This, to me, is the end-game for the Democrats: "Florida lawmakers move toward special session to name electors." They've got the senate down to 50/50 and you can count on DeLay, in the House, to be the second coming of Joe McCarthy (in partisan furor, not with hearings etc.) which has everything playing right into their hands to take back Congress in 2002. I'm no longer sure they want Gore to win as long as he keeps fighting and pushing the Republicans towards what they forsee as party implosion over why they can't bury Gore once and for all. On the other hand, if Gore does win it might ignite the far right who have been such good soldiers through the campaign into an open rebellion, something we were deprived after impeachment, unless the Congress contests the election which would be a disaster on the scale of impeachment. All within two years.
- posted by levinson @ 11/30/2000 08:20:00 AM

 
I have trouble getting a solid read on William Safire. Like Thompson on the left, I can't quite figure out where he sits on the right wing. I don't think he's moderate, but I do think he has a very clear head for understanding Washington. His op-ed today, in my mind, is something that should open the Bush team's eyes. When a former Nixon aide tells you that you're setting yourself up to fail in Washington, you should take it from him. He's been there.
- posted by levinson @ 11/30/2000 07:25:00 AM

 
I was thinking something similar to this yesterday. I'd love to peer behind the curtain of the Bush campaign. Since Gore has been on TV recently, it seems as though the other side is hiding Bush. Fairly or not, with his opponent's face all over the news and a cadre of people all working for him, it seems like W. is just sitting and waiting until he's told to come out a make a speech that's prepared for him. It may not be the case, but that's the impression that I'm getting.

Disclosure: Voted for Gore.
- posted by levinson @ 11/30/2000 06:48:00 AM

 
Modern Humorist has the latest and greatest installment to the whole election mess.
- posted by levinson @ 11/29/2000 12:43:00 PM

 
William Saletan now likens the process of ballot examining to date rape. To me this is just a bit shrill. It is remarkable that there is such an assault being levied on the dimpled CHAD counting as a vote. Several states which have laws on recounts state that dimpled CHAD are to be counted. Are these states populated with fools? Are their legislatures so lacking in intellectual acuity that they've adopted the functional equivalent date rape in the voting booth? I'd like the naysayers to answer a simple question before we move the debate any further. If the voter didn't dimple the CHAD, how did it get dimpled? Are these ballots riddled with dimples? Can one dimple a ballot simply by handling it? It isn't sufficient to claim, "No hole, no vote" without an adequate explanation as to the myriad other ways a ballot gets dimpled. The onus for such an explanation is on those who would exclude the dimple as a vote.
- posted by levinson @ 11/29/2000 12:31:00 PM

 
Possible titles for this link:

The Gerald Ford Act

If We Had This, Castro Would Be Gone

How To Stop Campaign Finance Reform Before It Starts

What The Fuck Are The Ruskies Thinking?

Stalin Part II: Comrade Putin
- posted by levinson @ 11/29/2000 11:01:00 AM

 
My computer fried itself a few months ago (motherboard got a surge and went kaput) causing me to by a new machine which is basically a fire breathing dragon as compared to the old one. I put the old machine under a window in my apartment and basically forgot about it. Last night I remembered, though, that while I had removed the hard drives for Linux use on the new machine (having an IDE cable problem; a different story), the monitor on the old boy was still useful. I now have a 19" and a 15" monitor both hooked up to my machine. I now feel that a $200 item is not gathering dust on my floor, but what the hell am I going to use it for? I have several ideas, but none of them seems good.
- posted by levinson @ 11/29/2000 08:09:00 AM

 
Here we go, now we're actually going to see the election stolen. Regardless of who does or would win Florida after a recount, this would fundamentally stain a Bush presidency and start everything off on a totally devisive note. Not the actions of a uniter.
- posted by levinson @ 11/29/2000 07:49:00 AM

 
Jess went through this wringer a few months ago. We discovered that everything in this article at Slate is true. This is an area that needs some consumer activism to straighten the whole mess out.
- posted by levinson @ 11/28/2000 12:10:00 PM

 
Though many sports fans may not realize it, there is an exclusive club in the pantheon of sports fan-dom. Like Skull and Bones, being born into a family associated with the club all but guarantees entrance into it. It has no prohibition on race, creed or color. There is no stigma attached to income in this fraternity, no dues, no positions, and it has a grand old house in which it meets. However, no one in their right mind would ever apply to be in the club.

Residents of Boston, MA and the surrounding area will know instantly that I am speaking of the illustrious Fellowship of the Miserable. We are Red Sox fans. Like the democrats of the eighties, we stand high on principle and the plight of the working man against ballooning salaries for people playing a child's game. Also like those democrats, we haven't won the big prize in a long time and continue to lose to people who are, more than anything else, just better financed.

A lot of fans have a bristling, unbridled hatred for the New York Yankees and their 26 (I think, though I've lost count) World Chamionships. George Steinbrenner is our Darth Vader, Napoleon and Stalin all in one. He is ruthless towards his subordinates, has an incalculable ego and seeks to starve out all competitors. We come into every season and dutifully pay the highest ticket price in all of baseball, sit in a broken down relic of a park from 1912, and there hasn't been a championship for almost 100 years.

Having been a card carrying, shout from the rooftops, member of the Fellowship most of my life, I recently had a break and have for a while considered myself a New Miserable. Still a member of the Fellowship, but one more realistic about the world and how it works. I now cheer for the Red Sox on a game by game basis, I am happy for their wins and miffed at their losses. Pedro Martinez is the most brilliant thing ever put on the mound, an athlete of a kind that will not be seen again for a generation. Being miffed at their losses, however, covers only the regular season. I am only happy, if and when the Sox make the playoffs and believe it would be a genuine miracle if they ever won the whole thing. Upon their inevitable exit from the race, I am indifferent. Not a true fan you say? It is a retort that I only respond to other members of the Fellowship, for if you aren't a member, you couldn't possibly understand.

The crux of the issue lies in one simple statement. Baseball, as currently constituted, is not a fair game. It is rigged from the beginning, and its owners refuse to do anything about it. Many people marvel at the fact that the Yankees win the Championship every year. I don't, they should. If they don't, they've done something horribly wrong. I don't begrudge them this either. They can, do and should exploit every advantage they are given. The rules need to be changed. Until they are this will be, and has been, the result of every off-season big name free-agent signing.

Beyond simply free agency, the Yanks wield the ultimate trump card of money during the season. They can absorb every contract on waivers without a thought. Witness this year, when they were far from the best team in baseball for the first 2/3 of the season. During the season, they picked up Denny Neagle, Glen-Allen Hill, David Justice, Doc Gooden, Luis Sojo and Jose Canseco. Justice was the one responsible for putting the team into the playoffs, and World Series. Sojo was the one who hit the game winning double against the Mets. If the owners of the other teams truly gave a shit, they would change the rules so that buying the championship mid-season is no longer possible. I've written long enough here, so I won't go into further reasons why this needs to be done.

The bottom line, however, is that the owners don't want to change the rules. They're happy with the playing field hopelessly slanted towards the Bronx. Fine then. I'll be happy when the Sox win, I'll marvel at the brilliance of Pedro on the mound and Nomar at the plate, but I won't shed a single tear when they inevitably lose. It's supposed to be that way, and the proprieters of the game just don't care enough to fix it. Baseball has become the only game in which the regular season is the only part that matters since the outcome of the playoffs is already known.
- posted by levinson @ 11/28/2000 10:15:00 AM

 
We now see just how filled with contempt the boys on the ranch in Texas have become with all of us and our silly little laws and procedures. The General Services Administration says on Saturday that it will not give anyone the keys until all lawsuits are settled in the election. Bush has now said that he cares little for the GSA and their silly rules, because they are so foolish as to believe the election undecided. He is so driven to ram home his victory that, as he did when he wanted to ram home his campaign, he will forego the current federal set up and fund his own transition. Am I the only one curious where his bottomless well of money comes from? Am I the only one that sees two men so doused in oil that they can walk on water when I look at Bush/Cheney? I am concerned that, if he does make it into the White House, that we will see a troubling amount of this attitude during his administration. It seems as though he makes a token effort to work with people, then says screw the lot of you, I'll finance this thing myself. Is this really a vision that looks to bi-partisan politics, or one that promises even greater polarization of the minority opinion (read: not Bush's opinion) in the future?
- posted by levinson @ 11/27/2000 03:30:00 PM

 
Undoubtedly, the nightly news will either lead with, or feature the ABCNEWS.com Poll saying that 6 in 10 people (margin of error of 4% in the poll (itself 450% greater than the difference separating the two candidates in Florida)). The poll was taken last night after the Bush presentation and, shockingly, shows people preferring that Gore stepped down after Bush asked him to do just that. Knowing the timing of the poll, did we expect something different? Given that every single poll save one had Gore trailing Bush by anything from 2 to 5 percentage points on election eve, with Nader at 5%, and comparing those polls with the outcome, I am supposed to believe that this is a true representation of how America feels today at 4pm?

Let's review what the polls told us was going to happen before the election with such assurity that stories were being run about how Bush was planning to lobby the electoral college to switch their votes after the election. The pollsters would have had us believe that Bush would win the popular vote in the country by anywhere from 2-8 percentage points and probably the election itself.. There was a possibility, they told us, that he would win the popular vote, but lose the electoral college. The prospect of this prompted the Bush campaign to generate a strategy of lobbying the electors from every state to try and get them to change their vote. Can you imagine a scene like the one in Miami Dade last week out in front of the electors houses, complete with paid operatives standing in as protestors and people bussed in from all neighboring states? Moreover, each organization told us that Ralph Nader and the Greens would take 5% of the popular vote and thus usher in a new era of tri-party politics in the years to come.

This was the incessant mantra of each polling group until America went to the polls and showed me what I had suspected and what a few people (Rick Lazio included) had said was happening. The polling organizations are owned or at least hired by the news organizations in order to make news. Gallup Polls (one I had long held as a paragon of polling integrity) admitted that they poll different groups of people each day and thus wind up with different results. Perhaps this would explain why, the day after the story was broken by the left-leaning media, Gore hit a late-season low in the polls of 38%. It was as if the pollsters were saying, "Yes we rig our polls and fuck you for saying so."

I can therefore only attribute the ABCNews poll to nothing more than news making. They asked people if they thought Al Gore should step down after Bush proposed it. It's like asking the jury in a case to rule after the prosecution makes its case, and then telling the nation how the nation feels about the issue.
- posted by levinson @ 11/27/2000 03:00:00 PM

 
Hunter Thompson loves his job. I can never quite gauge where he sits on the left wing of American politics, but his hatred for the Republican elite is almost boundless. Having been born after Watergate and the extreme upheaval of post-war America and the 60's, his eulogy of Richard Nixon seemed certainly on point, if a little extreme as compared to the puff pieces run by the national media. That is, until I've been wading into this and have found that even Thompson didn't even understand the depth or breadth of his corruption. I haven't read Summers's other books, but this one is impeccably researched and documented. Having read Summers's account, one can turn to Nixon himself for explanations, albeit not a rebuttal, in either Six Crises or his memoirs.
- posted by levinson @ 11/27/2000 11:57:00 AM

 
Firing away on all cylinders today-

->If Bush really thinks he won the election, why does he currently have two petitions to the US Supreme Court, two cases in front of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, and why did he open court houses in four counties in FLA over the weekend in order to file four new cases? Are these the actions of the "winner" of Florida's 25 electoral votes? Who would have thought four weeks ago that post-election, the Bush campaign would be out-suing the Gore campaign?

->The FLA House Minority leader said over the weekend on CNN, "if anyone thinks now that the Florida Legislature is not an arm of the Bush campaign they are naive. As soon as Al Gore pulls ahead in Florida, you will see an emergency session convened and Bush declared the winner of Florida by the state legislature." The House Majority leader said nothing in response, both were on live.

->I wonder if any airline will attempt to vertically integrate the entire flying system by annexing not just terminals (they've got those) but runways and parts of the control tower as well. I wonder if that would have any effect on delays.

->How badly do the Congressional Democrats a) dislike Al Gore for his work on Welfare reform and b)care only about retaking majorities in both Houses that they are nowhere to be found during this dispute (Schumer, Frank I'm looking at you two). And, how quickly were Asa Hutchinson and the other House Impeachment managers asked to get the fuck out of Dodge by the Bush campaign after a reporter asked Hutchinson if it was disingenuous of him to tell the nation that he feels the counting method employed by the counties is unfair when he is so clearly biased on the issue? If you blew up the Governor's mansions in every state except Florida and Texas, would you hit any Republicans?

->Wouldn't it be a bit disrespectful to the 50,156,783 people who voted for him for Al Gore to concede when he's behind by .009% (537 out of 5,825,043 certified votes) in a state where the outcome is so obviously still in doubt?

->Now that Thanksgiving is over, it's time to start stressing about Christmas present buying and holiday travelling. Finaly delay time for my flight yesterday was 5.5 hours. Lovely. Still, once in the air it's only a 45 minute flight and I greatly enjoyed waiting for my plane to get clearance from my own living room rather than from the terminal bar at Logan.
- posted by levinson @ 11/27/2000 09:58:00 AM

 
I've accepted the fact that going to the airport, especially trying to deal with LaGuardia, is a crap shoot in which most odds are stacked heavily against the customer being in any way respected. We have to en masse figure out a way to force them to change their current policies. That's a discussion for another time. I would like, however, an accurate, step-by-step explanation of why on a rainy day, LaGuardia gets backed up by four hours. I had a 3pm flight. It's now a 7pm flight, maybe. It's just rain. I'd expect there to be some delays, but four hours is totally ridiculous. One would think that after fifty-odd years of consistent domestic flight travel, they could deal with a rain storm. Just explain it to me so I can move on, it's far less aggravating than standing at a gate waiting for an announcement which will be bullshit anyway because the airlines lie to their customers.

Lastly, with LaGuardia doing so much business, you'd think they'd have the resources to invest in cleaning up their system which is so clearly completely inadequate. I'm not a huge fan of government intervention, but when an industry that has been recently granted deregulation steadfastly refuses to clean itself up in any way, there's little reason to allow it to stay deregulated. It may well be that the true problem lies with the airports themselves and not the airlines. Airports are restrained by local government in what they can and cannot do, so it may well be that my earlier complaint about LaG not doing anything is unfounded and the state or city is holding them back from making improvements. If work continues to be slow, I'll have to look into these things.
- posted by levinson @ 11/26/2000 01:08:00 PM

 
Thanksgiving day fallout. Everything was running perfectly. The dinner was fabulous, prepared by my mother and sister. My grandmother came over, we all had a wonderful time. Somewhere in between the clearing of the dishes and the great dish washing clean-up, the sink got clogged. No one knows how or why, but something got down the drain and now has both the sink and the dish washer backed up. Normally, my bet would be some kind of mashed potatoes or other sticky/gooey side dish. The only chink in that armour is that this particular clog is taking out the dish washer as well. To my mind that says it was something that was put in the dish washer while my mom and sister were making the dinner. We know they had to run the thing once while making the meal. My bet is that something got down there via the dish washer drain and is now clogging up both. I doubt anyone would have noticed such a problematic substance when putting it into the dish washer, and perhaps it was a combination of ingredients from several different dishes. Nonetheless, my bet is on the first running of the dish washer during prep-time. Other than that, everything has been great.

I rented four movies on Wednesday that I hadn't seen as well as an N64 game, Road Rash 64. The movies have been pretty good. I enjoyed Titan A.E. and was especially impressed with the animation, although I still think Beast Machines is the best thing going. I found the first 20 minutes of Frequency to be unwatchable, and almost turned it off, but after that it became a cool thriller as long as you don't put too much thought into the various problems of time-lines and event sequences. I still have Rules of Engagement and The Patriot to go. As for the game, I was excited because the original Road Rash on Sega was one of the most enjoyable/maddening games I've ever played. Few games put the player through the highs and lows of smashing some opponents face in as you knock him off his motorcycle at 130mph only to have his buddy do the same to you 10 meters from the finish line. This game has perfected those elements by doing away with the whole element of winning a race simply by having the fastest bike or ditching one of the two skilled computer racers that accompany most games of this genre. Instead, unless you get knocked off your bike 1/2 mile or less from the finish line, you have a chance to catch up and win. All of that makes the game thoroughly enjoyable. What is frustrating is that aside from upgrading the graphics, they haven't done much to expand the elements of the game. That is, the weapons and game play are basically the same and the senery isn't greatly improved. I was hoping to see greater variation in both design and personality of the other racers rather than a few stock look-alikes depending on the kind of bike they're riding. The cops are still on their bikes, or in a car, although the cars don't do much (no helicopters or s.w.a.t. team units.) The pedestrians are there for you to hit, but there are no old ladies with shopping carts or women with strollers. There are no night time or foul weather races.

The lack of these elements don't take away from my enjoyment of the game, rather I felt that with the N64 machine, and with the examples set by Army Men and Zelda, they could have done more with it. I'd give it 2 broken controllers out of 4.

Genereating some early carpel tunnel syndrome here so it's time for more Rash64 (after I go hunting for some cheat codes.)
- posted by levinson @ 11/24/2000 09:00:00 AM

 
And the mad spinning goes on. This strikes me as exactly the kind of thing that the Bush campaign was castigating Gore for before the election. It is indicative of how far people will go to distort any information to their own devices. I think we're getting a clear indication of what how each camp would react under intense pressure and scrutiny if elected. The question is, would we even be able to evaluate those reactions effectively if we were dealing with another country wtih whom we have restricted media access. If things continue to go Gore's way, I wonder how much longer James Baker will be the Bush campaign's talking head, he seems to be getting a little over-heated, especially about the FLA Supreme Court's last ruling. I doubt we're in for a Nixonian, post-gubenetorial race, style melt-down, but he may start to, in Gore's words, "get snippy" with the media.
- posted by levinson @ 11/22/2000 12:31:00 PM

 
I'm not sure what kind of experience other people have had with DSL. I'm trying to help my parents with their installation (they like to put me to work as soon as I step off the plane; at least there's no snow to shovel) but Verizon not only keeps you on hold forever (it makes me wonder how large their customer support staff actually is; they can't be this far off on the needs of the market to their service) but whatever department you call is invariably the wrong one. The last time I actually spoke to a person, they disconnected me and I had to call back.

I did hear from one customer service guy about two hours ago who said that the DSL connection for the house, given the order date, shouldn't be active for another week. Why does it take 3 weeks to activate a DSL account? I've had plenty of trouble with my cable service, but I at least get to speak to someone within an hour of calling. If they can't offer better service than this, they're going to lose this war for people's internet connection money.
- posted by levinson @ 11/22/2000 09:24:00 AM

 
It's only my opinion, but this is way too early to be up on the first day of a vacation. If I'm up at I'm up at 6:30am there better not be any delays at LaGuardia. I had to get up at 4am to go to Arizona, but at least at that time I was able to see Dan Rather call back FLA for the second time live. No Dan now and I'm not sure any of the FLA Supreme Court Justices are awake.
- posted by levinson @ 11/22/2000 03:51:00 AM

 
Thanksgiving is a great holiday. I think the thing I like most about it is that there are no presents involved. Don't get me wrong, I love giving and receiving presents, but there is a certain amount of stress associated with the process, although I must commend Amazon.com for all their work in trying to make the gift shopping experience a little easier. Thanksgiving has the virtue of not having all that stress associated with it while still incorporating great food and general good cheer.

For me, the most trying part of the holiday will be getting home tomorrow. There's a flight that goes out of LaGuardia and into my home town, but LaG accounts for 20% of all the flight delays in the country. Because of that, I'm taking the earliest possible flight and hoping to beat the traffic on the busiest travel day of the year. Modern Humorist has a funny collection of Thanksgiving cards up right now, as well as some great paraphenalia regarding the brouhaha in Florida.

Their whole thing with Katherine Harris ("She seems open to reason") reminds of the movement Doonsebury started with this little piece of pen and ink. For anyone who saw Charlie's Angels, you'd appreciate Slate's take. "The CHAD is great.... the CHAD is great." Finally, as the spin machines whirl on and on in order to try and convince everyone who did and who should have done what in this election, I think David Greenberg's piece from October is a great reminder of how quickly the members of the media forget the events they covered, and how much they depend not the work of their own organizations either in the past or present, but on the prevailing wind of the moment. I'd like to see some more true investigative reporting out there rather than the constant peppering of pundits for the latest party lines.

I'm out of breath now.
- posted by levinson @ 11/21/2000 12:41:00 PM

 
I have an undying love for The Simpsons. There are innumerable pages both good and bad devoted to them, this being the most comprehensive in my opinion. I tape every new episode on Sunday nights, although I missed last weeks due to the fact that I was in Arizona.

A few months ago, the New Yorker did an article called, The Funniest Man in Television about a Simpsons writer named George Meyer. He now has the title of executive producer, but still contributes to the writing of the show. The article's author described his contributions as the kind of jokes that make you both guffaw in shock and laugh at the same time.

With this in mind, last night's episode had a priceless moment that I attribute to Meyer with no knowledge that it was his doing. An environmentally conscious Springfield has hooked their electric chair to solar power. The scene cuts to a priest overseeing Snake (the town's resident petty criminal) being electricuted. However, the solar cells produce so little power that Snake is simply jiggling all over his body. Snake then says, "Dude, we've been here all morning, do you think you could at least moisten my head-sponge?"

I laughed all night and am still laughing now about that. My brother thinks the show is slipping in quality. Having missed last week's episode, I can only say that I think this season's installments have been as funny as the stock episodes from the 95-98 seasons. Not blockbusters but very funny.

- posted by levinson @ 11/20/2000 08:46:00 AM

 
Now, the question is whether my little squiggle will carry past the first post.
- posted by levinson @ 11/18/2000 04:10:00 PM

 
Maiden voyage. My web site will be designed around this. Come to think of it, until I get the site up, I'll just keep this blog to myself. Hello?
- posted by levinson @ 11/18/2000 10:38:00 AM