leaving the White House, with nearly a 30% job approval, and Obama as President having a 23-point lead over Bush a year ago? Early last month, CNN released a poll showing that Obama now leads Bush 47-45 as to whom is/was the better President. A more recent Penn Schoen Berland poll gives the edge to Bush 48-43, and some 56% want Obama fired, even if they like him on a personal basis. In a PSB poll of 10 swing Congressional districts, nearly two-thirds of respondents say that Obama either has delivered no change or the change has been for the worse.A poll late last July showed Obama leading Bush 48-47 on whom was principally to blame for the bad economy. A Louisiana poll last August said that Bush showed better leadership on Katrina than Obama showed on the oil spill by a margin of 54-33. In a different PSB poll, 61% of respondents say that the Congressional leadership (Speaker Pelosi, Majority Leader Harry Reid) is to the left of them politically.
Readership Analysis
Last month was my best total since I started tracking readership in July; some posts are more widely read than others, so I'm not sure. There are cross-footing questions with aggregate counts, so I will use the relative country counts (with miscellaneous counts under 1% excluded): over the past 4 months, roughly 76.1% of my readers are Americans, Denmark (12.3%); South Korea (3.7%); Great Britain (3.4%), Canada (2.3%), and Luxembourg (2.1%). However, the top 3 over the past month were the US (82.1%), South Korea (6.4%), and Denmark (3.5%). So clearly my Danish readership has dropped off, and my domestic readership has expanded. I don't think I've written anything negative about Denmark, but I would welcome those readers back. Perhaps the pageviews are related to interest in the upcoming elections, my increasing publication of my own political jokes and ad libs, the embedded videos, my tastes in music, or context-driven stories (e.g., my summaries of Kathleen Edward).
Political Humor
[The historical rivalry between Boston and New York is well-known. While Boston's "Big Dig" actual costs nearly tripled from an initial $5B, the NY/NJ "Bigger Dig" started from an initial estimate of $8.7B (New Jersey's share was $2.7B) to $10-13B, with NJ's share climbing at least 30%. When Chris Christie balked, wanting protection against Boston-like cost overruns, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood indignantly decided to take his $3B in federal taxpayer marbles away and and spend them on less worthy projects elsewhere. Governor Christie is getting attacked politically for refusing to dig NJ into a deeper financial hole.
Now you know why Barack Obama can't drive the car out of that ditch: he's got tunnel vision. He keeps digging himself in even deeper with taxpayer money without light at the other end...]
An original:
- Paul the Octopus, who predicted Spain would win the 2010 World Cup soccer tournament, died last Friday. What you may not know is that Rahm 'Dead Fish' Emanuel was not pleased with some of the calls that Paul had recently made in the mid-term elections. That calamari that Joy Behar enjoyed for lunch today? Uh-huh.
Musical Interlude: Instrumentals/One-Hit Wonders
Roger Williams, "Autumn Leaves". A rare #1 hit (several weeks in 1955) for a piano instrumental. I remember singing Johnny Mercer's words to this song in my high school choir; I think it was one of the featured selections in our first performance. Now did you really think a Franco-American was going to ignore that this pop classic ("Les Feuilles Mortes") was first introduced in the 1946 film Les Portes de la Nuit by actor/singer Yves Montand?
Roger Williams, "Autumn Leaves". A rare #1 hit (several weeks in 1955) for a piano instrumental. I remember singing Johnny Mercer's words to this song in my high school choir; I think it was one of the featured selections in our first performance. Now did you really think a Franco-American was going to ignore that this pop classic ("Les Feuilles Mortes") was first introduced in the 1946 film Les Portes de la Nuit by actor/singer Yves Montand?
