The State of Democracy

From CNN this morning:

In a CNN poll released Friday, 60 percent of Clinton supporters said they would vote for Obama, but 17 percent said they would vote for McCain and 22 percent said they would not vote at all if Clinton were not the nominee.

How sad is that? My candidate didn’t win the nomination. So I’m going to stomp my way out of the sandbox, walk right past the voting booth, and go home. My guy (or gal) didn’t win, so, in effect, I’m going to disenfranchise myself and sit back to watch while the country goes to hell in a handbasket because my candidate didn’t get the nomination. They all probably got sand on their lollipops, too.

Let’s assume these poll figures, with a margin of error of 7.5 percent are correct, across the board for Hillary’s 18 million primary voters (a stretch, I know, but let’s have some fun with it). So, 22 percent of 18 million is 3.96 million voters sitting on their hands while the rest of the country votes. Check that. That’s 3.96 million active voters; voters who actually went to the polls this year, deciding to sit it out; sitting it out with the regular folks who rarely, if ever, vote. Nearly 4 million more inactive slobs who can’t get off their duffs to go vote. Add their stomp out of the sandbox reason to the litany of other reasons people don’t go to the polls, topmost of which being Don’t Care.

Sad, sad folks.

And another 17 percent, or 3.06 million say they’ll vote for McCain because Hillary didn’t win the nomination? There are that many bitter, vindictive active voters in the Democratic Party? OK, no surprise there. But where’s the commitment? If any number of voters affiliated with any party say they’ll defect, in effect casting protest votes, because their candidate didn’t win, does it do any good? More sandbox politics. Since you won’t build the sandcastle I want, I’ll go with this other group and build roads through your environmentally-sensitive sandbox corners. Is this politics or is this kindergarten?

Then there are folks like me, who are political schizophrenics. Here’s how I voted in the past four presidential elections:

2004 Ralph Nader
2000 George W. Bush
1996 H. Ross Perot
1992 Bill Clinton

Yes, a fine assortment of fruits and nuts there. Am I helping fan the flames of democracy, with this voting record? Absolutely. At least I voted.

Who will I vote for this time?

I hesitate to put it here, because of the off chance it’ll attract more fruits and nuts, or at least cause people to wonder if I was there during the Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

2008 Ron Paul

Why? So I may continue my political philosophy, best summed up by The Simpsons’ Krusty the Klown:

Don’t Blame Me, I Didn’t Do It!

In other words, I didn’t vote that bum into office. I selected the fringe candidate who had no chance whatsoever of winning – because he had no chance whatsoever of winning.

Am I just as guilty in damaging democracy as the Democrats I decry? Yeah. But part of me thinks this:

I Voted for X Because I Knew He’d Lose!

sounds better than this:

I Voted for X Because Y Didn’t Get the Nod!

And at least I went out and voted.

Hillary, Hillary

So Hillary Clinton has suspended her race for the Democratic nomination and endorsed Barack Obama. Probably with the kind of grin on her face that would make small children flee her presence.

Not that anyone else can't produce such a grin. I'm sure Mitt Romney wore such a grin when he endorsed John McCain for the good of the Grand Old Party. I've got to admit I find it very hypocritical of political candidates to endorse the other once one has clearly lost the race. They've spent the entire race baiting each other, sniping at each other, jumping on their gaffes and missteps and basically telling everyone who'll listen that their opponent is dumber than a rock. Then they turn around and say, all sweetness and light, that "for the good of the party," their opponent now east butterflies and poops rainbows. Yuck. Get them off me! Get them off me!

Here's how I'd rather these situations go:

The scene: Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton meet just prior to Hillary's concession speech. They meet in some dank greenroom backstage.

HILLARY: So, Barack.

BARACK: Yeah, Hillary.

HILLARY: Just gotta say, you ran a nice, uh, I mean, it was hard-run, um, what I mean to say is . . . your ears are too damn big. Stick out like Mater's mirrors.

BARACK: Just as civil as always, you buck-toothed honkey-donkey!

HILLARY: Yeah, Jeremiah Wright a lot about civility, eh Barack?

BARACK: Just as much as Bill can teach us about morality. So, seen Monica lately?

HILLARY: You dirty little . . .

BARACK: What? Lose your blue-collar swear words?

HILLARY: Elitist pimp.

BARACK: Oooh, that hurt.

HILLARY: Go cling to some Bibles and guns, Barack. See how well you do in the general!

BARACK: Say Hi to Bobby for me.

HILLARY: Don't suppose we could exchange a fist-tap --

BARACK: Absolutely not.

But we'll never see it that way, will they? Rainbows and butterflies, after the slime. That's the American way.

I've got to admit I'm glad it's over. Now we can look forward to a civil general election, followed by a civil Lame Duck period for George W. Bush, and, at the same, time, Osama bin Laden will surrender at a National Rifle Association in San Antonio, Texas, your average American will realize that the French have many redeeming qualities, and gasoline will drop to 12 cents a gallon.

Windy Update

I have now built a tomato greenhouse that we could live in. I used all the scrap lumber I could find and resurrected the plastic sheeting that the wind tore to shreds yesterday. I was actually brave enough to plant the tomatoes. It's nice and toasty inside the greenhouse. I'm a little nervous about it, however. To keep the wind from blowing it over and thrashing the plants, I had to seal up the side that I was going to leave open for weeding. We can get inside the thing by crawling into either end, but it's not very big in there -- it's at maximum about 40 inches tall. That's fine with the really short tomato plants we have now, but if they grow to any degree, it's going to be interesting to get inside there again. Not to mention I've got to rig up something to suspend the vines from once they start to grow.

I'm glad I got the greenhouse built -- about two hours after I finished the work, the rain came. Then, for about five minutes, the SNOW came. So help us, I don't think we get summer this year.

Windicanes

Here in Idaho, the joke is if the wind quits, all the buildings will fall over.

Then there are days like today. Constant winds gusting to 40 and 50 miles per hour, totally demolishing the greenhouse I made for the tomatoes. Fortunately, the tomatoes have not been planted, otherwise they would all have been crushed. You can tell I'm an American because that's the biggest stresser I've had today. Well, that and the stock market falling nearly 400 points. I'm so tired of watching my tiny investments get even tinier. Reminds me of the old Steve Martin routine: "Yeah, I got ten dollars, I think I'll just throw it out in the street. Oh, I can get in here (Steve's show) for ten dollars? OK."

Went to the post office today and on the way in I ran into an old guy. He asked what I thought of the wind, and even before I could answer, he said "I hate it!" You know it's windy in Idaho when the old guys start complaining about it.

I think it's evidence that Mother Nature officially hates humanity. She's tried shaking us off with earthquakes, drowning us with floods, hurricanes and the like, vacuuming us up with tornadoes, burying us with snow and mudding us to death with torrential spring rains. Not all of that has happened in Idaho of course, We haven't had hurricanes, at least.

On windy days like this, our eight-year-old refers to the wind and "windicanes." I like that.

Me for Veep

Dear Mr. Obama,

I’d like you to consider choosing me as your vice president.

I admire your idea of bringing change to Washington, however vague your ideas of change might be. I say vague because, like most Americans, I haven’t been following much the day-to-day primary process, and only get my news from the randomly-heard sound bite, occasional mentions on Digg and those whacked-out folks at the Huffington Post. Perhaps you have very firm ideas of what this change might need to be. Let’s hear them. Like you, I’m all ears.

What would my name on the ticket bring you? It could well change a red state (Idaho) blue. Okay, who am I kidding? The last time Idaho voted for a Democratic president was, I believe, for Lyndon Baines Johnson. And that was, if I remember right, because he promised to KEEP us in an unpopular war. So we’re a little whacked out here. We’ve had a Democratic governor – Cecil Andrus – and a fairly prominent Democratic senator – Frank Church. But such political affectations rotate around personality, and are anomalies for red-state Idaho. But with a native son on the ticket, you might get, you know, 25 to 30 percent of the popular vote here, which is saying something. You could get at least five percent of the vote simply because you’re not Hillary.

True, Idaho’s numbers don’t look promising for Democrats – You did win the state primary by a nearly four-to-one margin, but if the election had already been held, you would have lost to John McCain, who got just over 87,000 votes to your nearly 17,000. Of those Republican votes, I could probably earn you, at most, a dozen – and those would be immediate family members. Or some of them, at least. But there is a sizeable portion of the Idaho Republican party unsatisfied with the current crop of Republican hopefuls. Six percent of those who went to the polls May 27 – a total of 7,974 voters – indicate they’re uncommitted among Republican presidential hopefuls. Even in Madison County – touted as the reddest county in the United States – a full eight percent of those who voted in the Republican primary are uncommitted. That represents, of course, disappointment that Mitt Romney isn’t on the ballot. Choosing a Mormon VP (I’m waiting for your call, Mr. Obama) could help tip the scales. Not enough to win Idaho, of course; plenty of Mormon Democrats have proved that in the past. I’d bring religion into the race by asking everyone who asked a question about my Mormonism the Golden Question: Would you like to know more? That’ll shut ‘em up in a hurry.

What else could I bring? Doritos, probably. But I insist on having my own bag. We have a wiener dog. I have my own pair of steel-toed boots. If those aren’t good in politics, I don’t know what would be. Aside from a protective cup, I imagine.

The biggest thing I could bring is Change, Mr. Obama. Why pick some slick political insider with a hundred thousand skeletons in his or her closet, when you can pick a half-Dutch former journalist technical writer father of three who has an amusing collection of rocks that resemble pig noses? I may have a few skeletons in the ol’ closet, but they’re more along the lines of cornering my sister [name redacted to protect the innocent] in the bathroom when I was six and peeing all over her because my older sister Chris [name included because she’s not all that innocent in this case] told me that if [name redacted] didn’t let me use the potty first, I should pee on her.

I don’t know a thing about politics, the economy, the military, the balance of funds, mortgages (aside from how escrows work) and I’m in favor of putting the violence back in all those old Bugs Bunny cartoons. Give me an assignment and I run with it. All right, I run as far as the nearest pizza parlor, but I do indeed run. As a neophyte, I might find ways to cut through red tape, cut spending, bloat, graft, waste and, at the same time, develop a fuel made from rocks, and give you all the credit because, Mr. Obama, I am, generally, a self-effacing kind of guy. I also might spend all my time at the vice presidential desk surfing the net and whirling around in that big leather chair. But you’ve got to admit that’s more than most vice presidents do, don’t you think? And just think of the Village Idiot vote you’d capture. I won’t even require a secure, undisclosed location because, if there’s trouble, I’ll just head home to Sugar City, and there are people in Idaho Falls, only 26 miles away, that don’t know where the hell that is, so I can’t get more secure or undisclosed, unless I go hide in one of the lava tubes out in the desert. As a plus, I don’t hunt, so there’s absolutely no chance I’ll shoot a lawyer friend, even by accident. Even if I had lawyer friends. Even if I had friends.

Change this year could mean, Mr. Obama, bringing a complete political outsider into the White House. Don’t poll after poll show that Americans are sick of politics as usual? An Obama/Davidson ticket could bill itself as Politics as Unusual.

I promise I won't get all White Boy ethnic with you, either. You and your wife may fist-thump all you want. I'll settle for something along the lines of the Wonder Twins activating their powers or something a la Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy. I'll be Barnacle Boy.



I'm not bitter, though I am religious.

Oh. And I own all eleven seasons of MASH on DVD, plus the Lord of the Rings trilogy. We could have us a time with all those plasma TVs in the white house, unless Dubya takes them all back to Crawford with him.

So, Mr. Obama, I’d like to hear from you.

Vice Presidentially Yours,

BD

Vyvyan is bored

Don't get me bored.

Help! Help! I'm being repressed!

I may not be cut out for formal report writing.

This is a good thing.

To each his own, I say. And if my own isn’t dry as toast formal writing, report writing, abstracts and summaries, so be it.

It all started when I used a metaphor to help compare two summaries in an essay I had to write for my formal report writing class. Note I say “had to write.” The other writing I’ve done for other classes hasn’t felt like writing. It’s been fun. This class, it feels like writing, so help me. You can read my full essay here, using this really nifty file-sharing tool I found while researching stuff for my Second Life class. It’s called issuu.com.

Besides the stupid name, the service is great. They offer space to post documents online so they can be read there or posted to blogs. I’ve so far used it for private documents, though I’m befuddled that some of these documents are showing up as being read. Maybe people can still read them. Well, obviously they can. I’m using it because they let you post PDFs online – which most other online document repositories won’t let you do, for some reason I can’t fathom.

Anyway, my professor Dr. Shook didn’t much like how the metaphor got in the way of his reading of my assignment. Oh well. I still got full points for it, probably because he’s tired of dealing with me. I just don’t see why formal has to equal dull, which it does in spades in most of the formal papers I’ve read. I know there’s a place for dullness, but I believe if there’s a metaphor or artistic device that can help a reader understand an interpretation, we use it. I know not everyone thinks that way. I’ve suffered under the journalism teachers who pondered how fiction writers do what they do because “they have to make it all up.” I thought that was the point. But as I am fond of saying, I am no genius. I do not know the atlas.

Yes, I'm having a ball with this issuu.com feature. And the blog in general (as evidenced by all the junk I've been adding here lately. Perhaps it's a bit much. Just don't get me bored. . .

My Take on A Few Things

Hillary Clinton: She will not concede the race tonight. She will, perhaps, acknowledge that Barack Obama is “close” to winning the nomination. She will provide mathematical proofs that she could still win the nomination. The fight will go on to the convention. The undecided Democratic Superdelegates will see a few trickle into the Obama camp over the next few weeks, but the majority will hold off on a decision, pondering, as every good Democrat should, which candidate to support. And by support, I mean the Doonesbury notion of support, as when Alex and Mike are discussing her decision to vote for Howard Dean (I keep wanting to type John Dean; I’ve read too much about the Nixon administration) in the last election cycle: I believe I have the right,” young Alex says, “to pick the candidate I want, no matter if it brings the party down in flames.” “You’re a Democrat,” her father replies. “I thought so,” she adds. (Wish I could find the comic, but I can’t.)

The FLDS situation: Texas Supreme Court orders the kids be shipped home, the church vows not to perform underage marriages. Texas CPS waits in the wings, ready to swoop in if an FLDS parent so much as farts near one of their kids. The church or individual church members file lawsuits against Texas CPS and look likely to win. Texas CPS will blame the whole situation on Arizona and Utah, forgetting that they’re the ones who put FLDS Prophet Warren Jeffs behind bars while Texas CPS lurched into YFZ Ranch with the Constitution stuck on the bottom of their shoes. The Christian Right will continue its umbrage because religious tolerance is supposed to be tolerance of things like The Ten Commandments monuments on public property, “In God We Trust” remaining on our coinage and other superficialities, rather than on, you know, religious tolerance. The Left will continue its umbrage because of, as James Lileks puts it, their disgust in not what these people believe, but that they believe.

This all reminds me a bit of something I read this week in Jonh Ciardi’s translation of Dante’s Inferno. Following Canto XXI, Ciardi includes a fairly lucid commentary on Catholic versus Protestant umbrage, entitled “A General Note on Dante’s Treatment of the Grafters and Their Guards.” He writes:

It has often seemed to me that the offensive language of Protestantism is obscenity; the offensive language of Catholicism is profanity or blasphemy; one finds on a scale of unmentionable words for bodily function, the other on a scale of disrespect for the sacred. Dante places the blasphemous in Hell as the worst of the Violent against God and His Works, but he has no category for punishing those who use four-letter words.

Of course, in America there’s equal-opportunity umbrage. In this instance, however, I think Texas CPS let their obsession over the “obscenity” of FLDS practices overwhelm them. Not that child abuse, proven or suspected, is acceptable, or unobscene. But they want in with some pretty shaky evidence, as the courts have shown, letting their umbrage over plural marriage fill in the details where, in most cases, the detail will likely prove not to be present. The FLDS vow not to authorize underage marriage, if it holds, likely will be tested by CPS, unable to get past the obscenity they perceive.

Oh, Have We Got A Video?

Just for fun.

I made this video of my kids and dog climbing the North Menan Butte -- an extinct volcano about 20 miles weast of where we live -- for Uncharted.net. Until it's posted there, I thought I'd let the tiny audience of this blog enjoy it.

And while I'm at it, I'll make a supplementary message:

WHY I LOVE FARK.COM:

"Window on American Airlines plane shatters, takes out engine shortly after takeoff. Passengers charged $15 "skid-mark removal" fee prior to boarding replacement plane." (Posted there 6.2.08.)

An Experiment

Please bear with me. Another experiment in the works.

In the words of Dr. Fronkensteen: "IT . . . COULD . . . WOOORRRRRK!"