Dan Savage releases this item of sarcasm regarding gay marriage election outcomes, and placed at the feet of Florida Governor Charlie Crist. 

But let’s look on the bright side of the anti-gay-marriage amendments, shall we? The openly Republican governor of Florida, Charlie Crist—who got engaged to a real live girl when he was in the running to be McCain’s VP—won’t have to marry a real live girl now. Because it’s illegal for gays to get married now in Florida—right, Charlie?

Interesting.  Yesterday, the conference of Republican Governors presented some fairly odd moments, and what people were paying attention to was friction between Sarah Palin and the rest of the conference.  The friction was especially acute amongst the half a dozen 2012 presidential hopefuls in the bunch — presenting telling spittings such as this one.  Though, Crist is not in that group who have touched down in Iowa.  (Race, race, race.  It’s all one stupid race after another.)

Charlie Crist is probably basically unstoppable in his re-election bid for 2010, having just solidified a portion of Democrats by extending early voting in the election — an act which caused the famed anonymous Republican operator comment, “He just blew Florida for John McCain“.   I think that may rub his presidential ambitions in the Republicans primary a little raw, but moreso I think the supposition that he is gay likely would stop such a thing as a Republican Presidential nomination.

The rumblings are that Sarah Palin was snubbed, as (first source I can find) the governors’ vote this morning that elected, HUMAN EVENTS has just learned, South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford the new chair of the Republican Governors Association, Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour vice-chair, and Florida Gov. Charlie Crist chair of the RGA’s February 2009 Annual Gala in Washington, D.C.  That Governor Charlie Crist was elected to organize the Annual Gala doesn’t help Crist’s case.

Not that I care too much.  He didn’t openly (er… “openly“?)  campaign for Florida’s ballot initiative, which puts him in a different place than the gay-baiting Democratic Senate candidates in Kentucky and Mississippi.

The rumors of closeted homosexuals in elected Republican Party members swirl around, occasionally proven right and occasionally not.  I won’t mention his name, out of a sense of prudence, but there is a senator from South Carolina who is supposedly a closeted gay man.  He hasn’t been caught making out with a man yet.  But I remember a few years back seeing that a Senator from Idaho was well known to be gay.  It turned out that he wasn’t, and Larry Craig has set that matter straight.  I quote, “I am not gay; I never have been gay.”  Though, in that case, it becomes a bit of a he said / he said situation.  To further settle that matter, Craig — along with David Vitter — sponsored a “Marriage Protection Act” in that last Congress, which read like a bad Onion parody. 

In other news, Silverton’s mayor has himself some breasts.

I was drawn into a debate yesterday, to settle a matter.  I didn’t much like being drawn into the debate, because there was a good chance I would not be authority on the matter, but there I was — two strangers called me over with one guy saying, “Okay.  Help us out here.”

“You watch movies?”
A strange question, and one with the obvious answer of “yes.”  But this is vague and it’s as likely I haven’t seen whatever movie they’re going to give me as it is that I have.  Are they talking a Fellini classic or Weekend at Bernie’s 2?
“You see the movie… The Godfather?”
Oh God, no.  I don’t like the spot I’m in.  Yes, I’ve seen The Godfather, but I’m not going to be able to provide anything substantial to settle a debate.  “Yes, but… um… not for a while.”
“Okay.  Fine.  Now… when was that made?  What decade?”

Is that it?  I just have to say when it came out?  “Early 1970s.  I’m thinking, maybe 1973.  1974?”  (A quick google check just now shows that it was 1972.”

“Get out!”
“No.  See.  I told you.”
“It did not.  It came out in the 1980s.”
“You’re just upset because he gave you the right answer.”

“No.  Look.  Al Pacino.  Scarface.  Think about the age.  Scarface came out in 1988.”

“Um,” I said.  “No.  That sounds… a lot later than it came out.”  As I said that, the other guy shouted out, “Scarface came out in, like, 1982!  Jeez-Uz!”

A google search just now shows it came out in 1983.

As this went on, I wasn’t quite sure what the terms of the debate were, or what the misguided man’s mindframe on the matter was — he thought Scarface came out in 1988 and extrapulated back to The Godfather with Al Pacino’s age, but I sort smiled and walked away, knowing what the issue at stake was.  And I breathed a sigh of relief that I had a reasonably accurate answer, even if my guage was that this was a pointless debate that demeaned anyone who wanted to argure over it.  (People who care enough to argure over The Godfather or Scarface should be beyond its release date and be delving into other issues of minituae.)  But for me it is a bit of hit and miss, and I dodged a bullet in terms of providing something useful.

Roosevelt Hailed by German Press

Berlin Expects Debt Settlement and More Liberal Tariff Under New Regime

Dictatorship is Forseen

Centrist Newspaper Stresses that United States No Longer is Better Off Than Debtors

President Roosevelt’s inauguration fills the German press with hope for greater activity of the United States in foreign affairs, although it is realized the situation of the banks will monopolize the new President’s efforts for some time.

Germany expects two things from the new President, settlement of the war-debts problem, which German business men and economists contend has been barring the way for world business recovery, and , secondly, a more liberal tariff policy.

The Frankfurter Zeitung says today:  “In his dealings with foreign countries President Roosevelt probably will endeavor to observe a more urbane and less distant attitude than one has been accustomed to find in Washington.  In transacting business he will be more adaptable but will be hardly able to show himself more yielding than his predecessor, even if Congress follows him in a lessening of resistance.  He will be too much bound to anonymous currents of public opinion.”

The Boresen-Courier says: “America is ripe for a dictator, and it is possible for Roosevelt to become this dictator if in his first attempt he succeeds in drafting a comprehensive economic program and presents it effectively and convincingly to Congress.”

The Boersen-Courier believes Mr. Roosevelt’s policy will incline toward progressive ideas.

The Koelnische Zeitung applies to President Roosevelt what was said to Martin Luther when he went to Worms to be questioned by the Emperor: “You are going on a grave errand.”

Germania, the leading Centrist newpaper, says: “The new man is confronted with enormously difficult tasks.  Saying, ‘America, you are better off’ does not hold true any longer.  Governing America today is no fun, even if it is considered the American Parliament has eliminated itself in wise restraint.”

The government papers are especially hearty in their welcome to the new President.  The Kreuzzeitung says:

“Germany greets Roosevelt as a representative American.  The nation with respect and sympathy hopes that the friendly relations between both States will be further promoted by his administration.”

The Lokalangzeiger says:

“Germany greets Roosevelt and the American people in the heartiest way.  Although Germany’s attention these days is conentrated on domestic matters, she wants to take the opportunity of President Roosevelt’s inaugruration to emphasie that she hopes for fiendship with the new President and the American people under his leadership.”
…………………………..

Coverage as reported in the New York Times, and I didn’t record it when, for whatever reason I stuck it in the backfile here (for the past few years), but it would have had to have been upon election, as Hitler came to power with the Reichstag Fire on February 27 and that would have pretty well consolidated all opinion coming out of German press for his inauguration in March… to what I guess was a much sought after Dictatorship.  Well, that feeling was in the air at the time.

How does this pertain to the next administration?  Roughly, nothing.  The one thing one would advise for Obama is to “manage expectations”, which would allow him to ride out the problem that the Germania put out about how “saying America will be better off is no longer acceptable.  Governing America is no fun anywmore.”  No “Mission Accomplished”.

Perhaps the more interesting discussion / debate in the Oregonian editorial / Letters to the Editor complex concerns high school football, and the disparity in resources available to rich suburban schools compared to poorer schools.  A Lake Oswego resident charged in, railed for the great support and hard work they all put in to make their high school football program successful, and charged anyone bemoaning the disparity with demanding “Socialism”, which may or may not be the case.

I think what you find if you scope around the nation, in general, is that less financially advantaged high schools tend to have better basketball programs and richer high schools tend to have better football programs — football being a more expensive proposition.  None of which is to say I give two rips about the state of anyone’s high school athletics, and on that score figure there’s no real problem anywhere with how things turn out one way or the other.  But as for the decrying from the Lake Oswegon of creeping Socialism to whatever might be devised to get resources into poorer athletic programs, no less a sports force than the National Football League runs off of a Socialist program, and Pete Bozell’s great dream of “Parity”.  Of course, this has lead to every few years, right on schedule, since the early 1980s a bemoaning of the league as steeped in mediocre without any good team, but fans who yell this line tend to stop after their team mediocrely wins their big game.  In the end, this seems to have helped it’s bottom line in earning large quantities of money.

But I leave that all aside and try to digest this letter.:

Rural bias widely accepted
If you take a good look at the election maps, it’s obvious that the most widely accepted bias is the one held by urban residents against rural residents.

Consider comments directed at Sarah Palin like, “caribou Barbie” or columnist Katha Pollitt urging Palin to, “Get back to your iceberg.”

If someone advised an urban candidate to, “Get back to your slum tenement,” would that be considered acceptable?

Critical comments were directed against Levi Johnston (Palin’s future son-in-law) regarding his search for work out of town rather than staying in Wasilla with his pregnant fiance, Bristol.

This displayed a profound lack of understanding about the realities of finding meaningful and profitable work in a small rural community.

It’s going to be interesting to watch how the lack of representation for rural voters plays out in the coming years.

RAY PENDLETON
Southeast Portland

We’ve sort of been hitting ice burgs of arguments existence of “double standards” for one side or the other of the great donkey / elephant game — or other demarcations of this divide (urban versus rural?  Really, must I?), sorting out “the way we live our lives in actuality”.  But imagine reactions if Barack Obama had a teenage daughter who was knocked up by his boyfriend, and as a result dropped out of high school to get work.  “Slum tenemant” indeed.  Meanwhile, that “interesting to see how the lack representation for rural voters” final sentence almost sounds threatening — but I don’t have any guage on where it’s going.

“Elections matter.”

I saw this stated at the end of a dailykos blog post which trumpeted the news that the influential committee chair Senator Max Baucus of Montana has unveiled his plans in forming a Universal Health Care plan.  In saying this, you are required to suffix the name “Max Baucus” with “of all people”, as in “this is being done by Max Baucus, of all people.”

Elections have consequences?  You better believe they do.  Can you imagine what would have happened if Bob Kelleher had won this squeaker of a race?  Where would we be now?

Taking a look at the map, it’s worth mentioning that this is one of those states where one of the parties won every county in the Senate seat — along with Wyoming, Massachusetts, Maine, Arkansas (though the Democrat — 7K year old Earth believer , and — hell!  Alaska (though that seems to be one massive “county”.)  The best performance on a county level that Kelleher did was 41.1 percent in Sweet Grass County and Sanders County and a 40.3 percent in Garfield County.  I don’t know the partisan divide around Montana, and in a race which should be scrambled a bit in how people vote (this is an eccentric Socialist Republican), these results should not be much predictive of partisan make-up.  But, looking around the presidential map for Montana, I see that these three counties are Republican — Obama didn’t was in the 20s or 30s in the three 40 plus counties for Kelleher.

I imagine South Carolina is a bit more scrambled — the Democrat (such as he was) was a supporter of Pat Buchanan and Ron Paul — and ran against the rampant Liberalism represented by Lindsey Graham, throwing his head around in those parts of the state that that might be attractive.  But the map is fairly similar to the presidential race — I suppose a closer look might be interesting to take, but I don’t quite care enough to take that effort.

Incidentally, if you look at Alabama on the County level for the Senate race, I think you can spot in its most concertrated form what is commonly referred to as the “Black Belt“.  Though this also becomes pretty evident on a county-level if you look at the map of the United States as a whole for either the Senate races or the presidential contest.

“Elections matter”.   Mark Begich has overtaken Ted Stevens in the balloting, as early votes and absentee votes are being counted. He lead at the end of yesterday by THREE — count them, one two three — votes. He now has a “comfortable” lead in the three digits. Unless there’s something about the ballot that were just counted that makes them different from those yet to be counted (Anchorage goes first?), this strikes me as an irreversible trend in the direction of Begich. Mark Begich wins. Ted Stevens loses. The other permetation comes with Sarah Palin having started to send out feelers suggesting she might just pursue the Ted Stevens seat after Stevens is kicked out of the Senate (right now it’s the basis of a leadership fight within the Republican Party with Jim DeMint challenging Mitch McConnell to have the vote to kick him out of the Republican Caucus). But, this prospect of “Senator Palin” is moot with the apparenta Stevens loss.  (As an aside in the on-going saga of Sarah Palin, I will note for the record that I never bit on the item about Africa and whether it is a country or continent.  Maybe I should have taken a swipe against it publically just to establish myself some eye-witnesses?  I may as well quibble about some arguments of it as an immediately establishable hoax, though, which had the argument “A third grader knows Africa is a continent.  You expect me to think Palin doesn’t have the knowledge of a third grader?”.  To be fair, I was smarter as a third grader than I am now — so the question’s basis is wrong.  Also, Africa tends to be lumped into one discussion as a whole entity when discussing “the plight of Africa”.)

Lieberman appears to have a posse in the Senate that will protect his Committee on Homeland Security (I don’t see what the problem with stripping Lieberman there is — even in the magnanimous statement that he is “with the Democrats on all but one issue”, that would suggest he shouldn’t be in a leadership position for the Democratic Party on Security matters), so that game leads to its sort of predictable conclusion.  And then there were two.  Franken — Coleman in Minnesota — the full weight of Mitt Romney has come out on behalf of Coleman in his efforts to stop three digits worth of votes from being deciphered where voters squared when they should have circled — and the run-off in Georgia which is December… 2nd?  That, I guess, determines whether the Democrats have 60 seats in the Senate or 59, and the Chambliss ads are running over to that effect with the slogan “It all comes down to this.”  Because if there’s one thing people fear, it is a Democratic majority with 60 seats instead of a Democratic majority with 59 seats.

I believe that calculating the effects of a third party candidate is just about never a function of simply allocating all of the third party candidate’s votes to one of the major party candidates, and oddly enough it seems this letter writer to the Oregonian who tries to do just that knows that too.

Has anyone noticed that Gordon Smith would have won this last election if Measure 65 had been in place? Sunday’s Oregonian reported unofficial election results: Merkley, 817,932; Smith, 766,508; Brownlow, 87,533.

If Measure 65 — the so-called “open primary” measure — had been the law, then only Merkley and Smith would have been on last week’s ballot.

It is not unreasonable to speculate that, driven by idealogical reasons, Brownlow voters would have voted for Smith (or not at all). Had that occurred, the results would have been quite different: Smith would have beaten Merkley, 854,041 to 817, 932, a margin of 36,109 votes.

BILL SNOUFFER
Southwest Portland

Brownlow believes he threw the election to Smith, but third party candidates tend to believe they’re important — something that goes in two directions, Brownlow believing he didn’t spoil the election or Nader insisting that he didn’t spoil the 2000 election and drew from Republicans (“I am not a mere spoiler”).

Merkley: 48.9%
Smith:  45.8%
Brownlow:  5.2%

Wipe Brownlow off the election and you can expect a good number of his votes to have gone for Smith (It is not unreasonable to speculate that, driven by idealogical reasons, Brownlow voters would have voted for Smith), a rather large number of his votes to just disappear into the ether (or not at all — and with that Snouffer undermines his own argument), and a smaller but still decent number to go for Merkley.  What is telling is that Smith was concerned enough about Brownlow to run advertisements touting what an extreme Liberal Brownlow is, pointing to some views which are, strictly speaking out of the mainstream of the, quote-in-quote “fringe” of congressional Democrats but in a large gathering of Democrats you can probably find a few who hold to them, along the lines of “Bush must be tried for war crimes”.  (Oddly enough for Brownlow, I believe outside the purview of the One World Government of the UN.)

You would also have the effect with Brownlow out of the race of some in that 5.4 percent bracket voting for whoever has the better hair, or looks better in a grainy black and white photograph, or whose name spills off the tongue better at a random moment.  Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum politics, gotta make a choice and the Bright Colors (whatever Bright Colors those may be) are no longer an option.

All of this is to say, wipe Brownlow’s name off the ballot, run the same campaigns (a bit confusingly in this thought experiment, with the candidates still acting as though Brownlow were on the ballot), and…

Merkley wins.  Now, change the results down to — maybe a one or one point five percentage difference between Smith and Merkley and the same 5.2 percent for Brownlow, and we have a different ballgame to consider.