Final results are in

WARNING -- election geek stuff ahead!

We've just heard the final results for the Presidential vote in Johnson County, Iowa, where both Iowa City and Coralville are.  Before the election we heard that our precinct, Coralville 6 (CV06) had never gone Democratic, and the first returns showed that the precinct had gone Republican again this year.  But for the first time, absentee and early ballots were counted in their precinct this year instead of simply being counted generally, and it made a difference -- CV06 went Democratic.  It probably had done so before, but we did have the lowest precinct percentage for Obama in either Iowa City or Coralville, with only 60% for Obama.  (A few rural or small-town precincts were lower, and two, with a total of 809 votes, actually went for McCain.)  So I'm feeling better about where we live now...

Final early voting statistics in our precinct

Since we're poll watching on election day, I've been watching the early voting statistics in our precinct (Coralville precinct 6, or CV6). Iowa's had a lot of emphasis on early voting, and it shows -- in our precinct, 57.8% of registered voters have already voted, almost 70% of Democrats, over 50% of Republicans, and almost 50% of independents. We're guessing that we'll have a pretty easy time as poll watchers tomorrow; we hope so!

Drive and drop

Today we went out on a "Drive and Drop" for the Obama/Biden campaign. I mentioned this in a post yesterday, but let me explain what that is.

The Democratic party has developed a list of everyone in Iowa who is a registered Democrat or has registered his or her intention to vote for the Obama/Biden ticket. Each day the county auditor in each county makes available the names of all the registered voters whose votes have been received (by mail ballot or at an early voting place). These names are marked off the master list, and the next morning the precinct captain will get a list of those voters in our precinct with an Obama/Biden interest who have not yet voted. We will take some of these names and will drive around a neighborhood, putting out door hangers reminding them to vote. Simple. Our job will be simplified considerably by the fact that well over 50% of the registered Democrats in our precinct have already voted.

On election day we will be poll watchers, another get-out-the-vote volunteer job. We will note and report those people on the list who have voted (not HOW they have voted, of couse; we won't know that) so that as the day goes along, the precinct captain will know who has not yet voted so they can be contacted with more reminders. Some of these contacts will be by phone and some by door knockers.

From John McCain's campaign...

A member of John McCain's campaign staff has been quoted as saying "John McCain needs foreign-policy advisers like Tiger Woods needs a golf coach." (New Yorker, October 13, 2008, p. 116) Interesting concept, since Woods HAS a golf coach (see TheAge.com or USA Today, among others). On the other hand, Obama has an extensive and very experienced foreign-policy team. So which is best -- "experience" that needs no assistance, or "experience" that knows enough to know that policy needs to be developed with careful thought and input? I seem to remember a President who insisted that he didn't need any help; wasn't his middle initial 'W' or something? Saints deliver us from another President who is his own vision of perfection...

Just turned off the "debate"

I tried to watch the debate tonight, but watching McCain try to get the last word in on every point and watching him spread the same distortions that his negative attack ads have been putting out, I simply got too nauseated to continue. Good bye, John. Good bye, Sarah. "Mothra" is on another channel, and I intend to raise the level of my television viewing.

Alaska postcard

Got this postcard in the mail today. Interesting, and it means something. Not negative, not smearing anyone's character directly or by implication, simply saying what the sender believes. And I agree with him. Hope you do too!

Cartoons this morning

This non sequitur cartoon was in this morning's paper, and I found it funny and very, very germane. Enjoy!

And in the next New Yorker there will be the following cartoon that's perhaps a bit more subtle.

My spam filter must work

I keep reading about email "whispering" campaigns that spread rumors about the Presidential (and Vice-Presidential) candidates by anonymous or pseudonymous email. Either the spam filters on my Mac or the filters that Stanislaus uses must be doing a good job, because I'm just not seeing them. In any case, I would never believe anything that did not come with full and verifiable citations, because I have never taken anyone else's word for anything like that. Perhaps this is part of my training as a mathematician; perhaps it is a trust in my own ability to discern; perhaps it is too much early exposure to preachers who told me that I must believe only what they told me.

It really doesn't matter anyway, because I got my mail-in ballot in the mail today. There are some local candidates I need to look at, but I expect to return the ballot by Monday. November 4 comes in September this year -- which would probably be a better title for this entry anyway!

Nobody asked me, but...

Interesting watching and listening to the political developments in the last few days. I had a strange thought about the Republican VP situation today. I suggest:

* Johh McCain knows that Palin is not really capabile of being a worthwhile Veep. He'd have to be as dumb as W to believe that, and he isn't.

* When JM is dealing with a real issue, Pailin isn't with JM -- Lieberman is.

So I'll put up the following two-part conjecture:

* Palin was chosen as eye candy and as a frisky distraction, and if JM is elected she'll carry out the public duties of the Veep. But the real contributions that a Veep would make won't come from Palin -- they'll come from Lieberman.

* if JM should become seriously ill, Palin will resign JM will name Lieberman as VP so he can take over.

As I said, nobody asked me, but this just might be plausible. YMMV...

I was wrong...

I couple of weeks ago I thought I could distance myself from politics, and I said so in this space. I was wrong. There's no way I can ignore the lies and misrepresentations that are flying around so freely. So, figuring that Seattle is the gateway to Alaska and so a Seattle paper would have some idea of what is really going on in Alaska, I want to share a few cartoons from Horsey, the editorial cartoonist on the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Enjoy!

Training the remote

Over the last eight years we have very carefully trained our TV remote to change channels -- or turn off the TV -- when certain faces appeared on the screen. After last night's round of character assassination at the RNC, we're instituting another round of training so that any Republican face or commercial triggers the same response. It's not that hard -- it's all the same stuff anyway.

Sheesh. Classical politics -- if you don't have anything to say, say something nasty about your opponent. If you don't have anything positive to offer, wrap yourself in the flag. If you don't have any policies to benefit citizens, say that you're for the nation (I suppose that most voters have never read about Mussolini's fascist state and its policies.)

Enough, already. To mis-quote Flower the Skunk in Bambi, "if you can't say anything nice, I'm not going to listen to you at all." And I suppose that means that this blog will become a politics-free zone.

Obama, Biden, and a Rove-free country.

Say what?

Does it strike anyone else as odd that the Republican National Convention starts on Labor Day this year? The irony is so deep...

Interestinger and interestinger

Well, John McCain pulled a surprise in selecting Sarah Palin as his vice presidential candidate. She's pretty, she's red-headed, and she's feisty, but what else is she? Her choice blows out the Republican claim that Obama's not sufficiently experienced -- she was the mayor of a town of about 6500 and was governor for two years, and has never faced any real national issues. Of course, she was really nominated in an attempt to get the nobody-but-Hillary voters, and that may succeed, but I'll be very interested in what Hillary has to say about her. It would have been very interesting to know how many others were contacted about the position and declined because they didn't want to be tainted by being the VP candidate on a losing ticket...

Oh, wait! I forgot another key advantage that Palin has -- she does not seem to have ever been photographed with George Bush.

Al Gore and the internet

A recent conversation in which somebody said "Yeah, and Al Gore invented the internet" in a depricating manner -- to which I had no real answer -- left me wondering just what was said. So I looked for sources, and found that he really said, in part,

"During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet. I took the initiative in moving forward a whole range of initiatives that have proven to be important to our country's economic growth and environmental protection, improvements in our educational system."

Judy managed the University of Iowa's networking system in the late 1980s and she says that indeed, Gore's initiatives were critical in moving from the older networking environments to the real internet, and that it wouldn't have happened without him. This is confirmed by Vin Cerf and Bob Kahn. How did the distortion leak out? Through the efforts of that real Friend O' Truth, George W. Bush and his trusty sidekick Karl Rove, whose efforts continue as consultant to the John McCain candidacy.