Yes, You Can Bet On The Election!!!

As I said in the last post, the election is over. At least the Presidential election is over. After 30 years of primaries, conventions, debates, and disturbing ads we are at the eve of another Presidential election. Most people I have talked to who know a lot more than me about politics suggested to me that the turn-out rate will be around 80%, which will cause absolute chaos tomorrow. This chaos will result in not knowing much of anything solid until 2 a.m. Eastern time. There will be long lines and there will be people crying foul because people will still be in line in some states as the polls close. Most states have refused requests to change the time polling ends. This will be a significant factor if things get close in key states and they will. However, in the end the election is over. I expect that Obama will win tomorrow in the end. I gave my endorsement of him in my last post and I am not budging from that position. One thing that is not over regarding this election is the betting.

Leave it to me as a degenerate gambler to try to get my gamble on with the results of this election. Right now, the odds of victory stand 1-7 for Obama and 4-1 for McCain. This means that anyone betting on Obama using those odds will not win any money because he is such a huge favorite. Best to bet straight up if you can find anyone silly enough to bet against Obama. No where have I found an electoral vote spread for the election. Based on the polls in every state, the electoral college spread should be 169 votes in favor of Obama. So with this in mind and the fact that there are six states that are considered toss-ups I will handicap tomorrow's election results.

Obama (-169) vs. McCain

This is the spread for the electoral college votes in the end. This spread was based on the poll numbers for each state. However, there are so many possible factors that could cause the voting in specific states to swing one way or the other. Obama needs 270 to win. I believe he will get 311, which will result in a spread of 125. I do not think that Obama will win all the states that he is favored to win and also think that many of the toss up states will go to McCain. Obama will get enough to win, but he's not going to cover.


Florida

The big toss-up state that is leaning currently towards Obama. A high voter turn-out in this state especially with Latino voters (many of which will be first time voters) will cause this bitter contest to eventually in Obama's corner.


Georgia

I would be shocked if Obama won Georgia for obvious reasons that I really do not want to get into. If he does win it will show that the state of Georgia has permanently changed politically as a result of the millions of transplants from the Northeast and the West crowding into Atlanta's suburbs. It won't happen this time. McCain will take this state in wider margin than expected.


North Carolina

Read the Georgia entry. Same thing applies to North Carolina. McCain is leading in the polls in NC and he will win comfortably. Also, if you all in NC elect McCrory as your governor then you get the rain of locusts that you deserve for doing it. He was bad for Charlotte and he will be bad for everyone else. Don't say I did not warn you.


Indiana

As a state bordering Obama's I thought that this state should be leaning towards Obama, however it is leaning towards McCain. McCain has strong support on the ground in Indiana and I expect that he will win as a result.


Missouri

The urban and suburban centers of Kansas City and St. Louis plus higher voter turn-out than expected will result in an easier than expected win for Obama.


North Dakota

If this state falls to McCain then there should be an immediate resolution to send this state to Canada. This state is leaning towards Obama and it will stay true to form.


Montana

Does anyone really think that Obama has a chance in this state? The fact that this is a toss-up shows how well his campaign has done. In the end, this states meager 3 votes will not matter much especially after Obama gets California, Washington, and Oregon later in the night.

Ladies And Gentlemen Of The Jury: The Case Against Sarah Palin

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I'd like to begin my opening statements in this case.  This case is all about the issues.  It is all about promises.  Promises made to a party.  To a nation. Promises that either have already been broken and promises that have no chance of coming true.  Why? Because the defendant in this case, GOP Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin has no intentions to keep them.  She has no intention to keep these promises because it is not in her nature to do so.  In fact, it is impossible in this case for her to do so.  She is being forced to attempt to adopt and parrot the GOP line.  She has put herself out to the public as a regular Jane.  A regular mom.  A hockey mom, in fact.  She and her running mate, John McCain, have advertised themselves as "mavericks" ready to go out into the world and change the system.  To change Washington, DC politics.  They state they are against special interests when in fact the people that are running their campaign are big business lobbyists of the highest caliber.  The defendant claims that she is a fiscal conservative.  However, the population of the state of Alaska where she is the governor has the highest state income tax burden per capita of any state in the country.   The state of Alaska spends more per person than any other state in the country.  This does not sound like fiscal conservatism.   She says she is against pork barrel projects, yet she has lobbied Washington, the very place she wants to "reform", for multiple pork projects that have literally in some cases gone "nowhere."  Her record for fiscal reform and limiting government spending is sketchy to say the least.  Her state is virtually controlled by the oil industry.  Citizens of Alaska get kick backs from the oil companies as hush money so that they will not complain that some of their tactics might be harmful to the environment.  All thanks to the defendant who has either supported these policies or looked the other way.  The defendant's coming party at the GOP convention provided us with a sample of her stated platform.  The below CNN segment provides evidence of where her stated platform at the GOP convention differs or is similar to the facts of the case--her actions while in office:  




Ladies and gentlemen, this is not about the defendant's family.  It's not about her daughter's pregnancy.  Those are off limits, even for me.  This is about her contradictions.  It is about what she says and does that is a snow job.  It's fraudulent.  It is simply a smokescreen thrown on the public.   So much so that it is insulting to anyone with a critical brain that looks beyond the smokescreen.

The defendant has continued to try to pound home the idea of change.  That she and her running mate will bring "real" change.  I present to you that I will prove that there is no such change coming under their administration.  In fact, it will more of the same.  The same ideas, rules, special interests, back pocket deals, and lobbying for the elite that got this country into a war it should have never started and a financial crisis that it should have seen coming.  Note the clip of Gov. Palin's interview below:

Listening to the defendant speak, it isn't the language of change.  It is the language of more of the same.  The language of a third Bush term just with different people behind the desk.  The defendant, if she were put in the vice presidential slot, one heartbeat away from the Oval Office, would give us the same litany of broken down policies and empty promises that we have seen in the last eight years.  Ladies and gentlemen, I will provide beyond a reasonable doubt that Sarah Palin is a fraud to her own political party and logically a fraud to the people.  She is the image of style over substance.  There is "style" if one could call it that, but when the evidence, the substance is presented it contradicts itself and the image of the defendant to such a degree that you will have no other reasonable choice but to find the defendant--guilty as charged.

Buyers Remorse

The Potomac Primaries are tomorrow. My twelve year old does not have a cell phone anymore. She was the victim of overindulgent text message use. Do these things have anything in common? Yes, each issue has caused me much frustration in the last two hours. My frustration over the phone has pretty obvious causes. The cause? 2 billion text messages in the last 24 hours. This was the count after the text messaging was blocked. I found out that the text messaging was not actually blocked after all. In reality the package of text messaging was canceled in a manner that I hope befalls the TV show Moonlight (truly the worst TV show that I have seen and forced by my significant other to watch) after the writer's strike ends. However, canceling the package does not actually stop the texting. So 2 billion texts and more charges than the GDP of Romania later I find that texts were still flowing the ether of the internet like Colt 45 being poured on the coffin of a gang leader. I must say that I am having buyers remorse over the purchasing of my child's phone and service plan. I am ready to call in a favor from a "made" family member with "connections" to find a way to do away with the phone and the plans that went with it--at no cost to me, of course. I am also worried that I will have buyers remorse after I go to a falling down elementary school gym/cafeteria tomorrow morning to make my selection in the Virginia primary. I am afraid that whoever I pick will disappointment me in the end to the point that I regret that I ever casted a vote for them in the first place. Each of the four candidates that are my final list are all untrustworthy in their own very special way. Clinton is indeed a Clinton. In other words, does a tiger ever change it's stripes? No. Hillary is preaching from the same choir book as her husband in 1992. She only wants to win the election. She does not appear to me to be genuine. She appears packaged. Packaged like an overly priced NY Strip Steak. She'll do and say anything to win. Obama is young, energetic, passionate and that is exactly what the package is supposed to look like. I am still not clear what the substance behind his talk of change for the future. He is wrapped in a pretty bow made by Oprah. Perfect. McCain has been in Congress too long to be believable. He has alienated his own party (which I think is great, by the way) and somehow out of no where is now the likely GOP nominee. He is the nominee because the rest of the field on his side of the aisle basically is worse than the New York Jets and the Miami Dolphins combined. Huckabee is basically out of his mind. He has no idea what he is talking about and appears so out of touch with reality that it makes Moonlight look realistic. Just to let you know if you don't already know about Moonlight. The show involves a vampire who is loved by a pretty blond who is stereotypically naive and stupid. The writers of that show should have never gone on strike because they are not really writers--they are stoned Goth high school juniors in their basements. OK, back on topic. I am sitting in my kitchen with my daughter's phone in the blender and I don't know who I am going to vote for tomorrow for fear that my candidate will also end up in the blender, too.

Regarding my political picks. I am 3-1 going into tomorrow. Obama is 4-0. He has won 20 out of 31 states. On some counts (again, this is ridiculous how there are different delegate counts for the Democrats as they have "Super Delegates") Obama has a lead. He has more money right now. He has all the momentum. It is hard to pick against him.

On another note, Richard Zednik of the Florida Panthers needed five pints of blood and emergency surgery after being cut in the neck by a teammates skate on the ice. I have two questions. First, why does this not happen more often? Second, will this increase NHL TV ratings if people know that in any minute someone might get their head cut off on the ice?

Why is Oprah Obama Winfrey Smiling?

If you had asked me two weeks ago what the races for the Democratic and Republican nomination would look like this morning after what I was figuring would be a dramatic Super Tuesday, I would have told you that the Democratic race would be over and the Republican race would be too close to call. I would have stated with some glumness that Whitewater Hillary would be running away with the nomination and that the Big Three shysters of McCain, Romney, and Huckabee in a close race (with Huckabee nearing the end of the line). Instead, we wake up to find that Whitewater Hillary and Obama Winfrey preparing for a drawn out and expensive race. Oprah Obama won 13 states to Hillary's eight. The delegate count (a convoluted sinkhole of a system) extremely close. I had expected that Mrs. Clinton would break-away from Obama and go on a money and time cruise control. It did not happen. Now, Whitewater has had to dip into her own personal slush fund ($5 million) to assist her campaign slush fund. Nothing wrong with this move, but it signals trouble for her as she has cruised with money only from her campaign fund raising up to now. Clinton only raised $13 million this past month to Oprah Obama Winfrey's $32 million. When your opponent is raising more than twice as much money as you then you are sinking (or at least on the verge). Obama is surging now. His message is becoming clearer, more energizing, and more distinct from Hillary's. Obama is appealing to the true core of the Democratic party. He is showing himself as a semi-liberal Democrat and his opposite of the US position in Iraq resonates with his party. His message of the need for change is louder and clearer than Whitewater's murky centrist message that her husband rode so success in the last decade. The message is the key. Obama truly represents the prospect of a new order. Clinton's message is conveying an old message from 1992 as opposed to a much needed message for 2008. Her campaign tactics are the same as her husband's in 1992. I will expect a major change in her campaign team in the coming weeks when her desperate attempt to get $3 million in the next three days from her supporters fails.

You have to admire the political resiliency of John McCain. After a disaster of a campaign in 2000 and predictions of total humiliating failure in 2008 he is well on his way to the GOP nomination. Reports indicate that it will be impossible for Shyster Romney and Father Shyster Huckabee to catch him. I am not even sure McCain himself would have predicted this to happen. McCain is benefiting from what I will further call the Asterisk Effect. This phenomena occurs when the President has pissed everyone in his own party off (as well as everybody else in the country) to the point that any candidate that reminds the party of the President will be rolled by anyone who can sufficiently separate themselves from them. This is what is occurring for McCain now. He has positioned himself as a centrist moderate Republican versus the nearly insanely conservative candidates Romney and Huckabee. The party masses alienated by President Asterisk and not willing to jump party affiliation see McCain has a hew hope and are aligning with him. I am still not clear as to what Huckabee stands for beyond giving AK-47 rifles to the severely emotionally disturbed children who will never receive services under his reign in front of a schoolhouse. He appears as a "Joe Six Pack" Republican that was appealing when Asterisk was running in 2000. It appears to be working to a point...except when you look at the numbers. Huckabee won four states. One of them was West Virginia. He won that state with only 571 votes. Hardly a ringing victory. I actually feel a little sorry for Shyster Romney. Mitt was a centrist moderate Republican governor in the Mass. He then flip-flopped to look like a ultra conservative Republican just like Asterisk. I wonder if he had just stayed true to himself where he would be now. He has dumped $20 million of his own fortune to make himself look like a TV anchor talking head Republican only to see that his old message being rung by McCain to an easy victory for the GOP nomination. Harsh expensive lesson, but he really deserves it for not being true to his own political chops.

We have the home stretch coming up. Shyster McCain on cruise control and Oprah Obama surging and political gambling degenerates like myself are licking their wounds.