Rod Blagojevich attains new heights of corruption and stupidity

So Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich had a complaint. On page 66 of Patrick Fitzgerald's indictment against him it reads, "In a conversation with Harris on November 11, the charges state, Blagojevich said he knew that the President-elect wanted Senate Candidate 1 for the open seat but 'they're not willing to give me anything except appreciation. [Expletive] them.'"

Wow. It's no secret that Blagojevich is corrupt and has a political tin ear, but I'm astonished at how rotten he is. And stupid. I understand Blagojevich was considering appointing himself to the Senate because that would offer him more legal resources, should he need them, and it might position him for a 2016 presidential run. A presidential run. The man is insane.

The only logical explanation I can come up with is that the governor must have been drinking the agricultural runoff from the Illini River. There's no way normal head injuries could cause thinking that's this addled.

Citibank cuts its lollipop budget

Banks have always passed out lollipops at drive-through teller windows, but I always figured it was just a nice thing that the local manager did. It never occurred to me that there was a corporate budget item behind it.

Of course, when I was young enough to get a lollipop ("sucker" in my neck of the woods) at a drive-through, there were still local banks. There were six branches of McDowell Bank, which served western Mercer County, Pennsylvania, since the first settlers drained the wetlands and built the town where I grew up in. We had an annoying ritual at the drive-through when we were kids. Mum would be sitting in the car, getting things ready to stick in the pneumatic tube, so my siblings and I would crouch down into the seat wells and start chanting, sotto voce, "Sucker! Sucker! Sucker!" The money and the suckers would come back in the pneumatic tube, bringing blessed relief to my mother, who had to put up with that nonsense.

Anyway, the company that pays Sallie Krawcheck $10.5 million a year (not including $11 million in stock options per year) and Chuck Prince nearly $30 million a year (and another $13 million in stock options) is embracing fiscal austerity by ceasing to pass out suckers at the drive-through bank locations. Excellent. They sure know the best corners to cut.

These bastards won't learn anything until we storm their corporate offices and start fixing their heads on the ends of broom handles.

Suckers for all!

Predictions for the November 4 election

Folks, I'm hopelessly optimistic sometimes. Hopelessly. To prove it, I'm going to make predictions for this election this year. They're pretty stellar numbers that I'm predicting, but I offer you my predictions with a caveat: in order to be good at predicting an outcome, you need to be as neutral and as non-partisan as is possible. Considering that I'm not at all neutral or non-partisan, I'm useless at this.

That said:

Obama 402 electoral votes
McCain 136 electoral votes

Democrats net +30 seats in the House

Gubernatorial races: the only change of party is in Missouri—Republican to Democrat.

Democratic pickups in the Senate: New Hampshire, Virginia, New Mexico, Colorado, Alaska, Oregon, North Carolina and Minnesota. Georgia will go to a runoff, which the Republicans will unfortunately win. Kentucky will be narrow, but the Republicans will keep it.

Republican pickups in the Senate: none.

The states I figure for Obama's 402 electoral votes:

the Kerry states (252)
Virginia (13)
North Carolina (15)
Georgia (15)
Florida (27)
Ohio (20)
Indiana (11)
Missouri (11)
Omaha, Nebraska (1)
North Dakota (3)
Montana (3)
Colorado (9)
New Mexico (5)
Nevada (5)


Possible surprise pickups that Obama could pull:

Arizona (10)
Alaska (3)
Louisiana (9)
Mississippi (6)
West Virginia (5)

...but don't count on those.

Okay, folks: always look on the sunny side. And, if you haven't yet, GET TO THE POLLS RIGHT NOW. Democracy, and civilization itself, depend on it. (And no, I'm not exaggerating here for any kind of effect.)

Conservatives don't want you to vote.

Well, no, of course they do. They wouldn't advocate voter suppression—not openly, of course.

Their strategy is an erosion of your rights. Remember that.

Obama trails by less than 3% in Alaska

I originally figured Alaska was going to be close and a likely Democratic pickup this year, but after Palin made her way onto the Republican ticket, I assumed that couldn't happen. But now it looks like it might. Hayes Research has the McCain/Palin ticket leading Alaska polls 46.6% to 43.9% for Obama/Biden.

Odds are still better for McCain to win Alaska, and it's not like its three electoral votes are likely to swing the election one way or another, but what a thumb in the eye that would be for McCain and especially for Palin!

Landslide for Obama in Dixville Notch

Okay, so the first election results are in from Dixville Notch, New Hampshire, as usual, where 100% turnout is the rule and the polls are closed soon after midnight on Election Day. It looks like a landslide for Barack Obama in Dixville Notch, with Obama securing 15 votes, John McCain 6. In nearby hamlet Hart's Location, New Hampshire, Obama beat McCain 17-10, with Ron Paul snaring 2 votes.

If these results continue throughout the country on Election Day, Barack Obama will win an historic 64% of the nation's popular vote, with John McCain getting 32% and Ron Paul 4%, which will likely translate into something like 530 electoral votes for Obama. So, yeah, it's a good start. Let's keep it up!

Of course, it's not like Dixville Notch is some sort of historic predictor of how presidential elections will turn out. In fact, it hasn't gone for a Democrat since Hubert Humphrey in 1968. The fact that Dixville Notch went Democratic this year probably says more about the way New Hampshire is changing than it does about America's attitude right now. Still, it's kind of nice it's going Democratic this year, isn't it?

2004 results: Bush 19, Kerry 7
2000: Bush 21, Gore 5
1996: Dole 18, Clinton 8
1992: Bush 15, Perot 8, Clinton 2
1988: Bush 34, Dukakis 3

They have school in Alaska, don't they?

We've all noticed how Sarah Palin is dragging her kids all over the country with her on campaign stops. We can disagree as to whether we should criticize her for using them as props, but can I be the only one wondering why those kids are missing so much school? I mean, come on, it's the middle of October already. School usually starts by Labor Day. If she keeps traipsing around the United States with her brood, they'll have missed two months of school by the end of the campaign. That can't be healthy.

Thursday night fight: who won the VP debate?

It would be disingenuous of me if I said I wasn't hoping for an utter train wreck Thursday night, and something in me felt that that train wreck might happen. Something else told me it wasn't going to happen. One of those two somethings had to be right, so here we are. Sarah Palin is painful to watch, particularly in light of the fact that she's so adept at saying nothing, and saying it very well. As John Binkley, one of her 2006 primary opponents in the Alaska gubernatorial race, said, "She's the master of the non-answer." Watching those debates (they can be found on YouTube) bears that out. Granted, since those debates were about Alaska issues, Palin was more familiar with what she needed to talk about and knew how to talk about it, but the fact remains that she really knows how to gloss over a subject that she either doesn't want to answer or one that she flatly knows nothing about. Thursday night, Sarah Palin said a whole lot of nothing. The commentariat has expressed dismay and alarm over the things she said: wanting to expand the powers of the vice presidency, her reluctance to assign human activity to global warming, her desire to build an American embassy to Israel in Jerusalem(!!!), etc.—all this done in shocked tones, as if they really believed she was speaking as someone who had genuinely reflected on these issues. I'm sure none of them believed she actually has reflected on much of anything, of course, but the fact is that if she's to be vice president, we need something to base our opinions of her on, so we might as well take what comes from the horse's mouth. Or the pig's. But she said nothing, and she said it just like that nice lady up the street who's glad to come feed your cat and collect your mail while you're away on vacation. This worried me at first, but I've calmed down. The way I look at it, Sarah Palin could have completely blown a hole in the bottom of the McCain campaign if she'd crashed and burned. She didn't crash and burn, though; she performed... adequately. Some conservative commentators have claimed that Palin knocked the ball out of the park, but that's a bridge too far. The bottom line is: no one thought that Sarah Palin really had a very good idea what she was doing when this debate started. Though she didn't come off as entirely incompetent, Sarah Palin really didn't convince anyone who didn't already think so that she knows what she's doing. She didn't hurt, but she didn't help. With 29 days to go before the election, quite a lot is going to capture our attention. The economy will continue to crash. The campaign will continue to roll on, with two more presidential debates to go. And Sarah Palin will continue to stump for John McCain throughout the South and in other places where they need to gin up support from religious right conservatives (like southern Ohio, Missouri, southern Colorado and northern Nevada.) But come, say, October 10, we probably won't remember this debate. The only way it would have been memorable would have been if Sarah Palin had really dazzled us or if Joe Biden had somehow bombed terribly. Since neither happened, this one, for all its anticipation, is going to fade. The polls are bearing this out, with CBS reporting that 46% thought Biden won, 21% thought Palin won, and 33% feeling it was a draw. In a way, it was a draw, but only because the bar had been set so low that Kate Moss herself would have had difficulty squeezing under it. It's depressing that someone like Palin could be taken so seriously, but there's a bright side. The McCain campaign is pulling out of Michigan, which is worth 17 electoral votes and is a state that Obama more or less has to win. McCain is sending many of his Michigan staff to Indiana—a state that hasn't voted Democratic since 1964. (Michigan hasn't voted Republican since 1988.) This means that Obama has a signficant lead in every state that Kerry won in 2004. Obviously, that's not enough, but if Obama wins any two or three of the remaining states (or Ohio or Florida alone, or even Nevada plus the solitary electoral vote that Omaha, Nebraska offers,) he wins the election. It's an uphill struggle for McCain, and I'm sure he knows it. Watch for mud; it's going to start flying soon, doggone it, dontcha know.

Dow Jones average drops below 10,000

That's what it is intraday, at least. I don't know what to expect by the close of business, but today's already shaping up to be another lousy day on Wall Street.

This announcement has been brought to you by the Keating Five Easy Credit Savings & Loan®, because rules just complicate things™.

Why bother voting?

Often I hear the complaint that it's not worth voting, that because of the Electoral College, my vote won't make a difference. While it's true that your vote probably won't alter the way your state's electors vote—particularly if you live in a state that has a chronically lopsided outcome like Massachusetts, New York, Texas or Idaho—all votes still count for something. The electors are the ones who officially make the decision, yes, but the voices of the 130,000,000 or so voters do count. After all, while a president can lose the popular vote and still win the presidency, it sure doesn't look good when that president gets into office that way.

Say we Obama supporters were to lose the electoral college but win the popular vote. That would put a dent in McCain's claim on a "mandate." Bush still went crazy in that situation when he lost the popular vote but got the electoral vote awarded to him by the Supreme Court, but it still affects popular opinion.

If there's an electoral college tie then it's settled by a vote in the House of Representatives. They will probably settle it for Obama, since the Democrats control more state delegations than the Republicans do, and that's probably not going to change with this year's elections. But if McCain wins the popular vote in that situation, it'd be a harder sell for the House to vote for Obama.

Of course, if we win both the popular vote and the electoral vote, the greater our popular vote is, the better Obama looks. The fact is that while most Americans know the rules of the Electoral College, on some level it doesn't feel fair that the candidate who got the most votes doesn't get to be president. That's the rule for every election in this country except for the presidential one, so there's a certain visceral resentment toward the notion that the number-two candidate can snag job number one.

So you see, there's always a reason to vote, even if your state (like mine) isn't likely to be anywhere near close. And it goes without saying that we all have a duty as citizens to participate in this process which is the backbone of our system of government. Maybe it's just the civics nerd inside me talking, but I maintain that that's important.

Deregulation fever wrecked the American economy

I've been saying for years that the deregulation fever that broke out during the Reagan administration would eat this country alive one day, and here those chickens are coming home to roost. Deregulation was blunted by a Democratic-controlled Congress in the 1980s, but when the Republicans took over in 1994, things got way out of control.

Is it really fair to blame President Clinton in part for all this mess? Sure is. Congressional Republicans pushed for excessive deregulation, and President Clinton was morally obliged to veto those bad bills. Things got bad in the 1990s. Of course, when President Bush took over, things got worse. And when President Bush got a Republican House and Senate to play with in 2003, things got far, far worse.

We've had a string of conservative presidents: Reagan, Bush, Clinton and Bush. They all pushed for more deregulation. I watched it from inside the financial industry, where I used to work, but jumped that ship when it became all too apparent it was taking on water. I don't enjoy saying that I told you so, since the wreck of the markets and our economy has hurt us all and will continue to do so, but there it is.

What we're seeing is the fallout of conservative economic philosophy. Blame can largely be placed at the foot of the Republicans, but the conservative Democrats who played ball with the Reaganites and their disciples are just as guilty.

Lady Forester de Rothschild on... elitism?

Okay, so we've heard charges from millionaire Republicans like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity that Democrats are elitists. It's a favorite canard of theirs, and they've gotten a lot of phony-populist mileage out of it. You have to wonder how far this kind of chutzpah can stretch.

Frankly, I still have to wonder, because they seem to be stretching it pretty far already. Recently, none other than Lady Lynn Forester de Rothschild, wife of the multibillionaire international banker Sir Evelyn Rothschild, whom she was introduced to by none other than Henry Kissinger, is disparaging Senator Barack Obama as... an elitist. No, really! I have video! Check it out:



As Lady de Rothschild explains in the video, she was a supporter of Senator Hillary Clinton's White House bid, and was even a member of the Democratic National Committee until very recently. (Obviously, she felt compelled to step down when she decided to endorse Senator John McCain for president.)

I suppose that's all well and good. As an Obama supporter, there's something nice about watching the McCain campaign squirm at a member of the elite hypocritically referring to the child of a single mother who worked his way up in life as an "elitist." But what's Lady de Rothschild's complaint all about? Barack Obama's and Hillary Clinton's policy views aren't that different, while both are very different from John McCain's. In the interview with Campbell Brown earlier this week, Lady de Rothschild doesn't seem to have a clear explanation as to what this is all about. So what's going on?

At the risk of adding just one more Rothschild-related conspiracy theory to the towering heap already out there, I offer mine. Lady de Rothschild supported Hillary Clinton for the nomination as a strategic move to put the weaker Democrat in power, making it easier for the Republicans to retain the White House this year. Having failed at that, she's moving toward the next-best strategy, which is to support John McCain outright, with money and everything. But that's where my theory falls apart. If Lady de Rothschild really supported John McCain, would she actually go on TV, demonstrating herself to be an out-of-touch, vapid denizen of the upper-upper-crust, giving no solid reason to support John McCain in the first place, and making McCain look like an elitist by merit of her jumping on board his ship?

It could be that there's no conspiracy, and that Lady de Rothschild is as myopic as she comes across. This just leaves one question unanswered: is Lady de Rothschild a millstone for McCain, or an albatross?

Drill, baby, drill!

Japan is counting on us!

And there you have it: the Bush administration and the McCain/Palin campaign are insisting that we need to drill more in order to get us out of our energy crunch, because the stuff is so scarce. So what do they do? They let Alaska sell 98.1 billion cubic feet of natural gas to Japan, even though the price of natural gas is supposed to rise by 22% this winter. Of course, the Governor of Alaska approved the sale. I guess this is what's known as "taking on big oil companies," huh?

Can we all finally agree that drilling for more oil and gas won't end the energy crisis? That it will only serve to put more oil and gas on the international market, doing nothing to affect the price of the stuff one whit? Or are we just going to see more lying about it on the part of the McCain campaign and other Republicans in Congress?

Lies, you say? Well, if that's what you want to do, okay. But it won't help, just so you know.

McCain: Mayors and governors lack experience

I guess John McCain was against insufficient experience before he was for it:



The above clip is 32 seconds long—the perfect length for a Barack Obama campaign commercial...

Liddy Dole: an untested campaigner

Elizabeth Dole is up against Kay Hagan, fighting for her second term. It's not going to be the easiest race for the Democrats this year, but it's one that's in striking range. Elizabeth Dole does carry a certain amount of gravitas, but that's more due to her more famous husband, the 1996 Republican presidential nominee, than her own record. She did run the Red Cross adequately, and did some pro-seatbelt commercials back in the early 1980s. I remember those commercials, and they're probably responsible for my having adopted the seatbelt habit at age twelve or so, which saved my life in a car crash when I was fifteen. However, Elizabeth Dole, for all the good she did back in the 1980s, has had a lackluster career since, and could very well be unemployed early next year. Seeing how she's roughly John McCain's age, that sounds like a desirable course for her to take.

Her presidential campaign in 2000 failed early and hard. In 2002 she went after Jesse Helms' seat, which Helms was vacating. She was challenged by Bill Clinton's former chief of staff, Erskine Bowles. A couple of factors worked against Bowles: 1) 2002 was a bad year for Democrats and 2) North Carolina and Utah spent that year fighting over who was going to pick up another seat in Congress because of population changes in the last census. North Carolina eventually won that fight, but the result was that the North Carolina primaries had to be delayed. Dole had only token opposition while Bowles was up against state Democratic Leader Dan Blue, and the prolonged primary contest allowed Dole to get it together while Bowles and Blue tore each other apart. I wouldn't say that Bowles would necessarily have won that election in better conditions, but it sure didn't test Dole very well.

Now Dole's a one-term incumbent, facing a tough challenger in a year that's not as good for Republicans as 2002 was. She's still leading Hagan in the polls, but this thing ain't over. Dole's crashing failure as the lead recruiter of Republican candidates during the 2006 elections, when the Republicans lost six Senate seats and picked up exactly zero, hasn't earned her a lot of good will from her Republican colleagues. They aren't willing to come 'round and try to put lipstick on *that* pig.

Obama vs. McCain: a quick glance

While John McCain has been rising in the polls due to his recent pick of a running mate, the state-by-state numbers tell a different story. After all, for all the benefit that Sarah Palin brings to John McCain in Alabama, it doesn't make a heck of a lot of difference, since that's not a state that Barack Obama was terribly likely to win anyway. Since the Electoral College remains winner-take-all, John McCain winning Alabama by 20% is the same result as if he won Alabama by 5%.

MSNBC's Chuck Todd figures that Obama's got 260 electoral votes more or less safely in his column. I figure Obama has 264 reliable electoral votes. The only difference between what Chuck Todd and I think is that I don't see New Hampshire as that vulnerable.

The way I get 264 is that I figure Obama's going to win all the states John Kerry won (252 electoral votes) plus Iowa (7 electoral votes) and New Mexico (5 electoral votes.) Since I figure Obama's got New Hampshire's 4 electoral votes fairly secure, there are only five more to go.

Obama will need to win one more state in addition to what I predict in order to pull off a squeaker. That would be most likely one of the following:

Ohio (20)
Indiana (11)
Virginia (13)
Florida (27)
Colorado (9)

There are other Bush 2004 states that could go Republican again but also might flip Democratic. Those are states like North Carolina, Missouri, Nevada, Montana, and North Dakota. However, I don't see those states flipping Democratic without one of the five states I listed above also going Democratic, so those states are gravy, though definitely worth campaigning in. (The Obama campaign was once hopeful of winning Georgia but recently pulled up stakes there. I suspect this is the Sarah Palin effect, but I don't know. Before Palin was selected, I would have also added Alaska to this maybe list, but not anymore.)

The only Kerry state that I see McCain having a real shot at peeling away is Michigan. At 17 electoral votes, that would be a big prize, and would leave the Democrats scrambling to make up the difference. For my part, I'm keeping an eye on Michigan as a true bellwether in this campaign. I figure that it McCain is winning in Michigan, that means he'll most likely take Ohio, as well. But if Obama is winning in Michigan, that doesn't necessarily mean the same thing for him. Sure, Obama could very well win Ohio and Michigan both, but Ohio without Michigan, too? Not at all likely.

State by state, it's a better picture for Obama, but I wouldn't say this thing's over yet.

Sarah Palin, petty crook

So apparently John McCain's poorly-vetted running mate Sarah Palin has been charging Alaska taxpayers a per diem for nights she spent at home. The state allows for travel expenses to be billed to the taxpayer, but this is not what the framers of the Alaska constitution had in mind.

If you're traveling on state business, sure, you should be allowed to bill the taxpayers. That part of your job. But there's a term for the money they give you for when you stay home and don't travel. That kind of money is called "salary." Since Palin was already drawing a salary, this per diem for ferrying her family between Juneau and Wasilla is what we call "stealing."

Sarah Palin is a petty crook. If I charged my employer for family trips to my original hometown (which, as it happens, is also 600 miles away from where I live now,) I'd be fired, and rightfully so.

More of that famous conservative "fiscal discipline" we hear so much about. Who but a Republican could charge the American people $60 a night to spend the night in her own bed and still manage to get to sleep?

Who's Sarah Palin?

Sarah Palin? Who is this Sarah Palin? Well, as a Democrat, I've got mixed feelings about this choice. I thought McCain was going to choose a lousy candidate like Mitt Romney or Tim Pawlenty, but he actually found a worse one.

What's so bad about her? Well, a few things. For one, with the McCain camp hitting Obama on experience issues, it doesn't look too good for them to have the vice president be someone who's only been governor of a small state for about a year and a half. Probably worse is the trouble Palin is in. The short story is that she pressured Alaska's Public Safety Commissioner to fire a state trooper who happened to be her ex-brother-in-law. The trooper hadn't done anything wrong except get into a messy divorce case with Sarah Palin's sister. The Public Safety Commissioner refused to fire the guy--so Palin got a new Public Safety Commissioner who fired the trooper for her. This has recently come to light in Alaska, which caused Governor Palin's approval rating to drop. Granted, her approval was already in the high 80s, so she's still pretty popular in Alaska, but does John McCain really want a running mate who's under a serious ethics investigation? It's bizarre.

The only thing I can think of is that he chose Palin in order to peel away disaffected Clinton supporters. His reasoning is that there are enough women out there who'd vote for a ticket just because it has a female vice president on it, abandoning Barack Obama. This is, frankly, lousy reasoning. It already has a number of conservatives freaking out, throwing their arms up in the air, bellowing, "What the hell is McCain doing? What the hell is he doing?"

So maybe this is a Hail Mary pass. Considering McCain's other choices, he didn't have a lot going for him. McCain could have chosen:

Former Governor Mitt Romney (MA)--A Mormon who would alienate Evangelicals.
Former Governor Mike Huckabee (AR)--An Evangelical who would alienate moderates and Catholics in the Northeast.
Former Congressman Rob Portman (OH)--Who?
Governor Tim Pawlenty (MN)--Again: who?
Former Governor Tom Ridge (PA)--A Catholic who supports abortion rights, who would alienate Evangelicals everywhere, though he'd help among moderates.
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger (CA)--A dream running mate for McCain, but ineligible, since he was born in Austria. He'd probably alienate conservatives, too, though he'd stand a chance of attracting enough Democrats to the ticket, if only he could run.
Senator Joe Lieberman (CT)--Lieberman's an old friend of McCain and the best thing to happen to conservatives since Benedict Arnold joined them. However, Lieberman's voting record is still fairly moderate, which would have pleased the evangelicals not at all. And Lieberman's Jewish, which is also a turn-off for evangelicals, who largely don't even view Roman Catholics as Christians. Sure, Ben Stein believes in intelligent design, but I don't think Joe Lieberman follows suit.

Could McCain be thinking that there are enough Hillary Clinton supporters who'd be drawn to a ticket like this? Maybe. But that theory seems too obvious to be correct. Still, why else would he pick such a risky candidate?

Rachel Maddow's new show.

I recommend that you check out Rachel Maddow's new show on MSNBC. She's got a good take on politics and issues. She doesn't skimp on the important stuff, but she's a spoonful of sugar to make the hard issues easier to take. She makes no bones about her liberal viewpoint, but at the same time, she's fair. We all have biases, but it's still important to be fair. It premiered last night, and I really enjoyed it.

Oddly, my favorite segment of the inaugural show was toward the end, when she talked with Pat Buchanan (announcing with a witty little note on the bottom of the screen, "It's Pat!") I've long been aware of Pat Buchanan, and I find his politics galling, and I tend to feel a little dispeptic whenever I know he's about to speak. And I felt no different when he came on Rachel's show.

See, for the past couple of decades I've been listening to political commentators. I started in the late 1980s, when Rush Limbaugh was still a hot property and new on the scene. I of course never liked him and still don't. But Rush's show was a smash hit, where his brash, thuggish style would frequently stomp all over liberals and moderates, claiming to be part of a balanced debate where no such thing was going on.

Through the 1990s, liberals got sucker-punched all the time. This kept happening in the media until Keith Olbermann came along. Sure, old liberal war horses like Phil Donahue were still around, and while I like Donahue's measured, thoughtful manner, the fact is that Donahue was a harp seal at a time when the waters were filling up with sharks. The tougher, scrappier liberals like Dick Cavett and Gore Vidal were either old or dead, and not able to command audiences on the national scene anymore.

So whenever it happens that a conservative or a wing nut is getting ready to make a vicious and outlandish claim, I figure we liberals are going to feel the beatdown again, so I might as well brace myself. Whenever I see Pat Buchanan talking, I seem to find myself screaming, "You! Mika! Eugene! Whoever! Hit that rat bastard back! Don't take this crap!" I felt that same old feeling tonight on Rachel's show, but with one major difference: when Pat made the ridiculous statements, I clenched up, but Rachel punched back deftly, poised like a martial artist ballerina with a pouch full of throwing stars in reserve. She made it clear that she was up for a conversation, but also that she was not up for taking any crap from Pat Buchanan without properly vetting it, and that she'd likely treat any other frothy-mouthed culture warrior the same way.

God bless you, Rachel Maddow. If Pat declares that there have to be culture wars, I'm glad you and I are in the same corner—and I'm gladder still that you can throw a punch a hell of a lot better than I can.

Where have you been, Kurt?

I've been getting questions as to why I stopped blogging. I'll spare you the gorey details, but I went through a rough time brought on by a family tragedy earlier this year, and the fallout from it finally hit me, and has interfered with my writing. So has my boring job, which demands a lot of my time.

But no more! Things are perfect again! Well, okay, they're not perfect, but they're better. Or, at least, I'm going to start writing again. So thanks to all of you who wrote, asking about why the blog is down. It's live again, and I intend to keep you updated through this election season, which is getting pretty damned intense.

Gas Tax Holiday: the $30 bribe

Okay, so you've been hearing the plans from Senators Clinton and McCain about how they want to suspend federal gas taxes during the summer, because that's when gas prices tend to go up. This is supposed to help Americans who are hard-hit by rising gas prices, which are approaching $4.00 a gallon right now. This is supposed to ease our lives. Barack Obama has called this a gimmick, and rightly so. There are many reasons as to why this "Gas Tax Holiday" should immediately appear to be only so much gas, and you don't even need a degree in macroeconomics to understand them (but I'm sure it wouldn't hurt.) —It's a small slice of pie. The federal portion of the gas tax in the United States is 18¢ per gallon. Assuming you drive the same distance that the average American drives in a summer, this should net you about $30.00 by August. Wow! That's almost one whole free tank of gas! Why doesn't the government just write all of us $30.00 checks every three months and get the economy humming again? —Upkeep. The gas tax nets the government about $10 billion a year, and this money is earmarked for road and bridge maintenance. If the roads are in lousier shape, this will be harder on our cars. Collapsing bridges will be harder still. —Supply and demand. A lower price increases demand, which means that if gas is cheaper, people will use more of it, thus shrinking supplies and driving the price up. 18¢ isn't enough to make that much of a difference, admittedly, but it pulls the essential Jenga block out from the bottom of this already flimsy argument. —What the market will bear. Petroleum companies, understanding what markets do, will just raise the price by 18¢, eliminating any benefit that this "Gas Tax Holiday" might bring about. That will just mean bigger profits for petroleum companies. And Hillary Clinton's "windfall profits" tax on petroleum companies, while a good idea by itself, wouldn't make up the difference here. Remember that something like much more than half of all petroleum is pumped out of the ground by government-owned petroleum companies—foreign governments. This would punish American companies while rewarding foreign governments—all while starving America's infrastructure! Brilliant! It's all too rare to hear a politician speak plainly and rationally in the face of feel-good proposals that only serve the would-be elected official who proposes them. It does my heart good to see Barack Obama shouting this one down. The government can keep my thirty bucks this summer and go fix a bridge.

Indiana and North Carolina results

Okay, so the results are in:

North Carolina: Obama 56 (45 delegates), Clinton 42 (37 delegates) Indiana: Clinton 51 (32 delegates), Obama 49 (29 delegates)

It looked for a little bit like Obama might pull it off in Indiana, but in the end he fell about 20,000 votes short. Still, he came a lot closer in Indiana than a lot of people (including myself) thought he would. North Carolina was a clear win.

So where does this leave us in the pledged delegate count? Well, Obama has a net gain of... five. Five more pledged delegates than before, and a gain in the popular vote of about 211,000. If any superdelegates are going to switch after tonight, I haven't heard yet. But I'd be damned surprised if we didn't see a number of them declare for Obama after last night's primaries.

Currently, including superdelegates, Obama has 1,841.5 delegates, while Clinton has 1,700. That means Obama still needs 183 delegates in order to lock this thing up, while Clinton needs 324.5. 404 pledged delegates remain, 270.5 superdelegates remain.

It's over, Hillary. Accept it. Resign resign resign

Clinton's Götterdämmerung

The media talking heads are saying Clinton is more or less over. This chirade of her primary campaign might be over now, and the real campaign might start soon. But there's still something nagging me that this thing's going to go on until May 20. Of course, if Clinton backs out tonight or tomorrow, I think the result would be about the same. Both candidates could save face, and the general campaign would get off the ground two weeks earlier, which would help a lot.

Indiana still too close to call

Nearly all of the remaining votes are in Lake County—the area including and surrounding Gary. Some 220,000 votes are yet to be counted, with Clinton leading currently by about 40,000. Since Gary is the Chicago area, Obama is expected to have an advantage there. If Clinton wins, it'll likely be by less than the 4% lead she currently has.

This is the beginning of the end, hopefully. Clinton, I suspect, might just want to go out on a high note. She's expected to win West Virginia big next Tuesday, and then win Kentucky big on May 20. Obama is expected to win Oregon big on May 20, so that might be the best time for Clinton to announce her concession. Of course, she also might continue to rend the party in two by prolonging the primaries unnecessarily, flogging Jeremiah Wright against Barack Obama the way Al Gore flogged Willie Horton against Michael Dukakis in 1988. (Remember that? Maybe you thought it was the George H.W. Bush campaign that dug up the Willie Horton garbage, but it was actually the Democratic presidential contender, Senator Al Gore Jr. of Tennessee. But we'll never learn, will we?)

Indiana could go either way, but effectively it's a flop for Hillary Clinton.