Reading, Writing and Right Wing Rhetoric

Son #1 said to the hubby after school today, "I heard that if Obama wins the election, we'll have to go to school on snow days."

Yes and abortions will be mandatory.

Your Vote Counts

Apparently Obama went from a 70:30 favorite a few weeks ago to dead even in the Intrade prediction markets. This is likely more credible than my qualitative analysis with supplemental Facebook statistics. D'oh!



In tribute to the woman, the myth, the legend (and since a Sarah Palindrome is boring), I thought I would give you some Sarahnagrams instead.

HA IRAN SLAP
AH LIAR SNAP

And my favorite: I A RASH PLAN

McCain v. Obama

Here's to me stepping, once again, into territory where I don't belong and my economist brother piping in with details regarding where my logic is flawed! (Bring it on.) But really, who's going to win?

Today's polls show the candidates neck-in-neck: 47% McCain v. 46% Obama. ABC.com boasts myriad conflicting articles as I type, "Public still doubts Palin's readiness," "White women shift to McCain," and "George Stephanopoulos examines how Sarah Palin has boosted McCain's campaign."

A lot of my friends/neighbors are split. My Obama-oriented friends are filled with passion and outrage. They send missives all day long. My McCain-favoring friends are quietly smug. They somehow don't need to fight for their cause; it's a given. Perhaps mere mortal words cannot state their case effectively.

If I turn to my trusty Facebook, the "One Million Strong for Barack" group has 707,941 members and "Barack Obama (politician) has 1,855,105 supporters; whereas, the "1,000,000 Strong for McCain/Palin" group has a scant 65,820 members and "John McCain (politician)" only has 337,872 supporters. Quite a contrast.

While I realize that Facebook is not a representative sample of the U.S. population, it is an interesting dynamic. I think the numbers may actually support the key finding of my random qualitative survey of friends and neighbors: one segment vehemently supports its candidate and the other segment appears to be simply accepting its candidate to a moderate degree.

I wonder how the passion (or lack thereof) will manifest itself in driving people to the voting booths come November. If you want me, you can find me left of center off of the strip.

I Dare You to Vote for Me!

According to Political Calculations, it's time for me to "Fire up the spin machine, you're ready to kick off your campaign this week! It's time to start courting donations from lobbyists and to put underlings to work deciding what you believe!"

Actually, this site calculates my "qualifications" based not on my experience in office (or lack thereof) but rather on whether or not I've ever toured with a rock band which I have not -- yet. Oddly enough, it doesn't ask race, gender or whether or not I'm a total babe. It's also more focused on my current bio. Holding all values equal, I'm still qualified for office if I am married with two sexual partners vs. in a relationship with only one. Yee haw! As I said to my brother, this doesn't account for my millions of past affairs or the fact that I'm one step away from rehab next week. As long as I'm clean and perceived to be sober today, all's well.

Not to mention that I can strangle moose barehanded . . .

Huckle Up

What happens if you weigh the election issues that are important to you and then vote on a five-point scale of "strongly opposed" to "strongly support" according to topic-related statements?

Let glassbooth do the work for you.

Apparently I should be voting for either Obama (70% similarity) or Huckabee (69% similarity) . . .

What this survey mechanism doesn't account for is my level of confidence in any candidate's ability to actually accomplish what s/he is touting in his or her platform.