Although I think that the Electoral College may have outlived most of its usefulness in this day and age of mass communications, I will say one thing in favor of it: Without the Electoral College system, we would right now almost certainly be trying to recount 101 million votes from all 51 states, rather than six million from Florida (with another possible six million from Iowa, Wisconsin, and New Mexico).
posted by MES 1:50 PM ET | discuss | link

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Couple years ago, I'm watching the Orioles beating the Yankees at home in The Bronx in Game one of the ALCS 4-3 in the eighth inning, when a twelve-year-old kid took what should have been a fly-out right out of the glove of Oriole outfielder Tony Tarasco. Incredibly, the umpire ruled it a home run (he later said it should have only been a double). Now, maybe the Yankees would have won the game anyway (even though the winning run came during the extra innings mandated by the game-tying homerun that wasn't). But then again... If the Orioles had managed to win game one IN NEW YORK, even if they'd lost Game two, they would have gone back home to Camden Yards having split two away games against a Yankee team that was being called a "team of destiny." The entire complexion of the series might have changed. This fact really sucked for exactly half of the interested fan base, and was really great for the other half. We in the disappointed half bitched and complained until out throats were hoarse, but we knew there was no way that the Ump, or Major League Baseball was going to overrule the call and re-play the game. They just couldn't do it. The precedent set would be too huge. It would threaten the very integrity of the game. It would have created a situiation where anytime a team was unhappy with the outcome of a game (which is desgined in such a way that someone HAS to lose), they could challenge the results and expect to have a reasonable chance of getting their way.

So we bitched and bitched, and as we expected, nothing changed, as we knew it couldn't. The final 5-4 score stood, and the Yankees went on to win the World Series.

And life went on.

Can't imagine what inspired me to tell that story. :-)
posted by LT2 12:17 PM ET | discuss | link

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Thursday, November 09, 2000

Wow. Here's a 6000+ word dissertation from MSNBC on the decline of The Simpsons.
posted by MES 2:49 PM ET | discuss | link

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Everyone, particularly certain people, should read Molly Ivins' piece from Tuesday on why everyone should vote. Here's a snippet:

I know it's easy to lose track of -- sometimes politics seems like an extremely bizarre form of sport -- but it actually is about our lives. This is not something you can divorce yourself from. You can't sit and look at it as though it were a picture on the wall or a TV program you don't like. This is the stuff, the warp and the woof of our lives, and something more as well -- it is our community, our connectedness to one another.

I can review all the reasons you should care -- and it's not just because they make you pay taxes. (You can't buy a candy bar without paying taxes on it.) Your whole life is shaped by the people who get elected to public office.

They decide as much about your life as you do -- how deep you will be buried when you die, the qualifications of the people who prescribe your eyeglasses, the books that your kids learn from in school. You are touched by government every day in a swarm of ways.

posted by LT2 12:31 PM ET | discuss | link

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Wednesday, November 08, 2000

Funny picture:

posted by LT2 7:51 PM ET | discuss | link

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Strangely, this morning's Washington Post also has an article about Vietnam motorcycle safety. Some more quotes:

"safety experts estimate that fewer than 3 percent of riders have opted to wear protective helmets. They compare the resulting fatalities to a fully loaded 747 jetliner crashing every two weeks."

"People blithely ignore red lights, stop signs and one-way postings. Someone wanting to make a turn will just cut through oncoming traffic, expecting that everyone else will yield to a beeping horn."

"it's not unusual to see televisions, computers, stacks of dead pigs and vegetables, even full-size refrigerators, strapped on the rear rack."

"The most common complaint [about helmets], however, is the climate. A typical helmet, which covers a rider's whole head and has a plastic shield to protect the face, is commonly referred to as a 'rice cooker.'"
posted by MES 6:05 PM ET | discuss | link

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I think I've solved the great campaign finance reform debate. Let's pass a law that says you can contribute as much as you want to anyone you want, but that every dollar you donate, must be matched with a dollar donation to the government to pay down the debt. So I send $1,000 to Bush, I get a bill from the federal government for $1,000 which goes into a general fund. this fund is used at the end of each fiscal year for NOTHING but debt repayment.

Gad, I'm SUCH a genius!
posted by LT2 5:49 PM ET | discuss | link

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Here's an interesting article from the NY Times about an American running a motorcycle helmet business in Hanoi. Vietnam recently passed a law that will soon require helmets in the major cities by next year.

Some quotes:

"Crossing the street in Hanoi must rank as one of the most hazardous daily activities in the developing world."

"They bob and weave in a chaotic stream that is slowed only by the all- too-frequent accidents. Families often pile onto a single machine, babies and toddlers clinging to their parents, all bare-headed."

"wearing a helmet ... is an extraordinarily tough sell in a country where riders gossip, flirt, and even cut deals while tooling three abreast down crowded thoroughfares."

"Imagine everyone in Hanoi or Ho Chi Minh City wearing helmets," said Mr. Nguyen with a grin. "They would look like a city on another planet."
posted by MES 4:54 PM ET | discuss | link

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Hey look, Clinton did what we did: "Clinton is due to arrive in Vietnam on November 16 for a visit that has been cut back to three days from four after he canceled a stop in the central city of Hue." He probably talked to some backpackers who just came from Hue...
posted by MES 4:39 PM ET | discuss | link

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In the interest of equal time, I submit this "proof" that Dubya was drinking at recently as 1992. Now, despite the fact that he sounds drunk (Much like Flanders in the Beer Baron episode), I'd been told in advance that at the end of the video he does a shot. Well, check it out yourselves, but that ain't no shot glass. It's a high ball glass, and exactly the kind of glass the serve you water in when you're at a wedding party, not drinking.

God, I'm disgusted with myself for even perpetuating this stuff.
posted by LT2 2:24 PM ET | discuss | link

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I didn't see Lars mention this, so I figured I would. On Monday NATO (that's the theater owners, not the treaty organization) came out with a bunch of decisions, the main one of which is that their member theaters will no longer show trailers for R-rated films before G or PG rated films. (I don't really know how big a problem this addresses. I've seen two G-rated films in the past year, Toy Story 2 and Chicken Run, and in both cases the trailers were painful--PAINFUL! Nothing but G-rated sense-assaulting kid's stuff, and kid's stuff of the worst order it was! This was stuff like "The Mattel and Mars Bar Quick Energy Chocobot Hour: The Movie." That kinda stuff.)

NATO also said they will step up enforcement of the R and NC-17 restrictions by posting more people at the entrances to each auditorium to check tickets. But, and this is where it starts to get a bit silly, for NC-17 and "hard R" films they will ask the films' distributors to help pay for the additional labor to keep the kiddies out! Here are two articles, one from AP, and one from Variety.
posted by MES 2:23 PM ET | discuss | link

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I got e-mails all day long yesterday suggesting Dubya's guilt ina great many horrible things. I also got a lot of e-mails suggesting that his answers to some fluff questions suggested, among other things, that he is simple, or an alcoholic, or just plain illiterate.

So, in the spirit of the goose and the gander, I submit the following:

For the official World Series magazine, Gore and Bush provided written answers to some questions pertaining to baseball, including "What do you think of domed stadiums?" Gore's complete answer was:

"The design and construction of domed stadiums--in Seattle (the Kingdome was the first free-standing cement dome ever built), Houston (the Astrodome was the first stadium to use Astroturf) and Minnesota (the Metrodome is the only stadium in the U.S. whose roof is suspended without beams or rods--it's supported by air pressure), for example, have been feats of architectural and engineering excellence. But the real measure of any stadium, domed or otherwise, is how much fun you have inside."

Bush's complete answer was: "I like to go to baseball games outdoors."

And by the way, for the record, The Carrier Dome on the campus of Syracuse University also features a roof supported only by air. Last time I checked, Syracuse was in the US.
posted by LT2 1:50 PM ET | discuss | link

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Hey, whaddaya know? The Onion turns out to have the most accurate version of the election story! The network bunglers from last night could learn a thing or two. The Onion truly is America's Finest News Source.
posted by MES 12:26 PM ET | discuss | link

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Tuesday, November 07, 2000

Monday, November 06, 2000

Boo-hoo... no one will argue with me. I've scared-off or angered-off four people over the last six hours. I must have combat dammit!!!

This is too much fun. Remember folks, this doesn't happen again for four years, and perhaps never again under these circumstances.
posted by LT2 9:20 PM ET | discuss | link

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I've been saying for a long time that our foreign policy over the last 8 years has been a goddamn disgrace. Since Al proudly claims to have been a co-architect of that policy, I thought I would post an 11th hour expose from a contact of my father's in Haiti... one of the places where the Clinton/Gore mistakes have been the most tragic, embarrassing, and expensive, at a total cost of $2 BILLION and counting (remember that number the next time someone complains about the $4 million Lewinsky/Whitewater investigation)

It's a very long piece, so I'll post it in the chat board rather than taking up space here. But you should all read it and remember that the most important job of the President is to exert our will abroad, by force if necessary. To do that effectively, requires that the President be respected, and often feared. Al Gore is not a man who commands respect around the world as Haiti, Somalia, and Kosovo have proved again and again.

Another USS Cole anyone?
posted by LT2 8:17 PM ET | discuss | link

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All the pundits seem to be predicting a Bush win tomorrow, but Columbia professors Robert Erikson and Karl Sigman have done a statistical analysis of the polls and trends in the battleground states, and they say that there's an 84.7% chance that Gore will win the election. Go figure!

They also say that "a Gore Electoral College win would amost certainly be accompanied by a popular vote loss," Can't wait to hear the grousing if that happens. Should be an exciting night!
posted by MES 8:07 PM ET | discuss | link

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How about them SAINTS!!!

I can't remember the last time we shelacked the 49ers like that. Whoo-hoo!!!!
posted by LT2 5:56 PM ET | discuss | link

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Mike's been hoping for a good Angry Pen letter for a while. This meaning an angry letter to a company or entity, as opposed to an op-ed piece. Well, here ya go. Couple months ago, I got a ticket for an expired tag. The new tag had already been bought and paid for by me and was, I would later discover, actually sitting in my mailbox at the time the ticket was written. I wrote several nice letters to the traffic Nazis explaining the situation. I even included xeroxed copies of the ticket and the new tag to show that the issue date on the tag actually pre-dated the issue date on the ticket. Not only did they not fix the situation, but they NEVER EVEN RESPONDED!!! I have tried calling, but now that so much time has passed, they refuse to do anything for me. I flat out refuse to pay the ticket and since it's the only one I have, I figure I can get away with that for a while. But then yesterday, I got a letter saying the matter has been referred to a collection agency and that in the future, I might face Garnishing of my wages or whatever it is that they do.

I took the collection notice out of the envelope, scrawled "BRING IT ON" in big, black letters with a sharpie, and mailed the fucker right back to 'em.

posted by LT2 3:35 PM ET | discuss | link

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This just in, breaking news from the campaign trail:

- In 1978, while his wife Laura was out of town visiting family, Dubya went out to do the family shopping and, according to one published report, "squeezed the Charmin."

and

- In 1996, despite repeated requests from a talking chiuhuahua, George refused to "drop the chalupa."

Federal Investigators are said to be considering charges.
posted by LT2 2:30 PM ET | discuss | link

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Yesterday at a rally, Tipper called a vote for Al Gore "America's last, best hope for the future." You get that? Our "last hope!" I guess Bill didn't do such a good job after all.
posted by LT2 1:34 PM ET | discuss | link

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