Soviet Music

Say what you want about the Soviets, they did inspire some good music:

Let's Go:



Soviet National Anthem:



The Red Army is the Strongest:



Smuglianka:



Echelon's Song:



And as a bonus, a heavy metal remix of the Soviet March from Red Alert 3:

1979 Again

Yesterday, the American embassies/consulates in Cairo, Egypt, and Benghazi, Libya were stormed. The Egyptian riot destroyed a few things and burned the flag, but no one seems to have been injured in the melee.

Things were much worse in Libya. The ambassador, Christopher Stevens, and three marines were killed in the attack. It appears that they were taken to a separate building by Libyan security officials and then the mob was informed that there were Americans in that building. The mob stormed the building and killed those inside.

With these attacks, one can't help but be reminded of the Iranian assault on the US embassy in 1979. In that case, our people were taken hostage rather than killed, but the feeling is about the same. Of course, with no hostages, there won't be a botched military rescue effort, but that does not preclude the possiblity of things going south in any reprisal efforts.

Couple this with the public slap of Prime Minister Netanyahu, and yesterday was not a particularly good day for anyone in this country. With the possibility of more protests forming in North Africa, it doesn't look like things will be improving anytime in the near future.

Fantasy Freakiness

My fantasy league is run through CBSSports and one of the things CBS does is put a list of players with comments (both good and bad) during the week. It has me a bit unnerved that all of the comments are about players that I have.

In reverse order, the comments are about:
Donald Brown (RB-Ind) - back up running back
DeShawn Jackson (WR-Phi) - starting wide reciever
Michael Turner (RB-Atl) - starting running back
Aaron Hernandez (TE-NE) - starting tight end
Wes Welker (WR-NE) - starting wide reciever
Lions Defense - starting defense
49er's Defense - back up defense
Cam Newton (QB-Car) - starting quarterback
Darius Hayward-Bey (WR-Oak) - starting wide reciever
Carson Palmer (QB-Oak) - back up quarterback

It's actually even worse because the player that had dropped off the list with the addition of Palmer was Randy Moss, who I picked up as a back-up wide reciever. Hopefully all this attention means good things today.

And Now We Fight

With the close of the Democratic National Convention, we are now officially in to the Presidential race.

At the moment, just about everything is drawn even. Almost all national polls, and most battleground state polls show a statistical tie between President Obama and Mr. Romney. Some polls show Mr. Obama up a little while others show Mr. Romney up a little. At this point, it is all noise.

From a historical point of view, a tied race is not the best news for Mr. Obama. He has had the advantage in being able to spend campaign money while Mr. Romney has been unable until the Republican convention finished. That Mr. Obama has not been able to build himself any kind of significant lead would be troubling. Also troubling is that historically undecideds break towards the challenger. The idea is that if a President is doing a good job, less people are undecided and will voice their support for the President. If they are not sure, the generally opt to see if the other guy can do any better.

This is still a close race any anything can happen. But Mr. Obama is going to have put some blood, sweat, and tears into this race to win it. The generally panning reviews of Mr. Obama's acceptance speech are not the most auspicious start to the general campaign.

Likewise, Mr. Romney is not going to be able to sit back and just say that I'm not Barack Obama and expect to win. He will need to draw blood and risk getting bloodied himself if he wants to win. Mr. Romney has made large ad buys in a number of battleground states but has oddly omitted Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania from the ad buy. Even if he doesn't think he'll win any of these states, it would be beneficial to attack them, if only to spread Mr. Obama's thinning resources even thinner.

We have two months to go and it will be interesting to see how the battle tactics evolve as the field shapes up.

The Black Knight Rises

It's just a flesh wound.

Via TeeFury

Going Dark on Facebook

I avoid politics on Facebook, but I think this is funny.

For the Glory of Rome

I've been on a bit of a Caesar 3 kick lately and even dusted off the old game to play a bit here and there. But the background music helps to get you into the mood:

Type 1 (population 0-999)


Type 2 (population 1,000-2,999)


Type 3 (population 3,000-4,999)


Type 4 (population 5,000-6,999)


Type 5 (population 7,000+)


Long combat theme

A Good Callender Campaign

One of the oldest cliches in politics is that whatever election it is, it is now the dirtiest election ever. This is complete hogwash. Every election is dirty and it always has been. In fact up until this year, modern campaigns have been rather mundane affairs.

Real dirty campaigns are like those organized by James Callender. Callender was an independent publisher who attacked the Hamiltonian Federalists during the period of the Adam's presidency. He was hired by Thomas Jefferson during the campaign of 1800 and attacked Adams on monarchial grounds. After Jefferson won, Callender turned on him when he was not granted special favors for his services. It was Callender who published the details of the affair between Jefferson and Sally Hemings. Callender would later go on to accuse Jefferson of attempting to seduce married women and suppress pro-Federalist newspapers (how's that for a First Amendment violation?).

Fast forward to this year. Neither campaign has accused the other of fathering children with a mistress yet, but we have had some saucy accusations so far:

- Republicans openly mock Mr. Obama of eating dog while living in Indonesia.
- Mr. Biden has rhetorically accused Mr. Romney of wanting to re-enslave African-Americans.
- Mr. Obama has been accused of wanting to destroy all free enterprise.
- A PAC ad has suggested that Mr. Romney is liable in the death of a man's wife.
- It has been suggested that Mr. Biden is mentally incompetent.
- Mr. Reid has accused Mr. Romney of tax evasion.
- Mr. Obama has been accused of supporting the takeover/destruction of the US by Muslim extremists.
- Mr. Ryan has been accused of wanting to ensure that older people starve to death or die due to lack of medical care.

There are others, but this gives a flavor of what we are getting into. I don't think it has risen to the level of some of the older campaigns (yet), but we still have a good two and a half months to go. We'll see how long it takes for the modern Ms. Hemings to make an appearance.

Dr. Who Anime

I have no idea who created this but if you are a fan of anime and/or Dr. Who you will enjoy this. It is based on voice acting and plot themes from the Third Doctor (John Pertwee). I could have done without the scantily clad anime girl, but the rest is pretty good.

The Railroad Ticket

It was a bit of a surprise that as I was getting ready for bed last night, Mrs. X saw that Mr. Romney was announcing his Veep pick tomorrow. Based on the rumor information, I surmised that it was going to be Mr. Ryan and I can pat myself on the back for that one.

My only post on the VP was back at the beginning of April. I hadn't paid much attention to it because speculation was mostly pointless and I can't even remember a time when the VP pick had an actual impact on the race (outside of Mrs. Palin's selection four years ago). So I have no verifiable proof of my early Ryan advocation.

Of course, I use advocation loosely. I have no strong feelings towards the man one way or the other, but I felt that given the nature of this election and Mr. Ryan's credentials, he would be one of the best picks for Mr. Romney.

My thought process was as follows:

1. Romney had never worked in Washington and would be best served with someone with Washington experience.

2. Romney desperately needed someone that the Conservative wing approved of.

3. Romney needed someone with a penchant for economics, who was seen as pro-business as he was.

4. Romney needed a good attack dog. Someone who would go out and hit the Democrats as hard as needed and wasn't afraid of getting a little bloody himself.

Weighing all of these considerations in my mind, I though Ryan was the only candidate who fit this bill. Clearly I wasn't the only one who thought this way.

Now, does this mean it will help Mr. Romney get elected? I don't know. Some will be more inclinded towards Mr. Romney and some will be turned away. Only time will tell. Still, I can already tell that there's more interest in the VP debate between Mr. Ryan and Mr. Biden than there had been before.

Brave Selections

The Soundtrack to Brave is very catchy, especially if you like Scottish jigs and bagpipes.

This is "Touch the Sky", the openning credits song.


This is "The Games" when we have the set up for the archery contest. Wall o' bagpipes in this one.


This is "Song of Mor'du" a song the warriors sing as they dream of killing Mor'du.


This is "Show Us the Way" when Merida falls into Mor'du's lair.


This is "A Mhaighdean Bhan Uasal" the song Eleanor sings to Merida in a flashback.


This is "Learn Me Right", the closing credits song.

London Opening Ceremonies

Today marks the Opening Ceremonies of the 2012 London Olympics. Technically, the Olympics started two days ago with some opening group matches in women's soccer but no one is really paying attention to that. As far as everyone is concerned, everything kicks off today.

There's been a little bit of strife going on as several London unions (cabbies and police most notably) have gone on mini-strikes or threatened to because of how bad the conditions have turned with the influx of people to London for the games. A large segment of the British army has been brought in to London to aid the police in security. There have also been several arrests recently on terrorism charges (bomb making mostly) that may have included plans for the Olympics (authorities won't say).

Adding to this was Mr. Romney's comment that he wasn't sure if London was ready for the games. Mr. Romney has experience in these matters due to his running of the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics, but it likely would have been more tactful to not say anything. The British authorities are already stressed out that they don't need a bit of needling from someone who has already done the job.

I certainly hope that it will be a good games and an entertaining Opening Ceremony. I don't know if it's the bad vibes from the stuff mentioned above or what, but I can't help but shake the feeling that something bad might happen, if not tonight, then at some point in the games, much like the 1972 Munich games forty years ago. We shall see.

What Every Guy Thinks of Titanic

This is from How it Should Have Ended. It covers a few of the major problems that jump out at you when you see Titanic. It also shows how Rose is a complete moron.

Cooking Music

These are some of my favorites from Ratatouille. The first one is when Colette is showing Linguini the basics of the kitchen. I don't know if Colette or the music is supposed to be Catalian, but that's how I imagine it.



The second is "Special Order" and is a nice jazzy French tune. It reminds me a lot of Henry Mancini's Pink Panther music.



The End Credits also make a nice round up of the musical flavor of the movie.

Colorado Theater Shooting

Far more sophisticated blogs and news sites will do a far better job covering this, but I thought I would throw my own two cents in.

The alledged shooter, James Holmes, is currently in police custody. Just reading the surface stuff, this fellow appears to be both intellegent and highly disturbed. He obviously planned all this well in advance, striking a target he knew would be packed full of people. His use of armor suggest that he anticipated encountering counterfire (from either police or armed theater patrons) and he wanted to either survive or make sure that it took more than a lucky shot to stop him. He also set up an elaborate booby trap bomb system in his apartment to kill even more people once he had been taken down, one way or the other. The system is elaborate enough that the Denver bomb squad has requested additional assistance from the FBI in disarming the trap.

Naturally, there has been much speculation on his motives and ideology. ABC speculated that he might have been a member of the Tea Party due to a similar name (Jim Holmes) listed as an active member, but that James Holmes has been identified as a man in his 50's while the shooter is listed as 24. Other speculation has tied him to a James Holmes listed as a member of the Black Bloc, an anarchist splinter group of the Occupy movement.

Whatever his ideology, it can be agreed that he is a very dangerously disturbed man who should be locked away for a very long time.

Last report I heard was that the death toll was between 12 and 14, with the youngest confirmed death a six-year old child. May God guide the hands of the doctors to save the rest and comfort the loved ones of the slain.

*UPDATE*

The James Holmes in question seems to have enrolled at University of Colorado a year ago to pursue a PHD in neuroscience and dropped out last month. It has suggested that he may have brewed the gas that he let loose in the theater himself. The doctors treating the victims have been very careful and not simply assumed that they are dealing with either smoke or tear gas. No confirmation has been given about the nature of the gas, one way or another.

O Filii et Filiae

When going through the various Mystery! themes I like, I was reminded of my copy of Cadfael. The second piece on the CD is a chorus (The Clerks of St. Albans Abbey specifically) singing a traditional Catholic Easter piece called O Filii et Filiae (O Sons and Daughters), written in 1494 and based off a French melody. It is quite enjoyable to listen to.

The lyrics are as follows:

Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia.
Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia.

O filii et filiae,
Rex caelestis, Rex gloriae
morte surrexit hodie.
Alleluia

Ex mane prima Sabbati
ad ostium monumenti
accesserunt discipuli.
Alleluia

Et Maria Magdalene,
et Iacobi, et Salome
Venerunt corpus ungere
Alleluia

In albis sedens angelus
praedixit mulieribus:
In Galilaea est Dominus.
Alleluia

Et Ioannes apostolus
cucurrit Petro citius,
monumento venit prius.
Alleluia

Beati qui non viderunt
et firmiter crediderunt;
vitam aeternam habebunt.
Alleluia

In hoc festo sanctissimo
sit laus et iubilatio:
benedicamus Domino.
Alleluia

Ex quibus nos humillimas
devotas atque debitas
Deo dicamus gratias.
Alleluia

An English equivalent is as follows:

Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia.
Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia.

Ye sons and daughters of the Lord,
the King of glory, King adored,
this day Himself from death restored.
Alleluia

All in the early morning gray
went holy women on their way,
to see the tomb where Jesus lay.
Alleluia

Of spices pure a precious store
in their pure hands these women bore,
to anoint the sacred Body o'er.
Alleluia

The straightaway one in white they see,
who saith, "seek the Lord: but He
is risen and gone to Galilee."
Alleluia

This told they Peter, told John;
who forthwith to the tomb are gone,
but Peter is by John outrun.
Alleluia

Oh, blest are they who have not seen
their Lord and yet believe in Him!
eternal life awaitheth them.
Alleluia

Now let us praise the Lord most high,
and strive His name to magnify
on this great day, through earth and sky:
Alleluia

Whose mercy ever runneth o'er;
Whom men and Angel hosts adore;
to Him be glory evermore.
Alleluia

Poll Frustrations

If you are a political junkie like me, one of the biggest things to play with is polls. Unfortunately, polls are also so easily manipulated based on the pollster's inherent bias, with the most common form being the weighting sample.

Weighting sample is a way that pollsters manipulate the data to make it conform to their expectations. For example, a pollster may get a set of data and his raw data says that the sample was 40% Democrat, 30% Republican, and 30% Independent. If he believes that he has oversampled Democrats and undersampled Republicans, he will apply some factor that will bring the sample more in line to his own expectations and thus be more believable.

In 2008, exit polls showed that the split among voters was 39% Democrat, 32% Republican, and 29% Independent. Mr. Obama won nationally by 7-points. However, in the 2010 mid-terms, voter split nationally was 35% Democrat, 35% Republican, and 30% Independent. Democrats, by in large, were defeated, with Republicans capturing many state offices and the House of Representatives.

From this we can see a significant swing in party affiliation in only two years. Independents remained stable (only shifting by one point) but Democrats dropped by four and Republicans increased by three. The conclusion that one is drawn to, is that predicting the final outcome is a shot in the dark, although one can expect the numbers to fall within a set of norms.

It is unlikely that Mr. Obama will be able to regenerate the same level of voter enthusiasm that he had in 2008 so the 39/32/29 sample represents an extreme Democratic end. Likewise, with a national race to motivate Democrats, it is unlikely that they will be as docile as they were in 2010 so the 35/35/30 sample represents an extreme Republican end. If I were a pollster, I would probably settle on something close to a 36/33/31 model until I saw something that prompted me to shift it to either the left or right.

Of course, most news outlets don't report the polling sample in the headline, they just give the overall number (Obama and Romney tied at 47-47, for example). Hence the frustration with trying to look at the public mood from polls. It does teach one to be skeptical of polls until you can dig down into the raw data and draw your own conclusions, which is a good life lesson in general.

Working Through Falken's Maze

From the best Hacker movie ever. Many childhood memories are dredged up by this music.

State Trends - July

Time for this month's update of state trends. There isn't much movement between this month and last month but this is all without the influence of the Obamacare decision. The shift between July and August could be dramatic, especially as things start to gear up towards the conventions.

The three changes I've made since June are that I've downgraded Michigan and upgraded Missouri and Arizona. There was a lot of polling around the middle of June that showed Michigan slipping into Toss Up territory. There was one poll that showed Mr. Obama with an 8-point lead, but the others showed him with only a 1 or 2 point lead and one poll even showed Mr. Romney up by one. All of these led me to downgrade Michigan to "Lean Obama" from "Likely Obama".

The Supreme Court's strike down of most of the Arizona Illegal Immigration law might motivate Hispanics in that state, but until then, the most recent polling has shown Mr. Romney's lead grow to over 10-points. As such, I bounced it up to "Likely Romney" from "Lean Romney".

Missouri is more of a feeling. Mr. Romney's lead in Missouri is only about 5-7 points according to recent polls. However, I've seen a couple of articles talking about how Missouri is no longer a bellweather but a red state. I've held that view for several years now. There has also been some discontented rumblings from Missouri Democrats, which suggests to me that they are starting to distance themselves from Mr. Obama. Given that, I thought it merited moving Missouri up to "Likely Romney" from "Lean Romney".

Everything else remains the same and I wouldn't expect too much movement until September, but a lot could happen of the next month if people start paying attention to the campaign earlier than usual.

Big News Day

It's a big news day today.

1. The Colorado wildfires continue to burn out of control. The Air Force Academy is now directly threatened as is most of the town of Colorado Springs if the fire comes much closer and manages to jump I-25. There have been some rather sick folk who have cheered the fire and hoped that it would continue until it burned down the Focus on the Family Campus and other Christian related structures. The Boulder fire is not much better as it climbs the ridge just to the West of that town.

2. The full House of Representatives will vote on whether to hold Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress today. About a dozen Democrats have stated that they intend to vote yes. No whip count has been available for the Republicans, but it is somewhat expected that nearly all of them will fall in line with the leadership. What happens after the vote is anyone's guess. Most likely there will be a drawn out negotiation and then probably some sort of court fight over these documents.

3. The Supreme Court will release its ruling on Obamacare today. Speculation has been all over the map and about the only thing that people seem to agree upon is that Chief Justice Roberts is writing one of the opinions. The general assumption has been that it is the majority opinion that he is writing so most speculation has been that either the court split 5-4 for the conservatives or 6-3 for the liberals. I've seen it postulated that Justice Ginsburg is writing the other major opinion which has fueled speculation of a 5-4 Conservative ruling. Of course, whether this is to strike down the whole thing or just the mandate is also a matter of speculation. The opinion will probably be released around 10 am so this should be the first thing we hear about.

*UPDATE*

SC ruled 5-4 that Obamacare is constitutional, although the mandate is unconstitutional under the commerce clause. It survives under Congress' power to tax. Chief Justice Robers sided with the four liberals while Justice Kennedy sided with the conservatives.

*SECOND UPDATE*

The House voted 255-67 to hold AG Eric Holder in contempt of Congress. 110 Democrats did not vote, including the entire Congressional Black Caucus (who walked out before the vote). But 17 Democrats did vote with the Republicans. The House has now indicated that they will hire an independent counsel and challenge the citation of Executive Priviledge in court.

Hell in Colorado

Some bad fires have broken out over the past week in Colorado but yesterday things blew completely out of control.

The worst up until yesterday had been the High Park Fire in the mountains west of Ft. Collins. This fire has burned over 80,000 acres, destroyed over 250 homes and killed at least one person.

However, this changed yesterday when the Waldo Canyon Fire exploded. This fire started outside the city of Colorado Springs (second largest city in Colorado) on June 23 but was thought to be mostly contained on June 25. However, the winds whipped up that night and the fire has now crossed into the Mountain Shadows neighborhood of Colorado Springs proper. 32,000 people have been evacuated (including the Air Force Academy). More are expected to be evacuated as the fire progresses.

Also of concern is the Flagstaff fire. This fire is only 300 acres in size but it started just 2 miles outside of the city of Boulder and is progressing in that direction. It has only about one mile (thankfully unpopulated) to the summit of the ridge where the wind could jump it over the last mile into the city.

Bellweather State Mythology

One of the greatest myths that exists in Presidential elections is the idea of a historical bellweather state. Political analysists are always looking for an easy model for them to study that would allow them to make their predictions easier: "So goes Florida, so goes the nation", etc. In each individual election, yes there are probably several states that genuinely reflect the mood of the national electorate, but these states are not static. The national character changes just as state character changes. As such, calling any state a historic bellweather is foolish.

The historic bellweather state of the 20th century was Missouri. Starting in 1904, Missouri has gone for the winner of the national election in every year except 1956 and 2008. Missouri is nominally a southern state, even though it stayed with the Union in the Civil War. But they have enough northern influence that they trended Republican. However, whenever southern Democrats would rise up (or northern Democrats who embrassed the South such as FDR and JFK) and take the national leadership role (Johnson, Carter, Clinton), Missouri would fall back on it's Southern roots.

Yet ever since the 2000 election, Missouri has not felt like a state in play. The state has remained close, but it feels as though Missouri (like much of the south) is now just a red state and they just happened to be right in 2000 and 2004 because the Republican won. John McCain only won Missouri by about 4,000 votes, but with Barack Obama winning nationally by 7 points, if Missouri were a true bellweather, Missouri should have gone Democratic easily.

The only two other states that have a potential track record as a national bellweather are Ohio and Nevada. Going from the same 1904 benchmark that Missouri used, Nevada has had every election correct except 1908 and 1976. Ohio can actually stretch back longer to 1896 and only gets it wrong in 1944 and 1960.

Nevada has had a nice balance between a conservative ranching population, libertarian business folk, and a large blue collar working class population in Las Vegas. This has worked well in nearly every election and even 1976 was something of an aboration as Jimmy Carter failed to win any state west of Missouri save Texas and Hawaii. The only real threat to Nevada's status as a national bellweather is that her population balance has tipped in recent years with the explosion of growth in Las Vegas. This has increased the size of both the blue collar union population and Hispanics looking for work. These two increases have shifted the state to more of a Democratic footing. The only way that this will be tested this year is if Mr. Obama loses nationally but retains Nevada.

Ohio has been an important state to Presidential elections. Going back all the way to 1856, no Republican has ever won the White House without winning Ohio. Ohio failed to get it right in 1944 and 1960, although Dewey only won Ohio by 0.37%. Nixon won by a more comfortable margin of 6.56% in 1960, although he lost nationally by 0.16%. The steady loss of manufacturing jobs from the north end of the state has resulted in a steady reddening of the state over the past few years. However there is still a large blue collar population who stick with their Democratic roots. They've also been aided by a small but significant growth in the liberal middle and upper class population around Columbus. Ohio could probably be best described as swinging easily with the economy. If things are going well, it sticks with the party in power. If the economy stinks, lets try someone else. That doesn't necessarily mean that it will go with the winner, although it makes for as good a trend as anything else.

In this particular election, I don't believe any particular state will tell you how things are going to go. It is better to look at things as a whole. 2008 was best defined by the fact that Indiana and North Carolina went blue. 2012 might be well defined as to how the race does in states such as Wisconsin and Michigan (either in that they change or to what percent they stay blue).

The Full Nixon

An old adage in politics: It's not the crime, it's the cover-up.

Operation: Fast and Furious was a government operation that has gone very, very badly. The operation was, in theory, an attempt to use American weapons to track, and be able to prosecute, the crimes committed by Mexican druglords. In its essence, a branch of the Department of Justice (ATF) authorized the sale of American manufactured weapons (assault rifles and such) on American soil (mostly in Phoenix) to known agents of Mexican druglords. These weapons would then be smuggled across the border and then be traced and tied to the various cartels when used.

Things blew up when an American border patrol agent, Brian Terry, was killed during one of these smuggling operations by the weapons in question. This caused a blow up because it exposed the operation long before it was ready and what the ATF did was technically illegal. However, the pebble that really started the avalanche was when the House Oversight Committee sent a request to the DOJ asking what they knew about the operation. On Feb. 4, 2011, the DOJ responded with a letter denying any knowledge of the operation. The committee went through the normal procedure of questioning the various ATF folks and found that someone in the DOJ did know about the operation and had signed off on it.

This started the climb up the ladder. Certain low level operators handed over things and gave testimony that this operation was known about at the highest levels (i.e. AG Eric Holder). Mr. Holder was summoned several times to testify and each time he evaded key questions. He promised to submit whatever documentation the DOJ had on the operation but those documents have not been forthcoming. Frustrated, the Committee scheduled a vote (for today) to hold Mr. Holder in Contempt of Congress in an attempt to force the handover of these documents.

At the eleventh hour, Mr. Holder petitioned President Obama to cite Executive Privilege over the documents in question. This request was granted. It is this point that may have turned this into a full Nixonian production. Only the President is covered by Executive Privilige. Cabinet folk and all other appointed positions are equally beholden to both the President and Congress. By invoking EP, Mr. Obama is stating that he was aware and personally involved in whatever these documents involve. Yet Mr. Holder has testified before Congress that the President had no knowledge of anything involving this operation. Someone is lying and now interest in these documents is going up as much as Congress' interest in the Nixon tapes.

The best case for Mr. Obama at this stage is that he is misapplying EP and it was an honest mistake. The EP is retracted or overturned and Mr. Holder will be held liable for anything incriminating found in these documents. Worst case scenario is that the President was directly involved in something illegal and that this is a full blown attempt to save himself (a la Nixon). If this is the case and the EP is overturned due to improper use (which again there is 1970's precedent for) and the documents show this, Mr. Obama could be set up for some very hard questions and potential criminal charges.

The one thing I am sure of is that there won't be any move towards impeachment unless Mr. Obama wins a second term. Even then, the Republicans won't do anything overt unless they have absolute concrete evidence of wrongdoing. The bad taste that was left in everyone's mouth following the Clinton impeachment left both sides wary of moving in this direction for purely political motives.

However, Mr. Holder may not fare so well. Much remains to be seen and I would expect a lot of courtroom fury over the next several months as well as a lot of annoying -gate references.

Rats Off the Coal Scow

It was announced yesterday that three prominent Democrats from West Virginia would not be attending the Democratic Convention in North Carolina. Of course, they made their usual excuses about needing to do work for the people, getting the economy back in order, etc. But I think most people are intelligent enough to realize that they see the President as a liability in their state and don't want him to drag them down as they attempt to get reelected. The three politicians include Governor Earl Tomblin, Senator Joe Manchin, and Representative Nick Rahall.

One could just chart this up to the quirkiness of West Virginia (where Mr. Obama had no shot of winning anyway) if it wasn't the bit of news that Representative Mark Critz of Pennsylvania has also announced that he will be skipping the Convention. Critz's district is in western PA (PA-12), just outside of Pittsburgh. It was Jack Murtha's district before his death in 2010.

There is one common thread uniting these men though: coal. West Virginia's economy is heavily dependent on coal as is western Pennsylvania's. As part of the green energy initiative, funding and support for the coal industry has gone down while EPA regulations on coal use have gone up. Reducing the pollution produced by burning coal is certainly a laudable goal but when the economy is already in the toilet, doing anything that reduces jobs in a hurting industry (especially one that is the backbone of a state) is going to make you unpopular there.

As noted before, West Virginia is already lost so no real harm, no foul there. But Democratic strength in Pennsylvania is anchored by Philadelphia and heavy union turnout in Pittsburgh. If this turnout is depressed in any way, it could make the contest for Pennsylvania much closer than it should be.

As an aside, this is my 666th post. OOGA BOOGA!

Mystery: Part 3

Two more themes for those interested in Mystery! The first is the spiritual father of the show: Lord Peter Wimsey. Lord Wimsey actually was shown on Masterpiece Theater back in the 1970's and it was so popular that it inspired the folks at WGBH in Boston to start up their own show based on mystery literary content.



The second is Reilly: Ace of Spies. I know very little of this one, but the theme is the Romance from the Gadfly Suite by Dmitri Shostkovitch and it is quite beautiful.



If I could find a copy, I'd put Rumpole of the Bailey in here as well, but I haven't found a seperate recording of that theme as of yet.

Cute HP Houses

I find these amusing.



Via TeeTurtle

VERY GOOD!

You can only truly appreciate this if you've watched Dora, although I'm sure others will still find it funny. My only complaint is that it should be longer.

Useless Statistics

Much like baseball, politics has a statistic for everything. I'm sure you could find how left-handed politicians did when facing off against right-handed incumbent Senators in off-year elections.

One such statistic has been making the rounds lately: since 1956, no President has been reelected while getting less of the Electoral College vote than he did when first elected. I did a quick check on this.

Eisenhower: 1952 - 442, 1956 - 457
Nixon: 1968 - 301, 1972 - 521
Reagan: 1980 - 489, 1984 - 525
Clinton: 1992 - 370, 1996 - 379
W. Bush: 2000 - 271, 2004 - 286

Arguably you could include Johnson in this as well. He and Kennedy were elected with 303 votes in 1960 and Johnson crushed Barry Goldwater in 1964 with 486 votes.

However, this doesn't really mean much other than the opposition ran bad candidates against an incumbent or things were going fairly well (sometimes both). FDR passed his 1932 total (472) in his 1936 reelection (523) but fell in both his third term (449) and fourth term (432) elections. Wilson only barely squeeked by Charles Hughes in 1916 (277) by 3,800 votes in California after romping Taft and Roosevelt in 1912 (435).

Barak Obama won in 2008 with 365 Electoral College votes, which means that he can lose 95 votes and still win reelection. I personally think that 365 is impossible to achieve again but 270 is very possible. Statistics like this make for amusing parlor games, but are not viable in reality. After all, President Kerry would like to remind everyone how that if the Washington Redskins lose their last home game before the election, the incumbent party also loses the White House (they lost 28-14 to the Green Bay Packers).

Two Small Elections

There are eight states that are going to the polls today for various issues. None are of any major significance but two are somewhat interesting.

The first is a special election in Arizona's eighth congressional district. This was Gabrielle Giffords old seat that became vacated when she opted to retire while dealing with her recovery. This area is strongly Democrat and should be a fairly easy victory for the Democratic nominee Ron Barber. The Republican is Jesse Kelly, a military veteran running for his first significant office.

The second is a ballot measure (issue 2) in North Dakota to eliminate the state property tax. The background of this is that North Dakota has been taking in large amounts of money through sales and corporate taxes because there has been a large oil business boom. The state has seen so much revenue coming in that members of the legislature decided to try and eliminate the property tax as an extra boon to their citizens. This measure was defeated in 2009. Independent groups then grabbed the idea and collected enough signatures to get the measure put on the ballot. Limited polling data has shown that the measure would be defeated with many citizens citing fear that if the boom economy collapsed, the state would be left completely bereft of revenue. I shall be curious to see what the final numbers are.

*UPDATE*

As expected, Ron Barber won AZ-8. The vote was a little closer than I expected (52-45), considering that Mr. Barber was Ms. Giffords former aide and had also been shot in the attack.

North Dakota's elimination of property tax (issue 2) also failed by a whopping 76.5 to 23.5.

June Trends

About six weeks ago, I gave my first early handicapping of the race between Mr. Romney and Mr. Obama. Charting a few things, I thought I would update on how the landscape has changed in that time.

I've added some degree of freedom since that first post. Rather than just have it be Obama, Romney, and Toss Up, I've added "slight" and "lean" to the mix (which is more in line with how things are done at RCP.



I've made three changes to the map since I first added the degrees of freedom at the beginning of May. I originally had both Ohio and Colorado as "slight Obama" and Wisconsin as "lean Obama". There have been several polls in May and early June that have shown a very tight race in Ohio and Colorado so I thought it better to move them into "Toss Up" status. Wisconsin has been a bit harder to track but with as well as Walker did, I thought it best to downgrade Wisconsin by one notch (but still keep it in the Obama column).

I've seen some sites and polls suggesting that things are tightening in Nevada and Michigan as well, but not enough to suggest moving things around.

If you give slights and leaners to each side, Mr. Obama leads Mr. Romney in the electoral college 253-206. Mr. Obama would only need another 17 electoral votes to win and the easiest path to that would be to take either Florida or Ohio. Conversely, Mr. Romney could take Florida, Ohio, and Virginia and he would still be 4 electoral votes short (i.e. needing one of New Hampshire, Iowa, or Colorado). At the moment, that would seem to present a steeper hill for Mr. Romney.

You can play around with the numbers yourself by giving various states to either side using this site.

RIP Ray Bradbury

The author of the Martian Chronicles, Fahrenheit 451, and numerous short stories died yesterday at the age of 91.

In honor of this great man, I'd like to pass on a little wisdom that my father gave to me on my wedding day:

If you ever go back in time, don't step on anything. Because even the slightest change can alter the future in ways you can't imagine.

Walker Wins Recall

The media got some egg on their face last night. As the exit data began to be released, the media started getting all breathless, reporting that the exits showed a race that was a statistical coin-flip, 50-50, etc. I'm sure they were hoping that they would get several hours of going over the data and keeping viewers in suspense as they vied to be the first one to call it.

However, in a scene highly reminiscent of the 2004 election, the exit polling turned out to be way off. The race was called less than an hour after the polls closed with only about 20% of the vote total in and Mr. Walker leading by 20 points. Dane and Milwaukee Counties (Madison and Milwaukee respectively) narrowed things a bit as they finally came in in larger numbers, but Mr. Walker still walked away with a 7-point victory (53-46) (making Marquette University the winner in the polling predictor contest). Mr. Walker actually exceeded his 2010 vote total by about 125,000 votes (out of about 2.5 million cast) and his margin over Mr. Barrett (who was his opponent in the 2010 contest) grew by an additional 47,000 votes.

Overall it looks like the GOP went 5 for 6 in the recall race. The lone bright spot for the Democrats is that they appear to have won the recall race against 21st district (Racine County) state senator Van Wanggaard. His challenger, John Lehman, is up by about 800 votes (out of 71,500 cast). This will probably go to a recount but that kind of margin seems pretty big to overcome given the sample size. That will give the Democrats a 17-16 edge in the Senate. However, that doesn't mean quite as much as the senate will remain in recess until after the November election, when half of the senate (16 seats) will be up for reelection.

The talking heads (as predicted) were already trying to read the tea leaves and try to figure out how Mr. Walker's win would affect the national race in November. Mr. Obama came out well ahead in the exit polls taken, but since the polls were so far off, those numbers are effectively useless. My own take is that Walker's win will have close to zero impact on the race. Mr. Walker won because he had done an acceptable job to many people and more than a few others, while they may have disagreed with his policies, did not like the idea of removing a man mid-term who had committed no malfeasance. If anything, I think the decent state of the economy in Wisconsin will allow Mr. Obama to retain the state as Mr. Romney's economic argument will seem a lot less dire.

In other races, Mr. Romney won all counties in all five of the primary contests. He won 169 delegates from California, 50 delegates from New Jersey, 20 delegates from New Mexico and 25 delegates from South Dakota. Montana doesn't actually allocate delegates until its convention on June 16. This brings his hard total up to 1397 and his overall total (including unbound pledges) to 1436 or 125% of the required total.



The only other interesting bit of news out of the elections was that two cities in California (San Diego and San Jose) voted to cut pension allocations for city workers as a means of balancing their budgets. I doubt there is any real correlation to what was going on in Wisconsin and this, but with union pensions being the narrative of the day, the news gets a bit more play.

Last Call

Today is the last call for primaries. Yes, Utah will still have its contest on June 26, but with 49 of 50 states done after today, elections are effectively over until November.

Normally this day would have come and gone without too much fanfare. Mr. Romney has enough delegates to be the nominee as does Mr. Obama, so the contests in CA, MT, NJ, NM, and SD don't count for much. I've not even heard of any interesting primaries in the lower races, although I would think that California must have something. But the day's news is being consumed by the recall election in Wisconsin.

There are actually several recalls going on in Wisconsin today. The one against Governor Walker is grabbing all the headlines, but there are also recalls against the Lt. Governor Rebecca Kleefisch and four Republican state senators. Polling has been highly favorable to Walker with the final polls showing him with anything between a 3 and 12 point lead. Polls close at 8 pm CDT (9 pm EDT).

Early reports have turnout being heavy but subdued. The general feeling is that Wisconsinites are suffering from election fatigue, having had congressional recall elections and a nasty state supreme court judicial race in 2011, only to be followed by the general primaries, the recall primary, and the recall election in 2012.

Many talking heads will be parsing the data from today's results, trying to find a way to apply it to the November general election. This is most likely an exercise in futility but that's what they are paid for. About the only substantial thing that has come out of this is that the Romney camp has stated that they will be tapping into the GotV mechanism that Gov. Walker has built in preparation for this recall. The theory being that they will force the Obama campaign to spend more money than planned to retain Wisconsin, bleeding it from other needed states, such as Ohio and Florida.

*UPDATE*

A local station is reporting that turnout may reach 65% of registered voters. Could be a long night of vote counting.

Now It's Official

Three states awarded delegates at conventions this weekend. Washington State gave Mr. Romney 34 delegates, Uncle Ron 5 delegates, and Mr. Santorum 1 delegate. Missouri awarded Mr. Romney 19 delegates and Mr. Santorum 6 delegates. Louisana assigned 23 delegates but those are officially designated as uncommitted by the state convention.

All in all, Mr. Romney added 53 delegates to his total, bringing his hard count up to 1133. When you factor in the unofficial commitments, his total jumps to 1168, meaning that he is now the official nominee. Louisana would probably have put him over the top in the hard count if preference were factored in so it cuts for him either way.

There are four primaries tomorrow and one state convention that will add to Mr. Romney's totals. However, all eyes will be glued to Wisconsin to see if Governor Walker is recalled and if not, what his margin of victory is. There will be much flapping by the talking heads in trying to parlay the results into some sort of trend regarding the Presidential election so that will dominate the news feeds for the next couple of days.

A Hair Short

Pretty much every round up of the news has Mr. Romney now being declared the (unofficial) official nominee. However, he came up just a tiny bit short in the delegate count to make that declaration.

Mr. Romney won 105 delegates last night which puts his hard total at 1080. If you include party leader pledges, that number jumps to 1115. If you throw in projections from caucus states of Iowa and Washington, it jumps to 1139. I'm sure that there are a few other states that have not made their full allocation yet (such as Missouri and Louisiana) that have been included in the projected news totals and that puts Mr. Romney over the top.

But if you are doing that, what's the point? We've known since mid-April that Mr. Romney is going to be the nominee and if you are just tracking delegates so you can make a declarative statement, why not wait until you have hard numbers rather than just relying on projections from conventions? Granted, a number of those conventions meet this weekend, but still.

Looking forward, Washington State has their state convention as does Missouri and Louisiana this weekend. Mr. Romney had been projected to win 16 of Washington's 40 available delegates but I'm sure he'll walk away with more which will put him over the top. If he didn't, you have 25 delegates in Missouri and 23 delegates in Louisiana available and I doubt Uncle Ron's hoards will be able to thwart Mr. Romney in all of them.

On the Senate side, Mr. Dewhurst was unable to crack the 50% threshold (45-34) so he'll have a runoff with Mr. Cruz on July 31. The Democrats will also have a run-off between their two top vote getters: Paul Sadler and Grady Yarbrough.

Although no delegates were awarded, Mr. Obama managed to avoid the embarrassment that had marked the last three southern contests by snagging 88% of the vote against 3 challengers (including the same John Wolfe who took over 40% of the vote in Arkansas).

TX: Dewhurst vs. Cruz

Today is the Texas primary and Mr. Romney should officially clinch the Republican nomination today. As such, the focus is shifting to the battle for the Republican nomination for Senate.

The current seat is held by Kay Bailey Hutchison (R) who is retiring. There are a number of candidates but the two top candidates are Lt. Gov David Dewhurst and former Soliciter General Ted Cruz. Mr. Dewhurst is the protege of Governor Perry and is seen as more of the establishment candidate. Mr. Cruz is more of an outsider and has recently picked up the backing of the state Tea Party.

The last polls that I saw had Mr. Dewhurst with the lead but the situation is fluid. This isn't so much of a case of RINO vs. Conservative as it is a case of Insider vs. Outsider and it will be mildly interesting to see which side prevails.

Dropping Biden?

There have been several news stories over the past few weeks either critical or showing skepticism in Vice President Biden. These may be nothing, but it is possible that they may be building towards a decision to drop Mr. Biden from the Democratic ticket.

Political lineages have been relatively stable for quite a while now. The last time a siting Vice President was removed in favor of someone else (and not by his own request) was when Henry Wallace was dropped in favor of Harry Truman in 1944. Wallace had originally replaced John Garner in 1940, when Garner opposed Roosevelt for the Presidential nomination.

In more recent times, the closest we've had to this is the resignation of Spiro Agnew and his replacement with Gerald Ford in 1973. However, Agnew was re-elected with Nixon in 1972 and it was only after he was hit with a bribery scandal that he was forced out of office.

Now, all of these stories might just be grousing about Mr. Biden and Mr. Obama may have no intention of replacing him. The big question is who would replace him on the ticket should Mr. Biden be dropped. Most stories focus heavily on Mrs. Clinton, but I'm not really buying that one. Mr. Obama wouldn't allow Bill Clinton to overshadow him in his first term and I see no reason he would allow that to happen in his second term.

Once you get past Mrs. Clinton, who are you left with? I can't think of anyone in the cabinet that would be notable enough and there aren't a lot of prominent Democratic politicians in states that Mr. Obama needs to add to the ticket. Most of the battleground states have Republican governors and the only two that I can think of off the top of my head that have Democratic governors(Colorado and North Carolina), won't help him (John Hickenlooper just became governor in 2011 and Bev Purdue is not running for reelection amid dismal approval numbers). If he had kept more in the limelight, I would have suggested Ted Strickland (former governor of Ohio) but I'm also not sure that he has even been forgiven for his public support of Mrs. Clinton in 2008.

Even sitting Senators don't really stand out at the moment. Most are either prominent liberals from states that Mr. Obama will have no trouble winning (such as California) or they are engaged in hard fights to retain their seats in purple and red states. Bill Nelson of Florida might have been a good pick, but he's up for re-election this year and is expected to have a hard fight on his hands. Of course, he could take someone from a solid blue state as before, but no one is jumping out at me as a real game-changer that would justify dropping Mr. Biden who, warts and all, is highly seasoned and familiar with the job.

Almost There

Mr. Romney finally lost a county since Mr. Santorum's withdrawal back in April. He lost Trigg county in Kentucky to Uncle Ron. I doubt this bothered him much as he won all 42 of Kentucky's available delegates and all 33 of Arkansas' available delegates.

Mr. Romney's hard total is up to 975. Texas has 155 delegates available when they go to the polls next Tuesday. That 155 won't be enough to put Mr. Romney over the top in the strict hard count, but if you factor in the soft pledges from the party leader allotment (he has 59 officially) that does put him over the top. The remaining 339 delegates available in June would just be gravy.

On the Democrat side, Mr. Obama easily won both of his primaries, but the results (like West Virginia) should concern him a bit. In Kentucky, Mr. Obama only got 58% of the Democrat vote (in a closed primary). The remaining 42% went to "Uncommitted". In Arkansas, Mr. Obama is winning 59-41 over John Wolfe. Mr. Obama is almost certainly not going to win the states of West Virginia, Kentucky, and Arkansas so these results won't bother him particularly. But they are potential evidence of discontentment with Mr. Obama among blue collar workers. It is because of this that it is looking increasingly likely that Mr. Obama will not win North Carolina and could lose Virginia and Ohio.

Of course, an awful lot can happen in the next 5.5 months.

Kentucky and Arkansas Today

Kentucky and Arkansas go to the polls today. We actually had to remind my cube neighbor, who lives in Kentucky, that today was voting day. It was actually pretty funny.

Almost nothing of importance is coming up from the vote today. About the only thing of note will be whether Mr. Obama loses any part of Arkansas to Democrat challenger John Wolfe Jr. There had been a little polling done which suggested that Mr. Wolfe may get enough votes to take some delegates, especially in the rural 4th CD. It won't amount to anything of significance but it would be a slight embarrassment for the President.

Is it About My Cube?

Political Quickie

If anyone bothered to check, Mitt Romney won 70% of the vote in Nebraska and Oregon and bringing his official delegate total to 899.

The only other race of note was the Republican selection of State Senator Deb Fischer to run against former Senator Bob Kerrey for the open Senate seat in Nebraska. Fischer had a last minute surge that powered her past the establishment candidate AG Jon Bruning and his main challenger Treasurer Don Stenberg.

Primary Housekeeping

Yesterday, Ron Paul announced that he would no longer be actively seeking the Republican nomination. This just means that he won't be spending any money, rather than actually suspending his campaign. Not that either of these designations have stopped his followers. They have vowed to continue to vote and push for Uncle Ron until the convention. This really isn't any different from those folks still pushing Mr. Santorum or Newt, but the Ronulans feel the need to make a show of it.

Anyway, there are two primaries today, but only one will have delegates assigned as a result. Nebraska has a non-binding Presidential preference poll while Oregon ends it's primary-by-mail. Oregon actually does all it's national elections by mail and it designates a "primary day" by which all ballots must be recieved by the ballot station. If the post office lost yours in the mail and it is delivered the next day, too bad. The primary is proportional as long as the candidate gets at least 3.5% of the vote so I would expect to see some sort of four-way split of it's 25 available delegates. Oregon won't announce anything until 8 PM PDT (11 PM EDT) by which point I will be in bed.

Not that any of this really matters. Mr. Romney is the only man left standing and he should win the lion's share. This is just another pit stop on the road to official nominee, which he should hit with the Texas primary on May 29. If some glitch occurs and he doesn't hit 1144 by that point, the June 5th primaries of California, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico, and South Dakota would most certainly put him over the top.

Victory Requirements

Amidst the flurry of spinning the results from North Carolina, Indiana, West Virginia, and Wisconsin last week, a few political strategists have been playing numbers games in trying to determine how either Mr. Obama retains the White House or Mr. Romney wins.

This far out, any analysis is pretty much useless. The best you can do is look back at 2008 and extrapolate based on current trends. From everywhere that I can find, it is expected that Mr. Obama will not do as well as he did in 2008 and that he will likely lose a few states that he won in 2008. I see no problem with this analysis and the question is how much he can lose and still hold on to the White House.

Two states that Mr. Obama will almost certainly lose that he won are North Carolina and Indiana. Mr. Obama won North Carolina by a margin of only 0.33% (14,200 votes) and Indiana by a margin of 1.03% (28,400 votes). These would require a switch of just 7,100 and 14,200 votes in each of those states and that seems quite likely at this point.

Florida comes next. Mr. Obama's margin of victory was 2.82% (236,450 votes out of 8.3 million cast) and a switch of just under 120,000 votes will swing the state. That is increasingly likely as Florida has tightened its voting laws and the poor economy has caused a number of potential snow bird votes from New York to lose their Florida homes and stay in New York (where Mr. Obama will win easily).

Ohio is the last state that Mr. Obama won with less than a 5% margin. He won Ohio with a 4.59% margin (262,000 votes). Ohio is still showing loyalty to Mr. Obama in the early polls. His strength will remain strong in the cities just as he will be pummeled in the rural areas. The make or break area will likely be in the southeastern corner of the state. A traditionally Democratic region (poor, blue collar) but that has been hit hard by the economic downturn and could go either way.

Virginia is the last state that Mr. Obama can lose and still retain the White House. Thanks to the strength of the Northern Virginia suburbs of DC, Mr. Obama won Virginia by a margin of 6.30% (234,500 votes). He'll still get very good returns in that region of the state, but if he doesn't retain the numbers he got from Richmond and the areas around Norfolk, Virginia will swing red again.

The tipping point state is Colorado. In the scenario painted so far, Mr. Obama would win 272-266. This means that if he loses any other state (other than the 3-pointers of Delaware, Vermont, or DC), he loses the election. Colorado was the next closest margin at 8.95% (215,000 votes). Iowa and New Hampshire are also obvious targets to turn as the margins in those states were 9.53% (146,500 votes) and 9.61% (68,300 votes) respectively.

Every state is different and while there might be a wild swing in one state against Mr. Obama, another state might push his margin of victory even higher than in 2008. However, the immediate take away is that Mr. Obama must limit his losses to less than a 4.5% switch across the board. If he does that, he'll win a second term. If he does worse than that, he will lose.

Mystery 2

Miss Marple (Joan Hickson version)



Miss Marple (Geraldine McEwan/Julia McKenzie version)



Inspector Frost

Delegates for Prisioner #11593-051

Another primary night has passed and very little that was unexpected happened.

In the Presidential primaries, Mr. Romney won all three states (IN, NC, and WV) with better than 60% of the vote in all. He will receive 27, 36, and 21 delegates respectively, bringing his hard total up to 881 while his projected total (including unsettled caucuses and unpledged delegates) sits at 939 or 82% of the needed total.

A funny side note on the Democratic side. Mr. Obama was up against a fellow named Keith Russell Judd in the West Virginia primary. Mr. Obama won the contest 59-41, however, Mr. Judd is currently in prison in Texas and the West Virginia Democratic party is at a bit of a loss whether to void the delegates that Mr. Judd should have won or not.

Outside of President, there were three races of note. The first was the primary defeat of Senator Dick Lugar (R-IN) to state treasurer Richard Mourdock. There was much hang-wringing and lamenting by the Washington insiders but this was not an unexpected outcome.

The second result of note was the passage of a constitutional amendment in North Carolina to outlaw gay marriage and civil unions. The funny thing about this (amidst the lamenting and moaning about this from the left) is that this actually changes nothing in North Carolina. North Carolina had already outlawed gay marriage and civil unions in the normal legal process. However, there was concern that this law could be struck down through the judiciary and so the constitutional amendment was passed, just has it has in 30 other states. The most likely cause of all the extra attention is the embarrassment of having this amendment pass by a large margin (61-39) in the same state where the Democratic National Convention will be held in September.

The third result of note is the finalizing of the contestants in the Wisconsin governor recall election. Scott Walker and his running mate, Rebecca Kleefisch will face off against Milwaukee mayor Tom Barrett and Mahlon Mitchell on June 5. This is actually a rematch as Mr. Walker defeated Mr. Barrett in 2010 for the governorship in the regular election. One other little note about this race is that despite a hot contest between five candidates on one side and an essentially unchallenged incumbent on the other, there were only about 24,000 more votes cast in the Democratic primary than in the Republican (out of about 1.3 million cast). That can't sit well with Mr. Barrett in terms of voter enthusiasm and generating enough support to oust Mr. Walker in four weeks.

Interesting Election Day

Today should be an interesting election day. Not so much for the Presidential primary, as Mr. Romney should take nearly all of the 132 delegates at stake in Indiana, North Carolina, and West Virginia. If he does, that will put him well over hard 900 delegates and close to 1000 if you include projections and unbound party delegates.

No, the real interest will be in the Indiana Senate primary and the Wisconsin governor primary. In Indiana, six-term incumbent Dick Lugar is being challenged by a state treasurer, Richard Mourdock. Mr. Mourdock is favored by the Tea Party while Mr. Lugar is being back by the Washington establishment. Indiana is an open primary so while Mr. Mourdock is polling ahead, Mr. Lugar has asked Independents and Democrats to come vote for him. The last polls in Indiana close at 6 pm CDT (7 pm EDT), so a call in this race should be made at a reasonable hour.

The other interesting race is the Wisconsin governor's primary. Governor Scott Walker is being targeted for a recall election that will be held on June 5. However, first there is a primary to determine who the main opponents will be. Mr. Walker is nearly unopposed as his only challenger on the Republican primary ballot is the little known Arthur Kohl-Riggs (who seems to be just trying to stir the pot a little). On the Democrat side, there are five people vying to become the challenger to Mr. Walker, but the two who are most likely to win are Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett and former Dane County Executive Kathleen Falk. Mr. Barrett is the more moderate Democrat and is ahead in the polls. Ms. Falk is the more liberal Democrat and will probably do very well in Madison but will need to take a large percentage of other areas to balance out Mr. Barrett's advantage in Milwaukee. Polls close at 8 pm CDT (9 EDT) but I would expect the counting to go on on the Democratic side for a little while.

Mystery Themes

One of my mom's favorite shows while I was growing up was Mystery! on PBS. At the high point of her watching, it would broadcast a lot of British serials done in the 80's and early 90's. Several of these seriels had some very distinctive themes and are quite good. I've had a devil of a time tracking a few of them down on CD, but now there is Youtube to help out.

This first one is the main theme for Inspector Adam Dauglish of the P.D. James series. I actually never cared much for these but the theme is so haunting. Finding this on CD has been absolutely impossible.



Second is Commissaire Maigret. Maigret actually has history going back to at least the 60's and his theme is established based on those. Mystery! actually broadcast a British version done in the early 90's with Michael Gambon (Dumbledore) as Maigret.



Third is the David Suchet version of Poirot. Poirot was actually made famous in the 70's and early 80's by Peter Ustinov, but David Suchet was cast in in the television serial and was highly memorable, as was the light jazzy theme.



Rounding out this round (of which I hope will be more) is Inspector Lewis. Lewis was much later as he actually started as the sergeant to Inspector Morse back in the late 80's. Morse has been so popular over the years (even after Jonathan Thaw's death) that the character was promoted and given his own show. His own sergeant is an obvious reference to Morse, reversing the relationship of the original show.

Politics Perspective

I enjoy following politics, especially from the horse-race perspective. But the problem is that when you follow politics, you end up having to deal with other people who follow politics. Many are fine folk, but there are some will stand on the flimsiest points and crow and others who shriek that the skies are falling at the slightest hint that their boy is not up by more than 10 points (kind of like Ohio St. fans).

I was reminded of this fact on Friday when a poll was released about the Florida US Senate race. Bill Nelson (D) is running for a third term and his seat is being heavily targeted by the GOP. The Republican primary has not yet occurred and Rasmussen released a poll of the three GOP challengers against Mr. Nelson. Not surprisingly, all three trailed by reasonable margins. The closest match was against the GOP front-runner, Connie Mack IV (great-grandson of baseball great Connie Mack) who trails 47-36.

The results of this poll didn't surprise me. The GOP hasn't decided on a single candidate yet, Mr. Nelson is fairly popular in Florida, and it's over six months until the election. Nevertheless, the amount of wailing and gnashing of teeth from conservative poll watchers and activists is mind-blowing. There was a steady stream of diatribes on how could Florida voters be so stupid and how this spells doom for the Republican's chances to retake the Senate, etc.

Perspective is a wonderful thing. Analyzing polls at this point is less than useless and politics is one of the principle games where literally anything can happen, and usually does, in a moment's notice. It is an important lesson that it's a good idea to back away once in a while and enjoy the smell of life and not act like you will throw yourself off a cliff because your team is down by 10 in the first quarter (I'm looking at you OSU).

Senate Glance

With the Republican Presidential nomination all but wrapped up and a good couple of months before we get real insight into who Mr. Romney will pick as his running mate, we can turn our attention to the Congressional races.

There's not much to say as far as the House goes. I've not been able to find a national map with the new districts and the races here in Ohio are pretty cut and dried. The Senate on the other hand, does offer some interesting examination.

The current make-up of the Senate is 53-47 with the Democrats in control. This year it just so happens that the majority of seats up for election are in Democrat hands (23-10), so their majority is in jeopardy. What really hurts the Democrats is that they are almost sure to lose at least two seats (North Dakota and Nebraska), while the Democrats are only looking at one seat likely to change hands (Maine).

To be fair, the Democrats have a fair chance at taking at least two more seats from the Republicans in Massachusetts (Scott Brown) and Nevada (Dean Heller). Brown and his Democrat challenger (Elizabeth Warren) have been trading back and forth in the polls, with neither being able to get more than a few points in the lead before the other one claws back. Heller should be a bit safer but Democrats have done better in Nevada in the past four years and if Nevada says blue in the Presidential race, it could give the Democrats a chance to take the seat.

Prospects for additional Republican pick-ups are a bit better. The prize targets are Florida (Bill Nelson), Ohio (Sherrod Brown), Missouri (Claire McCaskill), Montana (Jon Tester), and Virginia (open). I would also expect money (and a few Romney visits) to be thrown at Michigan (Debbie Stabenow), Pennsylvania (Bob Casey), West Virginia (Joe Manchin), and Wisconsin (open). If the Republicans managed to win all of these seats and only lose the Maine (open) seat (a long shot but possible), they would take control of the Senate 57-43.

I doubt that would happen, but the Democrats are going to need a strong turnout from their base and grab a good number of independent voters if they want to retain their majority in the Senate.

Game On: Romney Vs Obama

Reality has dawned on Newt and it is being reported that he will officially suspend his campaign and endorse Mitt Romney on May 1. Why he feels the need to wait a week is beyond me.

It is also being reported that Rick Santorum will meet with Mr. Romney next week, after he stopped just short of endorsing him last night. That just leaves Uncle Ron and we all know that he won't get out, but neither will he be any obstacle to Mr. Romney. Neither man will release their delegates (which gives them power to set things in the party platform) so Mr. Romney will still have to wait until the end of May to be declared the nominee mathematically as noted in the last post.

But for all intents and purposes, we can mark today as the true official start of the general election. Technically we could have counted the official start as two weeks ago when Mr. Santorum suspended his campaign, but Mr. Romney did still have to go through the motions and there was a question about how quickly the consolidation would take. But that is all but over now.

So how will the fight go? Dirty. We've already seen a glimpse of how the campaign will go with the whole Romney's dog on the car roof/Obama ate dog nonsense. Mr. Romney apparently gave a decent attack speech last night and we can imagine that even now the Obama campaign is dusting off the book containing all the dirt that's been collected on Mr. Romney since 1994. One can only imagine the volume of mud and s*** that we'll be dragged through in this fight.

Consolidation

As expected, Mr. Romney won all five contests last night and won them handily. I was wondering if a stray county or so would turn out in protest for another candidate (especially for Uncle Ron), but that does not appear to be the case.

Pennsylvania is still sorting things out as they elect their delegates directly (with each delegate declaring whom they support), but Mr. Romney has taken 10 of the first 22 delegates available in Pennsylvania. Another 37 delegates will be assigned as they sort out the votes and the last 10 will be elected by the Pennsylvania Executive Committee in June. Nominally, these 10 along with the 3 party leaders will be "Uncommitted" but they will all fall in line and support Mr. Romney I'm sure.

The other four states were dominating wins by Mr. Romney. He took all available delegates in Connecticut, Delaware, and New York and 3/4 of the available delegates in Rhode Island (Rhode Island does not have a 50% threshold rule as New York and Connecticut do). The last 1/4 in Rhode Island (4 delegates) were taken by Uncle Ron as he was the only other candidate to break the 20% voting threshold.

So, in the hard count, Mr. Romney now has 782 delegates or 68% of what he needs. This bumps up to 844 if you include non-binding pledges and caucus estimations, which would take his percentage up to almost 74%. Mr. Santorum is still in second with 226 hard delegates. Newt is third at 138 and Uncle Ron is trying to claw his way out of fourth, having now collected 61 delegates.

Next up are the state conventions in Maine and Minnesota on May 5 which will dispense another 21 and 13 delegates respectively. I would expect Uncle Ron to take most of these. Indiana, North Carolina, and West Virginia follow with primaries on May 8.

Mathematically, Mr. Romney will not be able to clinch the nomination in any delegate count until the Texas primary. If, for some reason, he fails to get the needed delegates by then, he will certainly do it on June 5 when California, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico, and South Dakota all go to the polls.

Northeast Voting

I still don't like this new format. Makes posting harder.

The rest of New England and the upper Eastern seaboard (Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, Delaware, and Pennsylvania) go to the polls today. The majority would have gone to Mitt Romney anyway, but with Rick Santorum out of the running, things should be even clearer for Mr. Romney.

Of course, that's where the wheels start to come off. He shouldn't have any problems in Rhode Island (16 delegates), Connecticut (25 delegates), and New York (92 delegates). I'd be a bit surprised if Mr. Romney didn't win all of the New England delegates and over 80% of the New York delegates. But there is still Delaware (17 delegates) and Pennsylvania (69 delegates) to contend with.

Delaware is in consideration because Newt has been camping out for the past week there and made some allusions that this is the hill that he will die on. He's over $5 million in debt and needs something to get his name back in the papers before Indiana, North Carolina, and West Virginia (states that would not necessarily have been strong for Mr. Romney a few weeks ago) on May 8. Delaware's size makes for a good stand from an economic point of view, but there are a lot of businesses there and its political make-up is far more moderate, both advantages to Mr. Romney. It also is winner-take-all so that if Mr. Romney beats Newt by one vote, everything Newt did there is for naught in terms of actual delegates.

Pennsylvania is more of a litmus test on Mr. Romney. Polling has been highly limited since Mr. Santorum dropped out, but in what limited polling has been done, Mr. Romney has never really jumped out to any kind of lead. Mr. Santorum will still be on the ballot (and let's not forget Uncle Ron as well) for anyone to register their lack of enthusiasm for Mr. Romney. I would be highly surprised if Mr. Romney did not win the state, but if Mr. Romney fails to carry large sections of the interior of Pennsylvania, it will be a further sign that he still has a ways to go in truly consolidating the base.

Polls close at 8 pm EDT in Connecticut, Delaware, and Pennsylvania and 9 pm EDT in Rhode Island and New York.

Minneosta for Paul

First, let me say that I don't like the new layout for blogger. I hope it will look better on my work computer, but I'm not hopeful.

Anyway, Minnesota is wrapping up their district caucuses today. Mr. Santorum would probably have done very well here (he took 2 of the 3 delegates in the caucus held before his withdrawal), but in his absence, Uncle Ron has ruled the roost. With 24 delegates available, Uncle Ron has taken 20. Santorum has the aforementioned 2 and 2 delegates have not declared, leaving them in the "Uncommitted" column.

Missouri also held district caucuses yesterday. With also 24 delegates available here, Mr. Romney snagged 12 delegates for a decent showing, although not as well as he would have preferred. Mr. Santorum took 7 delegates, Uncle Ron took 4, and Newt snagged 1.

Thus our updated hard numbers are 626 delegates for Mr. Romney, 223 for Mr. Santorum, 134 for Newt, and 52 for Uncle Ron.

Minor Delegate Tidying

While reading up on a few Republican party leaders who were officially declaring themselves for Mr. Romney, I noticed a couple of changes to the delegate allocations in North Dakota, Georgia, and Alaska.

Alaska and Georgia were simple changes. Finalized vote totals had lead to a slight reallocation of delegates. Mr. Santorum picked up 1 delegate in Alaska (8 total) at the expense of Newt and Newt picked up 1 delegate in Georgia (53 total) at the expense of Mr. Romney.

North Dakota was a bit more interesting. The North Dakota state convention met on April 1 and the vote totals changed rather dramatically over the caucus results. In the original allocation, Mr. Santorum won with 11 delegates, then Uncle Ron with 8, Mr. Romney with 7, and Newt with 2. At the convention, the attendees were heavy Romney backers and managed to get more of their people elected as delegates. Thus, the final total from North Dakota is now 20 delegates for Mr. Romney, 6 delegates for Mr. Santorum, and 2 for Uncle Ron. Newt was shut out.

So, our revised totals are 614 confirmed delegates for Mr. Romney (671 if you include caucus estimations and unbound pledges), 216 for Mr. Santorum (238 including caucus estimations and unbound pledges), 133 for Newt (143 including caucus estimations and unbound pledges), and 38 for Uncle Ron (63 including caucus estimations and unbound pledges).

Missouri and Minnesota elect more delegates on Saturday so we'll have updated totals then.

Very, Very Early Handicapping

In politics, a week is close to an eternity so you can imagine what six and half months will be like. Nevertheless, you have to start somewhere and the first maps shading the various states are starting to show up.

There are minor deviations here and there, but the initial take is that Mr. Obama is starting out with 201 electoral votes and Mr. Romney is starting out with 180.

The states currently up in the air and not counted for either side are: Arizona (11), Colorado (9), Florida (29), Iowa (6), Michigan (16), Nevada (6), New Hampshire (4), North Carolina (15), Ohio (18), Pennsylvania (20), Virginia (13), and Wisconsin (10) for 157 available electoral votes.


Now, this list varies from site to site. Michigan and Wisconsin are occasionally added to Mr. Obama's column, Arizona added to Mr. Romney's column, and Missouri listed as a toss-up state. We can quibble about the edges, but it would seem that at this point anyway, that the heavy money spending and campaigning will be primarily done in the above 12 states. Any wins by either side in states outside of this list that should "belong in the other column" will be seen as a major win during the election.

Obviously expect the numbers to shift and swing wildly as the months progress.

Weekend Delegate Wrap Up

Mitt Romney is going to be the Republican nominee, but he's still going to have to work at it. I noted on Saturday that about half of the Colorado district delegates punted and are going to the convention as "unpledged." He fared better at the state convention where he took 8 delegates with 4 remaining "unpledged", plus the three part leader delegates. This gives Colorado a final score of 13 delegates for Mr. Romney, 6 for Mr. Santorum, and 17 committed to no one.

Wyoming went far more as planned. Mr. Romney took all 14 of the state convention delegates to give him 22 out of 29 available delegates. The remaining 7 are 2 for Mr. Santorum, 1 for Uncle Ron, and 4 as "unpledged", although 1 of those unpledged party leaders has committed to voting for Mr. Romney.

A third contest, mostly under the radar, were three district conventions in Minnesota (for the 3rd, 5th, and 6th Congressional Districts). The 7th district had already held theirs on March 31 (resulting in 2 delegates for Mr. Santorum and 1 for Uncle Ron). The remaining 4 districts will select this Saturday (April 21). Uncle Ron swept these three districts giving him 9 more delegates.

So our final totals are now 604 actual delegates for Mr. Romney (646 projected), 220 actual delegates for Mr. Santorum, 135 actual for Newt, and 44 for Uncle Ron.

This Saturday we'll have the rest of Minnesota's district conventions (for 12 delegates) and Missouri's district conventions for 24 delegates (3 per CD).

Punting?

Colorado finished their district caucuses last night. Given Mr. Santorum's recent withdrawal, one would have expected most of the delegates to be pledged to Mr. Romney. That was not the case.

No candidate took all three delegates available in each Congressional District (21 total). Mr. Romney took 5 delegates while Mr. Santorum took 6. The remaining 10 went to "unpledged". I don't know if this is what they had in mind or if those spots were thought to be for another candidate and didn't want to officially declare for Romney.

Colorado will finish it's delegate list tonight along with Wyoming. That should give us a better idea of how things are balancing out in the initial aftermath of the Santorum withdrawal.

Colorado and Wyoming Conventions

It had been my intention to post about the Colorado and Wyoming conventions that start tomorrow with the same air of dramatic interest that we'd had over the last few months. However, since Mr. Santorum has now withdrawn, the selection process will likely be heavily one-sided.

But it may not be a complete slam dunk for Mr. Romney. Mr. Santorum, despite being gracious and polite, did not officially endorse Mr. Romney. This means that he'll retain the 212 hard delegates that he has, as he has not officially released them. Although he is now essentially a non-entity, Newt is still out there and will be making a pitch for the delegates available at the various conventions and in the remaining primaries. I personally doubt he will be very successful though.

Still, tomorrow does kick off the district convention in the 7th district of Colorado (outer suburbs of Denver). At this convention, they will select three delegates while the remaining six districts in Colorado will do the same thing with the same results on Friday for a total of 21 official delegates decided.

On Saturday, the Colorado state convention will meet and they will allocate an additional 12 delegates to the convention. There will be three party leaders sent as well who will be bound by the results of the state convention. That will give 15 total delegates from the state convention and 36 delegates in total.

Also on Saturday will be the Wyoming state convention. There the remaining 14 available delegates will be allocated to the various candidates. Twelve delegates have already been assigned (8 to Mr. Romney, 2 to Mr. Santorum, 1 to Uncle Ron, and 1 uncommitted). There are also three party leaders who are officially unassigned, although 1 has stated that they will be voting for Mr. Romney.

So by this weekend we'll have 50 delegates assigned and 36 delegates taken out of the estimated column. By all logic, Mr. Romney should recieve all 50 delegates. If he does not, then it will be a sign that Mr. Romney still has some work to do to rally the conservatives. An additional tell will be if there are any similar signs of protest voting at the Missouri district convention (24 delegates to be assigned) next Saturday.

Game Over!

Rick Santorum has suspended his campaign.

He'll still be able to raise money to pay off his debt but this now leaves Mitt Romney as the last man standing. Newt and Uncle Ron are still technically in the race but they are non-entities at this point.

Let the general election campaign commence.