a perfect tie

if the above results were to occur in the general election for president of the united states in 2008, barack obama and john mccain would have a perfect tie of 269 electoral votes each. it is possible. that would be quite funny if it were to happen. maybe we could finally get rid of this stupid electoral college system and replace it with nationwide popular vote if a fiasco like that happened. such a scenario is unlikely, however... barack obama will probably defeat john mccain by a huge margin. and i am very glad that barack obama is the likely winner. but still, we can never be too sure what will happen. i am just suggesting this possibility to point out that the electoral college system is really really dumb and outdated and needs to be replaced, as well as to warn people that this really could happen. what would the results of a tie be? who knows...

to hell with james dobson and to heaven with george carlin

james dobson, a right-wing christian fundamentalist nutcase and leader of the religious right, recently criticized barack obama’s theology, just because barack obama cited some old testament verses and took them literally. o noes! i thought fundamentalists were SUPPOSED to take the bible literally! but CERTAIN PARTS of the bible that say BAD THINGS are apparently NO LONGER TRUE because jesus came along and said to ignore all that bullshit from the old testament! hooray for christians ignoring the old testament! seriously though, if christians don’t believe in doing what the old testament says and don’t take it literally, TAKE THE OLD TESTAMENT OUT OF YOUR BIBLE! quit being hypocrites! you claim your religion is based on judaism and the old testament, yet whenever anything controversial from the old testament comes up, it’s all like “jesus came along and said that no longer counts, so anyone citing that old testament stuff is theologically illiterate.” theology is the study of complete bullshit by lunatics who actually believe in it. and to find out more about this nutcase james dobson (who has over 220 million brainwashed zombie followers listening to him on the radio every day) check out media matters or theocracy watch. to summarize, james dobson thinks that god destroying a major u.s. city would be justified because of homosexuality in the united states, he maintains that homosexuality is a choice people make and is not an inborn trait, he strongly opposes gay marriage and thinks gay couples should not be allowed to raise children, once in the same broadcast he claimed he was not political but also said that liberals “despise this country and its freedoms, and they're doing everything they can do to undermine it” and said that democrats advocate “the course of action that osama bin laden wants us to take”, and he has backed political candidates who called for the execution of abortion providers. basically this fruitcake is almost as crazy as the westboro baptist church lunatics, only he has many, many times as many followers. if hell existed, james dobson would go there after he dies, for being so evil. he is lucky that hell is just imaginary.

and you know who would be in heaven if it existed? george carlin. what a wonderful comedian he was, what a great spokesperson for the atheist cause, what an outspoken opponent of government censorship, what a champion of freedom we had in this man! and he was funny too! his biggest detractors were religious right zealots like james dobson. george carlin was awesome in the movie dogma, which i thought was an absolutely wonderful movie. george carlin actually challenged people’s bullshit beliefs and got away with it, and they even found it funny! now obviously the religious right is entirely correct about him, and his death was due to him being an evil godless sinner and he is burning in hell and james dobson will someday end up in heaven due to being a faithful fundamentalist christian... NOT! oh and guess what religion was founded by george carlin? frisbeetarianism. somewhere out there, there is a house where george carlin’s soul is stuck up on the roof and he can’t get it back down.

general election map

red states are republican strongholds, dark blue states are democratic strongholds, yellow states are swing states that are leaning towards john mccain, and light blue states are swing states that are leaning towards barack obama. i used data from 4 sources for my analysis: cnn.com, electoralmap.net, electoral-vote.com, and mydd.com. swing states are ones that are listed as “toss up” by cnn.com as well as ones with conflicting predictions from different sites. the predictions are based on combining together the results from each of those 4 websites (e.g., since mccain wins florida on 2 sites and obama wins it on 1 site and it is a toss-up on the other, mccain gets florida since 2 > 1). interestingly enough, my predictions agree with electoral-vote.com on every state except florida, which i predict goes to mccain while electoral-vote.com predicts it goes to obama. cnn.com labels a huge number of states as toss-up: all the swing states except for new mexico. cnn.com gives new mexico to mccain, while the other 3 sites all give it to obama, so in that 1 instance, cnn.com also disagrees with me. as for electoralmap.net, it predicts mccain wins missouri while 2 other sites predict obama wins missouri, so that is the 1 instance where it disagrees with my predictions. and as for mydd.com, it agrees with my predictions on every state except ohio, which it predicts goes to mccain, while 2 other sites predict ohio goes to obama. so for each of the 4 sites, there was exactly 1 state it predicted differently from me, and a different state for each site. so my combined predictions are theoretically more accurate than the predictions of any of these 4 sites. i am awesome! oh and guess what? according to these predictions, barack obama will win every state john kerry won in 2004, plus 6 states that george w. bush won in 2004. john mccain will win all the states george w. bush won in 2004 except the 6 that barack obama will win. those 6 states (colorado, iowa, missouri, new mexico, ohio, and virginia) have enough electoral votes to switch the balance in obama’s favor so that he beats mccain by a huge margin. hopefully obama will stay ahead of mccain in the polls up thru election day, especially in all those swing states.

hillary clinton supporters will almost all be barack obama supporters

i was worried earlier about hillary clinton supporters defecting en masse to john mccain. but frank rich of the new york times has shown convincingly that that will probably not happen. so, there is nothing to worry about with regard to the clintons. barack obama is doing very well in the latest polls, beating john mccain convincingly in groups like hispanics and women that were considered core hillary clinton demographics. john mccain is still winning working-class white males, but they have not supported a democrat for president since 1964; they are a key republican demographic, not swing voters. technically i am a working-class white male but i am one of the barack obama supporters in that group. anyway, john mccain faces challenges not only from barack obama but he has similar issues to the ones obama has from clintonites: many conservatives and libertarians are not supporting john mccain since he is not conservative or libertarian enough for them, and many of the more moderate republicans are actually supporting barack obama. there are a lot more prominent republicans supporting obama than prominent democrats supporting mccain. and joe lieberman as the poster boy for mccain’s bipartisanship does more harm than good, since joe lieberman is well known as a neoconservative warmonger and traitor to the democratic party. joe lieberman’s traitorous nature goes back many years: he was the first major democrat to publicly condemn president bill clinton for the monica lewinsky affair. since then, he has gradually become more and more opposed to the democrats and our agenda, and we tried to purge the traitor in our midst in 2006 when he was up for re-election. sadly joe lieberman won re-election, since all the republicans voted for him, as well as the establishment wing of the democrats. since that time, people in connecticut have woken up to the fact that they made a mistake, and now he is very unpopular in his home state and would not be able to win re-election if the election were held today. joe lieberman’s political career ends when his senate term ends in 2012, unless he gets a job in a republican administration, since no democrat would ever hire him. and john mccain has been running a potemkin village campaign to try to win over hillary clinton supporters, by pretending he and his campaign staff have genuine affection for hillary clinton and that they really believe she was unfairly treated by the media because of sexism. in reality, john mccain does not like clinton or obama, and people in his campaign all know that obama won the democratic nomination fair and square, by winning the most votes, the most states, the most pledged delegates, and the most superdelegates. we should not forget how john mccain called his wife a “cunt”, how he laughed and smiled when one of his supporters asked (with regard to hillary clinton) “how do we beat the bitch?”, and how he divorced his original wife after coming home from vietnam because she had been disfigured in a car accident and had gained weight, and went on to marry a younger, more attractive woman as his second wife. john mccain is not exactly a friend to womankind, since he would put justices on the supreme court who would overturn roe v. wade, and we only need 1 more ultra-conservative on the court for that to happen, since currently 4 of the 9 justices are ultra-conservative radicals (scalia, thomas, roberts, and alito). the oldest man on the supreme court, justice stevens, is one of the 4 who are more liberal (with justice kennedy as the moderately conservative swing vote). anyone who is an actual liberal who cares about the issues should obviously vote for barack obama. as for conservatives or libertarians, bob barr is running as a libertarian, and he has the support of ron paul. join the ron paul/bob barr libertarian quest for the presidency! to hell with john mccain! john mccain is exactly like george w. bush except older and even more of a war hawk. electing mccain would ruin this country even worse than what bush has done. the only people who should support mccain are those who think bush has done a good job as president and want the next president to stay the course and not change anything. anyone else who supports mccain is completely deluded about the facts, and is in dire need of some education. sure john mccain points to a record of bipartisanship as a senator, but george w. bush also had a record of bipartisanship as a governor of texas. john mccain might not be a total right-wing wacko on everything; he actually believes in global warming, for instance. but his few deviances from conservative republican orthodoxy hide the fact that overall he is quite conservative and is a loyal bush republican. anyway, if you don’t believe in global warming, vote libertarian! they don’t believe in it either! john mccain is such a doofus, he doesn’t even know how to use computers! he is afraid of computers and doesn’t go near them! do we really need a technophobe as president? i think not. i use computers all the time and you are probably reading this with a computer... imagine a president who doesn’t know how to do any of that shit. i bet even george w. bush knows how to use the internets. imagine a president even dumber than george w. bush. and no, barack obama isn’t stupid; he was president of the harvard law review and a law professor at the university of chicago. john mccain is the dummy. remember the bill clinton of yesteryear? bill clinton was a genius, a rhodes scholar, and was young and a very charismatic public speaker when he ran for president and won in 1992. barack obama combines those good qualities bill clinton had with honesty and integrity, two qualities bill clinton has shown himself to be rather lacking in. oh sure, barack obama is not perfect, and he is not the best person to be president. the best person to be president is senator russ feingold of wisconsin, but he has never wanted to run for president. but you know what? life is about compromise, and you never get perfection, especially not in politics. barack obama is the best candidate running for president of the united states, because those few people who would be even better are not even running. and the best of the republican candidates was ron paul. i wish ron paul were the republican nominee instead of john mccain. john mccain is the worst possible nominee for the republicans to pick, precisely because he has the best chance of winning. but i am glad that mike huckabee and mitt romney lost, because they were both religious wackos who wanted to end separation of church and state, and their other policies were equally bad. john mccain would not be quite as bad as them, because they are even worse than bush. john mccain would just be a continuation of the status quo under bush. but even that would be horrible.

update: maybe i am wrong about hillary clinton supporters. just look at these comments on cnn.com. there are certainly many people posting on the internet that they are hillary clinton supporters who will vote for john mccain in november, although none of them have logical reasons for doing so. are they all republican trolls working in operation chaos or the “p.u.m.a.” (party unity my ass) astroturf operation? or are some of them actual (former) democrats? whoever they are, they are not liberals, they are not true democrats, and we do not need them to win in november. these fools are of no consequence. let them vote for john mccain... they are nothing but a bunch of whiny drama queens who need to grow up, and while they may seem numerous online, ron paul supporters also seem numerous online, and look how badly he lost. these people are just a bunch of sore losers who are on the wrong side of history. everyone who says “mccain '08 hillary '12” is an idiot. there is no way in hell hillary clinton will ever be a democratic presidential nominee, ever. and she is not going to get on the supreme court, either: she failed her bar exam after graduating law school. and she cannot win the presidency as an independent, nor will she run as one. barack obama just hired former hillary clinton campaign manager patti solis doyle, and some hillary clinton supporters have had completely insane responses to this, such as calling it the “biggest fuck you i have ever seen in politics.” what is wrong with obama hiring people who worked in the clinton campaign? her campaign is over and he is the democratic nominee now. i just don’t get it. people need to move on and realise they lost. it’s not like hillary clinton lost to a conservative republican like john mccain. she lost to a liberal democrat: barack obama! now who would have a problem with electing a liberal democrat? answer: a conservative republican. anyone who does not support the democratic nominee now is not a democrat, and is a traitor to the party just like joe lieberman and zell miller. we have zero tolerance for traitors in our party. the traitors can go ahead and vote republican, but don’t go around pretending to be democrats, you liars. if i had less honesty and integrity, i might go around commenting on blogs pretending to be a disaffected mitt romney or mike huckabee supporter and denounce mccain while endorsing obama. but i won’t, because that would be stupid and dishonest. i have more class than these republican trolls who pretend to be hillary supporters.

the “cut off the nose to spite the face” movement

there is a new movement out there, like a phoenix rising from the ashes of hillary clinton’s failed presidential campaign. it is the “cut off the nose to spite the face” movement. this broad movement includes all sorts of people: centrists who think barack obama is a far-left radical, left-wingers who think barack obama is too centrist, people who just feel insulted by supporters of barack obama or by media coverage they think is biased, republican trolls participating in something known as “operation chaos”, female chauvinist pigs, and actual racists. people from all across the political spectrum are part of the “cut off the nose to spite the face” movement, people from all walks of life, but one thing unites them: they hate barack obama’s guts, and would rather have john mccain as president. almost all of them at least claim to be democrats, but i would not trust anything they have to say, since a good portion are probably republican trolls trying to stir up trouble. at a time when hillary clinton is about to endorse barack obama, these people claim to be her diehard supporters while at the same time rejecting her repeated calls for them to vote for the democratic candidate in november. many of them are changing their party registration from democrat to independent, republican, or some third party, to protest the results of the rules and bylaws committee meeting. they are evidently upset that florida and michigan only get 1/2 the vote they would normally get, and bring up the historical example that even slaves were counted as 3/5 of a person. what they fail to recognize is that the republicans likewise penalized both florida and michigan by only giving them 1/2 the vote they would normally get, and yet these fools still think this is a valid argument to vote for mccain over obama. on all of the major issues, hillary clinton and barack obama are very close to each other. just look at this chart from politicalcompass.org:



so, members of the “cut off the nose to spite the face” movement are mainly driven by one thing: raw emotion. they are upset over the outcome of the democratic nomination contest, and refuse to recognize the winner, because they got too emotionally invested in the loser. so now, despite the fact that most of these people agree with barack obama on the issues and disagree with john mccain on the issues, many of them are going to either vote for john mccain, vote for a third-party candidate, write in hillary clinton’s name, or not vote at all, out of spite. and many of them are leaving the democratic party out of spite. there is a site for all these losers called democrats against obama, which is ironic because the site urges people to leave the democratic party and change their registration to something else instead. democrats indeed. at pro-hillary blogs like talkleft.com and taylormarsh.com, there are some blog posts trying to convince people to vote democrat in november, but if you look at the comments, they are almost all anti-obama, full of people saying how they are leaving the democratic party or voting for john mccain in november. it is quite bizarre to observe. personally, i was not particularly impressed with al gore or john kerry, and actually disliked both of them when they were running for president, but i supported them strongly and voted for them anyway, because i am not voting for someone whose personality i like, i am voting for a democrat as president to uphold the values of liberalism and the progressive movement, and to fight against the plutocratic/theocratic/cryptofascist republicans, who should all be voted out of office. i am looking for someone whom i agree with on the issues. and that is why i chose barack obama over hillary clinton once i saw that my favorite candidate, dennis kucinich, had no chance. i have no sour grapes over dennis kucinich losing, just like i did not make too big of a fuss when howard dean lost the nomination to john kerry in 2004. i am a loyal democrat, something this country needs more of nowadays. i am very unimpressed with all the childishness of the people in the “cut off the nose to spite the face” movement. we need people making intelligent decisions about who to vote for in november, based on the issues, issues like abortion, the war in iraq, universal health care, and so on. people should not vote on any other basis besides the issues, because the age/race/gender/personality/experience of a president matters far less than their judgments on the issues that matter. i embedded the video of clinton supporter harriet christian’s mad tirade in my previous blog post but here it is again as a link if you want to see an example of this childishness.

let’s act like adults when it comes to deciding who to vote for, and not base decisions on our emotions, but instead on a logical analysis of who agrees with us on the issues and has a possibility of winning. and if you would rather not vote at all, or vote based on who you would rather have a beer with or some other incredibly stupid benchmark, either grow up and start thinking and voting as a responsible citizen, or don’t vote at all. or better yet, just do what i plan on doing: vote party-line democrat in every election, every november, for the rest of your life, no matter what happens. i agree with the democrats on pretty much everything and disagree with the republicans on pretty much everything, so it is really easy for me to decide who to support, regardless of which candidates each party comes up with and what offices they are running for. i know which side i am on, and it is the same side i have always been on, and i have no plans of ever switching sides. ever. i plan on being a loyal liberal democrat as long as i live, and the more i see these immature fools who are unable to muster any party loyalty and who do not know who their real enemy is, the more i realize how important party loyalty is. at least if you are a loyal democrat or republican, you know who your enemy is: the other party. but if you are a diehard supporter of hillary clinton, who is your enemy now, at this point? barack obama? the obama campaign? obama supporters? the democratic party? the republican party? john mccain? or is it all of the above? at some point you ought to realize that hillary clinton is a loyal democrat and that if you want to be a true supporter of hers, you ought to follow her wishes and vote for the democratic candidate in november, and that if you do not follow her wishes, you have not only betrayed the democratic party, but you have betrayed hillary clinton herself. i am sure that hillary clinton will be out there campaigning for barack obama; perhaps she may even be his vice presidential nominee, but i do not really care whether or not obama chooses her. many drama queen “hillary supporters” have actually said that they will vote for mccain even if obama picks hillary as his running mate... way to show loyalty to hillary. seriously, people need to grow up, and vote party-line democrat every election just like i do, unless they agree with the republicans instead, in which case they should just not vote, because i want republicans to lose.

our long national nightmare is finally over

obama is the democratic nominee! he won a clear majority of pledged delegates, and thanks to an outpouring of support from superdelegates, he now has a clear majority of overall delegates! and michigan and florida were settled once and for all on saturday... and obama finally won the race officially on tuesday, just a few hours ago. now we democrats can come together as a party behind our nominee... and those bitter voters who no longer wish to vote for democrats can either not vote, vote republican, or vote for third-party candidates (after all, it’s a free country). here is an example of one of those ex-democrats who is bitter:



if you watch the whole video you will see her pledge her support to john mccain at the end. hopefully, hillary clinton will be able to reign in the vast majority of her supporters from such insanity, and get them to vote for barack obama in the fall election. currently, the debate centers around whether barack obama should choose hillary clinton as his running mate, and whether he will do so. i personally do not care. he can select whomever he wants, as long as they are a democrat and are not conservative or anything (al gore picking joe lieberman in 2000: big mistake). but mainly the focus should be on someone who is qualified to be president, is a loyal democrat and staunch liberal, and is young and charismatic enough to run for president in 2016 and win after 8 years of president obama (but not too young, i.e. a bit older than obama).

and as someone who lives in new york state, i can tell you there is no way in hell john mccain is winning this state in november, even with people like that crazy lady voting for john mccain. i was in pennsylvania a few days ago and it looks like obama will probably win there too, judging by the number of yard signs i saw for each of the candidates. things are looking good, since after all, john mccain has the same policies as george w. bush, policies that have failed our country utterly and are quite unpopular. once people learn the truth about john mccain and what he would do as president, there is no way he can win. do we really want neverending war, more tax cuts for the rich that put us even deeper into debt, supreme court justices that take away our freedoms and overturn roe v. wade, no diplomacy, and basically a continuation of the policies that have made the u.s. dollar worthless and petroleum and food get much more expensive while people keep losing their homes and the stock market tumbles? do we really want a government made up of people who don’t believe in government, the type who mismanaged the response to hurricane katrina? do we really want regulatory agencies run by people from the industries they are supposed to regulate who do not believe in regulation? do we really want large corporations and the religious right calling all the shots? if so, john mccain ought to be our pick. but if we want something different, something better, maybe we should think about barack obama as a healthier alternative. and we won’t have the clintons to kick around anymore. things are looking good.