Bobby Wolff has crafted another masterpiece!

They play a strong club, but despite the limited nature of the North hand, Cohen (South) could easily envisage a slam making. Improve North’s diamonds a little and six diamonds might play well. Hence, the quantitative four-no-trump call, which got his side uncomfortably high, as the cards lay.

West, Norberto Bocchi, led a heart to East’s king and South’s ace. Cohen returned a heart, hoping that the defense would not find a club shift, and Bocchi duly won and led a third heart, leaving Cohen unsure who had the 13th heart. He won dummy’s heart 10, cashed his diamond K-Q, and was severely disappointed when Bocchi pitched a spade. At this point, though, Cohen could infer that Bocchi had five spades. He led the spade nine (hoping for a cover from West) to North’s king and was delighted to see East’s 10 fall. Then he passed dummy’s diamond eight to Michael Polowan (East) as Bocchi pitched a club. Cohen won the club return, crossed to the spade ace, and took the diamond ace.

In the three-card ending, West was squeezed in three suits. He had to keep his heart and two spades, so let his club king go. Cohen now threw West in with the 13th heart to engineer a spade lead from the J-7 into the Q-8.

Another demonstration of why Bobby Wolff is the King of the genre of Beat oriented Bridge poetry.
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Some news updates from The People’s Democratic Republic of Korea:

General Secretary Kim Jong Il’s works were briskly studied and disseminated in at least 40 countries and regions and international organizations this year.

His works including “On the Fundamentals of Revolutionary Party Building”, “The Juche Philosophy Is an Original Revolutionary Philosophy” and “Songun Revolutionary Line Is a Great Revolutionary Line of Our Era and an Ever-Victorious Banner for Our Revolution” were published and issued in pamphlet by political parties, organizations and organs including the Communist Party of the Soviet Union(*), the Mongolian Mt. Paektu Association for Independent Development, the Natun Katha of Bangladesh, the Brazilian Photograph Publishing House and the Canta Clara Publishing House of Venezuela.

Foreign papers including a Lao paper, a Mexican paper and a Bulgarian paper carried his works with his photos.

His works were edited in bulletins and posted on Internet homepages by organizations and regional and international organizations including the Switzerland-Korea Committee, the Peruvian Group for the Study of Kimilsungism, the U.S. Solidarity Committee to Support the Anti-Imperialist National Democratic Front and the South Korean People’s Struggle, the Asian Regional Institute of the Juche Idea, the International Alliance of Societies for the Study of the Juche Idea and Songun Policy in East European and Central Asian Regions and the Korean Friendship Association headquartered in Spain.

Seminars, lectures, reading sessions, briefings and others on his works took place at a total of more than 60 units in different countries including the Party for Unity and Progress of Guinea, the U.S. Group for the Study of Songun Politics and the Finnish National Committee for the Study of the Juche Idea.

That’s why Kim Jung Il is an Internationally Respected World Leader of Culture and Statecraft.  (*) Is it me, or does that organization no longer exist?
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There has been no news from the Paulville Movement since March 28.  What is wrong with the hardcore Ron Paul fans?
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A description of the enduring appeal of Ziggy.:

Poor Ziggy. He’s perpetually one step behind, one nickel short, one lane away from the fast lane. But we love him for it, because everyone feels like Ziggy now and then.

As for today’s edition of Ziggy, we can all relate to wondering who is drawing mustaches on Garfield — our cat, or our dog.

Have you heard?  Chris Matthews is planning a run for the Democratic Senate seat in Pennsylvania.

I don’t know my Pennsylvania Democratic constituency, so I have no clue how that would play out.  But … he’s kind of everything that is wrong with the world of punditry — a dashless display of and horse racing untethered to any outcome.  Also with a politics which shifts way too readily — as with his wistful proclamations on Election Day 2002 and 2004 on the “Real American values” carrying the day with perhaps dumb but ultimately morally sound Country Music sentiment — compared with Election Day 2006 and 2008 about the “Blue Values” imbedded in Greater America … civil liberties, and “not a center right nation”.

Or, more to the point, positions on Bush — up on him when Bush was up; down on him when he’s been down.  Also: well — this clip is cut a little too closely cropped, and would be a bit better in context if it included the serious minded analysis which preceeded it.  I’m gathering that Matthews would have to hope for a three way primary contest, to scoop up the flagrantly sexist male demographic.

Right now Al Franken (.”…[momentary and tangeantal comic relief moved to more relevant post.]) is dwelling with a protracted ballot recount.  Al Franken has a great deal more to recommend him for both a Senate seat, and for a Democratic nomination.  Oddly enough, the fact that his radio program was somewhat studiously labored into policy is a key difference which recommends Franken over Matthews.  It always seemed to me that Franken was intent on using his program to get firmer grounding in matters of policy to be a more serious Senate candidate, and presumably Senator.

But there is an apt comparison here.  Do you want Al Franken as a Senator?  Not really, but I’d want him over Chris Matthews.  Interesting to note, had the Minnesota DFL party nominated some conventional Democratic politician — Mike Cirsea — they Democrats would probably have that senate seat right now.  As it were, we have a pretty tedious slog — one which reading the comments in the NY Times post here makes me shake my head.  I hate the sort of stratified sloganeering.  And the only reason I’d just turn this over to a “Just flip a coin” is to circumvent the Impatience Mongerers get to me and their demand would end it here with Coleman ahead where the coin flip gives it a 50 – 50 shot and probably about what a mythical angelic vantage point of Election Day “Intent of the Voter” canvassing brings us as Franken mulls yesterday’s set-back.  A similar problem existed when a North Carolinan I know (or “Internet know”) expressed disappointment that the state had not been called yet — the hurry, particularly in calling North Carloina which bears not at all on outcomes, is what?

But the sheer mind numbing cynical politics of a recount, and what it brings two candidates to argue in terms of Challenged Ballots — is a game which ends up having to be played for the same reason you have to slice up re-districting to suit your party:  the other side is doing it.

Al Franken in the Senate.  Chris Matthews in the Senate.  Perhaps the Republicans can get in the act and send in Charles Krauthammer, Ann Coulter, and David Brooks… have them carpet-bag the proper states of electibility.

Meanwhile, the Georgia campaign goes.  Jim Martin trails by three points to Saxby Chambliss.  Which is interesting, because that was what he trailed by since the Day of the Great Hank Paulson Panic, and that’s what he was beaten by in the Election.  As a sidenote, in 2002 when Mary Landrieu was losing on the day of the Election run-off in Louisiana, Bill Clinton came in and did a giant robo-call which spurred the margin of victory in Landrieu’s favor by bringing out the black vote.  Unfortunately the Democrats don’t have a high profile politician in 2008 popular amongst black Americans, so…

The Republicans have Zell Miller.  He’s campaigned for Chambliss.  That’ll get their vote out, right?  Zell?  Hm… Challenged Matthews to a dual… maybe Matthews wouldn’t be too bad after all.

After watching the Obama Administration in action, I think it’s time to come forth and say what everybody’s thinking.  The nation is suffering from a bad case of Buyer’s Remorse, he’s shifted behind bad catch-phrases of “Change” and “Hope”, and everything in the hand-basket is still on the route to Hell.

The Barack Obama Administration has proven to be a complete and abject failure.  The economy has not significantly improved, the Terror Strikes in Mumbai have underscored that Obama has not significantly dealt with the threat of terrorism, and not only that but I don’t see Barack Obama wearing a flag pin.

That last point underscore just how correct his fiercest critics have been: his associations with radical elements such as Jeremiah Wright and Father whatshisface and Bill Ayres and on and on and his growing up in a Madrassa and all these deep suspicions everyone has suspected, have pretty much been confirmed.  He put on a flag pin to hide all of this.

I guess we just lick our chops and sit through the rest of Obama’s disasterous tenure.  Impeach him, and bring in a wise grown up replacement.  Somebody like Jeb Bush.  Jeb Bush will get out us of this disasterous experiment and put the nation back into steady hands.

I have been meaning to read up on the currency crisis and complete freeze of Iceland, which I suppose in a paranoid reading of events – and what with a looming $1 Trillion deficit as a necessary evil — a harbinger of things to come.  The oh so subtle alarmist Matt Drudge decided to pair that article with this red- bullet headline — which elicits the big “meh” for me.  The one item on the Icelandic situation I have tucked away is a little too broad for its own good — starting with an exploration of the golden age of Iceland in the age of the Vikings — which, strictly speaking, isn’t particularly useful in understanding immediate concerns.

I half want to be a teenage pageant contestant — Miss Teen South Carolina — and be handed a question about how to deal with the Icelandic currency freeze.  I want to give an answer, “My solution to the problem is to freeze Iceland and thaw Greenland — that way Iceland will be icy and Greenland will be green, which will settle confusion amongst prospective tourists and boost the Tourist Industry for both nations.”  Well, global warming has gotten us half way there for Greenland.

I was wondering if the “Lizard People” ballot had been referenced on wikipedia yet.  Of course it has.  But really, the other impact the “Lizard People” have made on the world of electoral polics is much more interesting.

During a provincial election in Ontario, Canada on September 12, 2003, the Progressive Conservative Party disseminated a press release describing Liberal Party opposition leader Dalton McGuinty as an “Evil reptilian kitten-eater from another planet“.

Now THAT’s a Zinger!  The greatest political punch in the modern era.  I know Ralph Nader was campaigning against a sound-byte culture, hence the “performance art” display of one word press conference, but I think Nader would have done well to shelve those misgivings and — in order to cut through the media block-out of his and other third party candidacies — come out against Obama and McCain as part of the “Two Party Evil Reptilian Kitten-Eater From Another Planet Duopoly.”

The “Intent of this voter” was, I guess, to vote for “The Lizard People“.  Or maybe it wasn’t.  And apparently he has never heard of David Icke, the chief proponent of the theory that the world is run by Lizard People, and the easy theory of reference.  (Also a man who got right the color of the universe, unless the calculators of such a thing a few years back changed the color scheme after that announcment — which they might have — my memory on that whole fracus is a little hazy.)

So, Al Franken does not get the vote.  Even though he filled out the ballot for Franken.  The man was having dualing thoughts here – is Al Franken good enough and smart enough or should I voice my dissent by casting my lot with Lizard People?  If he hadn’t I would hope that the vote would be counted for the “Lizard People”, but alas, he flubbed the whole exercise.

Imagine if it were to all come down to this one ballot…

Not interested in looking at the cause ane effect relationship with this study, but I want to note something from this.

Happy people spend a lot of time socializing, going to church and reading newspapers — but they don’t spend a lot of time watching television, a new study finds.

The Oregonian had this on the side of the front page, and they highlighted the “reading newspapers” in a noticably darker gray hue.  I had to check an additional copy to make sure this wasn’t the product of some bizarrely tightly limited and angular grubby fingers.  It strikes me as kind of unprofessional on the part of the Oregonian.

The relatively unremarkable, but moderately interesting map of the “Cotton Belt” transposed with the 2008 county-by-county election results (hint: it looks the same for 2000, 2004, and probably any Democratic losing state-wide races) was posted at Reason’s blog.  And it received this response.:

Err, there are a lot of dot clusters in red counties. Where they happen to coincide are in more densely populated areas, which tend to vote D for unrelated reasons.In other words, if you hadn’t told me what this map was supposed to show, I would have no idea what it was supposed to show.Part of this is smacked down with the comment.:cunnivore – the coincidence of high cotton production and Obama voting (read: majority black citizenry) is not at all limited to high density areas. The delta and the swath of black belt through central Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina are, for the most part, sparsely populated and very rural.

And part of it is a narrowness of vision.  From the vantage point of the nation as a whole, the belt is obvious, even as it has a lot of noise with interceding red areas and even heavy clusters of plantations belted up in red.

But, in the “Martian Observer” insight:  If you were a space alien you might think that the soil content made people black.

And a warning shot from the other line of demarcation I’ve discussed here, the belt where McCain outperformed Bush, in the comments at the American Prospect blog.:

Look, I know there’s a lot of merriment about this stuff with you Washington-based lefties [Where *are* these people? If they’re in the neighborhood, they’re the dirty guys ranting on the streetcorner], but this could be a lot more serious than you think. Here in TN, not only did Obama get creamed, but the Repbulicans won control of the statehouse for the first time since Reconstruction. And one of the Republican state reps, while trying to deny [of course] that it had anything to do with race, said that it more likely was the result of “the Muslim factor” and “many people’s perception that [Obama] was the Antichrist.”
Look–It’s crazy, but I know enough rural people to easily see how this stuff could be believed by perfectly sane people. First of all, you accept the premillennial dispensationalist gospel, so you take the Antichrist stuff seriously. Secondly, this really exotic candidate comes seemingly out of nowhere and wins the election, even though his values don’t line up with yours or those of anyone you know. You don’t trust any of the MSM and rely heavily on your neighbors, your church, and certain sorts of talk radio for understanding of the outside world. The results can be really toxic. Now, to Obama’s credit, his team seems to have understood something of how this works, and made really strong efforts to counter it among white working-class voters in battleground states. But the Obama campaign was virtually invisible in places like Tennessee; indeed, volunteers in Nashville were put to work calling voters in NC.  Frankly, I think the dismissal of this *Newsweek* piece by the left [or, worse, the assertion that it shouldn’t have been published at all, because it somehow lends credence to the notion that we’re a “center-right” nation–how?] says little for its perception. People you ignore or belittle have ways of  suddenly coming back on you; if you’re not clueless about them, it might help you prepare.

One last mapping entity oddity… maybe this is meaningless, but if you run the counties from 95 percent Catholics on back to zero, the trend-lines never really do stabilize, and while it does eventually get reasonably assured in Obama’s favor — the tipping point at 59 percent after some good swings about,  there are wild swings such as to suggest that this is a meaningless demagraphic category – those Hispanic Catholics in the border region of Texas that make up the two most heavily Catholic counties have apparently nothing in common with the third most populous Catholic county in Louisina, who have probably been hearing sermons about the evils of Abortion every week for the past few months.

Take the following exercise of figuring out the “Intent of the voter” for the Minnesota Senate race and you’ll start to understand what this guy here

must have felt like.  Well, except for you don’t have to deal with a these people pounding on your window:

Unless they are.  Those guys aren’t pounding on your window right now, are they?  Okay.  A run down.  Your mileage may vary.

Day 3 #1: Norm Coleman gets the vote
Day 2 #1:  Norm Coleman.   Put this in a mental file, and I’ll explain this as : this voter decided that he really wanted Bachman to be in the running but ended up settling for Coleman.
Day 2 #2:  Al Franken gets the vote.
Day 2 #3:  Ballot rejected.
Day 2 #4:  Norm Coleman gets the vote.
Day 1 #1:  Al Franken gets the vote.
Day 1 #2:  Accept the ballot, Norm Coleman gets the vote.
Day 1 #3:  Reject the ballot.
Day 1 #4:  Al Franken gets the vote.
Day 1 #5:  Al Franken gets the vote.  Just as the Coleman voter really wanted Bachman in the running, this Franken voter really wanted Lizard People to be in the running, but in the end… voted for Franken.  What is odd is that if the voter had filled out the “other box” for the write-in “Lizard People”, I would have been inclined to reject the ballot, but as he didn’t fill that one out, I just have to say he wants Franken.  I do not know who this one throws a bigger light of craziness — Coleman people like Bachman and Franken people like Lizard People.
Day 1 #6:  Ballot rejected.
Day 1 #7:  Norm Coleman gets the vote.
Day 1 #8:  Al Franken gets the vote.
Day 1 #9:  Dean Barkley gets the vote.
Day 1 #10:  Dean Barkley gets the vote.
Day 1 #11:  Reject the ballot.

Mercy me.  What grabs you is the intellectual inconsistency in how the two sides, the Franken side and the Coleman side, argue over the challenged ballots.  But that’s how horse race partisan politics works: blinders on.