So now that the election is over and everyone is agreeing it would be crass, ugly and counterproductive to try to ram the bill through the senate while delaying the seating of Brown, how moronic was the comment by Paul Kirk, which splashed the idea that the machine was going to disenfranchise the state all over the radio and the Herald the week before the election? I think he's my favorite blamepost of all.
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03:25:48 PM,
Wednesday 20 January 2010
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Hey, it isn't just Massachusetts saying 'I've got mine'. So the headline to this really is 'people with healthcare kill healthcare reform because it'll cost them money' all over again, and we'll keep going with a system that wrecks the country for the short-term convenience of the well-off.
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(2)
03:14:15 PM,
Wednesday 20 January 2010
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My old precinct vs my new precinct. Didn't move far politically, it seems.
Primary:
Old: 34% turnout, 43% Coakley, 37% Capuano, 15% Khazai
New: 38% turnout, 37% Coakley, 33% Capuano, 23% Khazai
General:
Old: 69% turnout, 65% Coakley
New: 71% turnout, 72% Coakley
Two underblamed culprits: Ted Kennedy for not retiring when there would have been time for him to ensure succession, and the primary ballot system. (I don't actually believe either of these would have made a difference, but they conform to my prejudices better than most of the theories out there)
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03:00:01 PM,
Wednesday 20 January 2010
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Joe Kennedy's twitter account was joek4senate.
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12:08:04 PM,
Wednesday 20 January 2010
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The nice thing about working with computers rather than actual machinery and infrastructure is there are so many fewer things you need to worry about. Pigeons and squirrels, for instance. There is no equivalent in computer programming of a squirrel building a nest in the air filter or shorting out a transformer.
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11:44:12 AM,
Wednesday 20 January 2010
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Also encountered in Wodehouse: the Social Purity movement.
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10:53:17 AM,
Wednesday 20 January 2010
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This line, from the whining memo leaked early on election day is exactly the problem:
Addressing and refuting their concerns, would, of course, have been impossible. Treating them like people to be engaged rather than an obstacle to being elected? Why would we do that?
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10:19:21 AM,
Wednesday 20 January 2010
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harumph
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10:18:02 AM,
Wednesday 20 January 2010
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The consensus seems to be that this was an endorsement of torture. Just fantastic. One candidate runs with a coherent, vile, swaggering position on torture. The other one, waffles, bumbles, equivocates and dodges. Voters don't like people who waffle and equivocate and dodge, so she loses, and now the torturers have a mandate. Who knows what would have happen if she'd made a stirring defense of civil liberties. Granted, as a very political prosecutor famous for standing up to satanists and baby-shaking nannies, doing so probably would have choked her, but there was one moment of the debate in particular where I was dying to have Barney Frank in there instead of her, where she could have jumped all over Brown. I blame pollsters and the craven politicians that listen to them. Coakley was the anti-Obama, unprincipled, inarticulate, relying on dishonest, divisive, trivial issues, ineptly following the polls rather than leading them. I don't believe for a minute that Scott Brown was a great candidate, or that this is some sort of referendum on the Obama agenda.
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10:13:10 AM,
Wednesday 20 January 2010
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From the Arlington list, the turnout numbers are excellent: 5pm and several precincts are already well over 50%.
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(10)
05:26:04 PM,
Tuesday 19 January 2010
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A map of MA democratic primary results, for comparison later this evening.
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02:58:28 PM,
Tuesday 19 January 2010
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This is why I'm furious with my state party. The mailing we got with the little girl holding a magic wand wasn't as bad as that one, but it was still vile.
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(12)
10:00:39 PM,
Sunday 17 January 2010
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site & script courtesy of Moss
