Rambling Rhodes

Some Points

ONE: 58 million people did not vote for Bush/Cheney on Tuesday because they were against gays. Yes, the "moral" vote played a surprising part, and possibly a substantial part, in the overall turnout, but it was by no means the main reason people voted the way they did.

TWO: Middle America is not comprised of just a bunch of uneducated, uninformed Bible-bangers. There are doctors, and there are lawyers, and there are professors, and there are journalists and there are millions and millions of very smart, educated and informed people living in middle America who just happened to vote based on a different set of opinions than Coastal America. It does not make Middle America inferior to Coastal America, or vice versa.

THREE: Had the election gone the other way, I'm sure we'd be hearing all about how the election was a repudiation of the war on terror and in Iraq, and you'd be hearing precious little nothing about the legions of conservertive voters who turned out in record numbers based on "moral" reasons.

FOUR: Who I actually voted for may surprise a lot of you, but I won't be saying who until I'm damned good and ready, if ever.

FIVE: To all the people singing about moving to Canada and that America is fucked, please take a sizable chill pill, sit back, and then start thinking about how you can help America become the America you'd like to see, whatever that may be, and then become active in trying to achieve it. I was in Canada recently. It was a lot like America, except it's currency is worth 80 cents to our dollar. That, and Toronto, inexplicably, had a lot of homeless people. And it's going to get really cold there shortly.

SIX: It's the weekend, people. Get out and enjoy yourselves, and think about something else for awhile.

REALLY LATE UPDATE: Glenn Reynolds writes: If you think that much of America is like a foreign country, you're not likely to win many elections -- because it's hard to get foreigners to vote for you. Calling the voters dumb probably doesn't do much to win people over, either. It always strikes me that so many people who are quick to note the importance of understanding the differences in perception between nations, or races, or sexual preferences, and to try to bridge those gaps, are so unwilling to do the same thing where people from elsewhere in their own country are concerned. But Democrats must do better, or become a regional party. Because contempt doesn't win a lot of votes.

Heh

Of the many interesting Google searches tht have landed on my site over the past couple of days, none made me chuckle quite as much as:

"what+is+a+big+bowel+movement"

Just for future reference, plenty of fairly big bowel movements can be found here.

Just A Thought

Stop doing frickin' exit polls.

Oops

I thought this was more than just a little bit interesting. Like or loathe the man, you can't let stuff like that slip through editing, although it looks like CNN Netscape has since wiped all evidence of their mistake from their servers.

It reminded me of when I worked at the Winona Daily News, way back in the early days of my employment there when I was in charge of writing obituaries and transcribing court rulings and police reports. Fun stuff. Journalism can be so glamorous.

Anyway, when writing obits, we had to be sure to slug the the file names as something that could be recognized quickly during layout, so I typicall would write helmsobit, or thomasobit, or whateverlastnameobit, so people in layout would know that the file was an obituary.

I was told that my predecessor got in considerable trouble once after he messed up during a particularly hectic news evening. Obituary requests just kept coming in, and he was getting fed up with writing so many obituaries so close to deadline. So, he went and slugged one file as anotherfuckingobit. That did not go over too well with the folks both in editing and layout.

Now THAT'S Determination

In Lighter News. . .

Man tries to convert lions to Jesus, gets bitten.

Awwww, fuck!

Not this close shit again.

UPDATE: Okay, that was a knee-jerk reaction on my part, having just woke up and glanced over the headlines through a morning sheen of eye-boogers. Bush won the popular vote by about 3.5 million, which is not a small amount. And, Ohio looks like it will be Bush's, no matter how many "provisional" ballots can be snatched from the air. If we have to wait, we have to wait, but Kerry doesn't seem to have anywhere near the legitimacy to contest this election that Gore did in 2000. If the Kerry camp drags this one on, they'll tarnish themselves needlessly, and blow any chance for Edwards in 2008 who, four years from now, could very well be an ideal candidate.

But, I'm droning on. Bush for four more years, for better or for worse. Let's move on.

UPDATE II: Thanks you, Sen. Kerry, for not making us go through 2000-Lite.

Liveblogging The 2004 Election

Because this election is, according to some reports, the most important thing to happen to this planet since the first amino acids combined to form the first single celled organism, I feel it is my duty to record this fantabulous day, as it happens. At least until the end of my workday. After that, I'll probably have some other shit to do.

9:05 a.m. -- According to electoral-vote.com, Kerry's going to take this election in a walk, or at least a slow lope, or possibly a brisk jog.

9:16 a.m. -- According to an imaginary, late-breaking poll conducted entirely in my own mind, 86 percent of respondents believe that "Everyone Else Has Had More Sex Than Me."

9:33 a.m. -- It occurs to me that, despite repeated claims that this election was going to be rocked by an October Event, such as the Bush Admin hoisting forth bin Laden up on a platter with an apple jammed in his mouth, or the eradication of a major U.S. city through terrorist machinations, no such October Event occurred. I'm curious if all those raving moonbats who made such outlandish claims along the lines of there "WOULD BE NO ELECTION THIS YEAR" are willing to come forth and eat some crow with a side of humble pie. Just wondering.

9:54 a.m. -- According to this Newsweek article, the guy who wrote this Election 2004 piece has the last name of "Kuntzman."

10:05 a.m. -- In other news, Osama Bin Laden apparently said something about something but, perhaps indicative of the man's diminished significance, not many people apparently give a crap what he has to say about anything.

10:35 a.m. -- Can't get enough of today's astronomically important, if-you-don't-vote-you-should-stripped-naked-and-raked-over-with-cheese-graters election? Well now, in addition to the election results, you can also track election PROBLEMS. Florida and Pennsylvania are among the states experiencing the most problems. I'm shocked. SHOCKED I tell you.

10:56 a.m. -- According to another imaginary poll conducted entirely within my own head, 98 percent of respondents agree that I smell fucking terrific today.

11:14 a.m. -- Just in case you didn't realize it already.

11:41 a.m. -- In a classic case of a headline not matching up with the picture, we have CNN.com:

Incidently, I pass that little town hall every time I drive to the Cities. It's cute, don't you think?

12:13 p.m. -- The election morning has passed without incident. Now we move into the unknown world of the election afternoon, followed by, if all goes well, the election evening. I just had two tacos for lunch, and they tasted very, very, not-so-good. I'm not sure what, if anything, that has to do with the election, except that both candidates, too, are very, very, not-so-good.

12:24 p.m. -- Bush takes the Guam vote. Guam? Who knew?

12:48 p.m. -- Well, somebody's going to get a new president.

1:06 p.m. -- Whoa. Electoral-Vote.com has updated, and it now has a single electoral vote between Bush and Kerry, with neither of them having the required number of electoral votes to win. Now, wouldn't THAT be an onion in the ointment. I can't tell you how much I'm hoping for a definitive victory on either side.

1:28 p.m. -- How could he possibly smile with that green monster clamped to his hand?

2:18 p.m. -- Well, I think it's fair to say that this election day is reaching a fever pitch. I say this because my Internet access has slowed to a fucking crawl. Good Lord, you'd think I was connected to the Internet through a couple of tin cans and a string.

3:08 p.m. -- It seems odd to me that my polling place, like so many polling places, is in a church. Separation of church and state and all that, you know?

3:32 p.m. -- I'm heading out to vote. I'll let you know how it all turned out, or if I was turned away by MoveOn.org nutters whipping me with a flail. Probably not. This is Rochester, Minn., after all.

4:25 p.m. -- Okay, so that's done. The vote's been cast. It's funny, though. Every time I vote, for some reason I envision the ballot being this wondrous tome where the candidates' names are written in gold leaf. But, it's so deliciously plain, and the leading candidates aren't given special billing or anything. And you also find out that there are a lot of other candidates for president who you probably never even heard about.

Alizee is hot in panties.

Credit Cards and a Scary Election

I've never been in debt. Okay, that's not entirely true. Yes, I've been in the kind of debt where I had to make car payments, and I'm currently in the kind of debt that says I have to make house payments.

I've never been in credit card debt, however. Truth be told, I've never even owned a credit card. I don't trust them. I've been conditioned not to trust them thanks to many years of living with college roommates.

Most of my college roommates had this weird outlook on credit cards. Basically, they thought credit cards were magical pieces of plastic that just magically paid for things and that they were somehow immune from the the ensuing debt that came about due to excessive credit card spending.

I'll admit it: I was sort of jealous of my roommates and their magical credit cards. After all, they always seemed to have money and, if they didn't, they just whipped out their credit cards. Books? Put them on the credit card. Food? Put it on the credit card. Night out at a strip club? credit card.

And yet there I was writing checks and budgeting like a fool. I remember thinking that I was doing everything all wrong. I mean, there I would sit, meticulously lording over my finances, while my roommates went waltzing all over town swiping their credit cards with the careless glee of a six-year-old with a loaded pistol.

Then, one year, I was a roommate with a guy named Chad. Chad was actually a former high school classmate of mine. He was, and is, a tech-head. He's one of those guys who was born to know technology. Way back in elementary school, he taught me how to write simple programs for the Apple IIc, and he always just seemed to know everything about computers.

But he didn't know shit about personal finances. He whipped out any one of his many credit cards with the swiftness and ease of a Old West gunslinger. By the time we became roommates, he had already accrued over $10,000 in credit card debt.

I remember thinking what an incredibly large amount of money that seemed to be, especially when I factored in the understanding that he also received financial aid, and that he also worked. Granted, he worked at the local Brach's candy factory on the Gummi Bear line, which paid about as well as you might imagine, but it was still money, so I came to the conclusion that old Chad was a pretty carefree spender.

Well, one day, I popped into Chad's outrageously messy room where I noticed, tucked between two huge bags of pilfered defective Gummi Bears, a credit card notice that was slugged "Urgent!" and another that was slugged "Immediate Payment Required" and still another that read "We Break Fingers And Toes."

Then the calls started coming in, usually two or three a day. "Is Mr. Haugen available? We really need to speak with him." No, he's not here. "Are you sure you're not really Mr. Haugen?" Yes, I'm sure. "Well, when he comes in, have him call Mike at Discover immediately." *sound of shotgun cocking* Will do.

Chad was masterful when it came to avoiding creditors. He always seemed to leave the apartment just two or three minutes before a creditor called. It was like he had some sort of sixth sense. Which was all fine and dandy, except that I ended up being the intermediary between Chad and the creditors, so I got to absorb all the impatient anger and suspicion of basically every credit card company on the planet.

It was the day a creditor appeared, in person, at our doorstep that I realized Chad's debt situation was probably more dire than Chad cared to admit. There was a knock at the door, I answered, and a gentleman in a suit that looked both impressive and threatening stood before me. He asked to see a Mr. Chad Haugen, at which point I heard a little scuffling emanating from Chad's room as Chad scurried out the back entrance which, conveniently, was located at the far end of his bedroom.

We chatted together, the ominous creditor and me, for about an hour, waiting for Chad to get home, even though, of course, there was no way in holy hell Chad was going to make an appearance while that guy was in our apartment. I even had to produce my ID, so the creditor was satisfied that I wasn't, in fact, Chad Haugen.

After that, I believe, Chad ended up getting a loan from his parents, or somebody, so he could pay off his credit card debt at least enough to keep the creditors at bay. He eventually got a job working at IBM, which was a long-assed commute from Winona to Rochester, but paid a whole lot more than the Gummi Bear line.

As for me, Chad's experience with credit cards pretty much scared me away from plastic for good.

Scary Election

Melissa and I carved these late Saturday night.