Vote!

I voted this morning about 10:15. The polling place was the elementary school my daughter used to attend, where about 8 precincts were voting. Usually when I go in to vote, it's pretty quiet; the poll workers are sitting around chatting. Today, they were all busy. I had to wait for one person ahead of me to sign in at my precinct and get my ballot, then I had to wait behind about 10 people for a booth to fill out my ballot. We use optical scan ballots (fill in the bubble), so if I wasn't concerned about secrecy and had had a pen on me, I could have just stood there and voted. Unfortunately, I didn't have a pen, and couldn't find a spare one, so I waited in line.

The whole process took me about 15 minutes. There were a lot more people than usual, even with about 2/3rds of King County voters using absentee ballots. King County (Seattle) and Pierce County (Tacoma) are the only counties in Washington not voting entirely by mail, and next year, King County will move to vote by mail. It is more convenient, but I'll miss going to my polling place and casting my vote on election day.

So, go vote: it's fun!

Irony is Dead

From the NYTimes:

As Mr. McCain did in North Carolina, Ms. Palin repeatedly invoked Joe the Plumber.

“So when he left Joe’s neighborhood in Toledo,” Ms. Palin said, “our opponent didn’t look real happy. Seems that the staged photo op there got ruined by a real person’s question.”

Ms. Palin, as has become her custom, did not take questions from the crowd or reporters.

The Real McCain

There's a strong perception that John McCain used to be better than his campaign has shown, that the Real John McCain used to be more moderate, less angry, wouldn't lie, etc.

I think everything we needed to know about the Real John McCain was demonstrated last night in the third debate when he used air quotes around the "health" of the mother.

No. Just No.

It's incredible to me, after watching the Katie Couric interviews of Sarah Palin, that anyone of any political persuasion could consider her even remotely qualified to be President. I don't understand how anyone could spend any time in politics, even local politics, be as ardently pro-life as she is, and not even realize that Roe v. Wade is completely dependent upon an inherent right to privacy in the constitution. I'm not even asking that she know that the right to privacy concept was actually laid out in Griswold v. Connecticut, or even what Griswold v. Connecticut is, but to claim that Roe v. Wade is a bad ruling while believing the constitution contains an inherent right to privacy is just strange.

Also strange is to say that you believe something ought to be left to the states, and call yourself a Federalist for believing that.  Alexander Hamilton would certainly be surprised.

Maverick

Americans romanticize mavericks - the lone, rugged individual who does "the right thing", no matter the consequences. It's a nice myth in the movies, where the maverick always turns out to be right in the end and everybody is grateful to him for having saved the day.

In the real world, though, it's not so simple. I've worked with mavericks before, and you likely have, too. You know, the person who walks into the meeting after you've spent months working on a proposal and negotiating among the various parties to get a workable solution, and just blows the whole thing up. It's usually not because this hero has thought of an important angle you overlooked, but more like a three year old throwing a temper tantrum. He blows it up because he can, and that's how he gets attention.

John McCain has long had the reputation of a maverick, and he had fooled a lot of people into thinking he was the wise, brave, rugged individual who put the country first. After all, he was a POW, and that experience unquestionably required those attributes. But if you think about your experiences with mavericks, you'll realize that another word for maverick is 'asshole.' Being an asshole is probably a good thing when you're a POW, but as John McCain has displayed this week, in the regular world, mostly you end up pissing everybody off.

Emergency!

A bunch of Wall Street fat cats need help! John McCain feels their pain, and he wants to be there for them. So he's putting aside his own campaign to rush to Washington to make sure they get taken care of. He's bringing his own coterie of lobbyists campaign staffers to help out, too.

But, sadly, that means that as much as he wants to debate Barack Obama this Friday, he just can't until a deal is reached. So, he wants to postpone Friday's debate.

Hey, you know what, there's this other debate scheduled for next Thursday; he thinks he can make that date. Nobody really cared about a silly Vice Presidential debate, anyway.

What a joke. I was even thinking of lifting my long-standing rule of refusing to watch debates, just because I thought there was some probability that McCain would just totally melt down. Who knew it would happen before we even got to the debate?

Where's W?

Constitutionally, George W. Bush is still President of the United States, at least as far as I know. Where is he? Is he off with Cheney hiding in that undisclosed location? His Treasury Secretary just nationalized one of the biggest insurers in the country, and Bush is nowhere to be seen.

I have no idea whether Paulson's $85 billion bailout of AIG is a good idea or a bad idea; I suspect it's merely the least painful of several bad ideas. There are no easy or good solutions at this point; maybe something could have been done 4-5 years ago to mitigate this meltdown, but those things weren't going to happen under a Republican administration. They probably wouldn't have happened even under a Democratic administration, but at least it wouldn't have been going against holy writ.

But Bush has not stood in front of reporters or anyone else to discuss his administration's actions. Extraordinary.