Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Life sucks then you die...
No political posting here today. Tonight I just went to my Senate Districts monthly meeting/dinner and I found out that one of the founders of our group had just died from bone cancer. He died earlier this month after being diagnosed in March. I didn't even know, he was 65, his name is John Swon. If you are religious (even if your not) I would appreciate if you readers out there (all 2 of you) to keep him and his family in your prayers. Also a much sadder situation I found out about last friday that was probably the equivalent to getting punched in the stomach. I still go to all my old high school's football games because I am a nerd like that. I noticed that there was a jersey on the sideline, it was the jersey of a classmate of mine who graduated the year after I did and I knew he had/has been battling cancer. I actually talked with his mom for 5-10 minutes a couple of weeks ago before a away game. Anyway, I had kinda one of those oh shit what happened thoughts then forgot about it. That is until a mom of a friend of his who I had known for years told me that he was home from the hospital, I could just tell in her face that this was good news. I asked the question I feared to know the answer to, "It's not terminal is it?", she said yes quietly, figuring in for a penny in for a pound I asked, "how long?", "2 months" she replied. 2 FUCKING MONTHS. Man at a time like this it really puts things into persepective, I really couldn't enjoy the rest of the game after that, I left at halftime partly because I had a presidential debate party to go to and partly because I couldn't keep my composure there. The kid is one tough son of a bitch and to think that he's not even going to live to see his 21st birthday. It's just not fair, thank god I have my faith to fall back on. I really don't know how people who don't believe in a higher power deal with death. Knowing or at least believing that there is something beyond this life is actually quite comforting despite what "elightened individuals" may say. In the end it doesn't make it any easier but your comforted with the thought/belief that they are at peace now and not suffering anymore. Still no one should have to go through what he has gone through and continues to go through. On a happier note I just joined a group on facebook called "ideas for Matt". He has a lot of friends and you can believe that he will have a blast before he leaves this earth. When his time comes his friends and family want to make sure he lived with no regrets. With that being said does anyone have any ideas for him. I know you don't know him and I don't know him as well as I'd like to but I hope to before he leaves.
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
The Doomsday electoral scenario...
Imagine if we wake up on November 5th and there is no president-elect. Worse, we have to go to our constitution to decide it, how can this happen? Well thanks to DC getting 3 electoral votes the number of electoral votes are now 538, not 535. A 269-269 tie is while however improbable a very real possiblity this time around. Don't believe me? Check out this article I found on Drudge courtesy of the Washington Times:
President Obama, with Vice President Palin? President Biden? President Pelosi? Call them the "Doomsday" scenarios -- On Nov. 5, the presidential election winds up in a electoral-college tie, 269-269, the Democrat-controlled House picks Sen. Barack Obama as president, but the Senate, with former Democrat Joe Lieberman voting with Republicans, deadlocks at 50-50, so Vice President Dick Cheney steps in to break the tie to make Republican Sarah Palin his successor.
"Wow," said longtime presidential historian Stephen Hess. "Wow, that would be amazing, wouldn't it?"
"If this scenario ever happened, it would be like a scene from the movie 'Scream' for Democrats," said Democratic strategist Mary Anne Marsh. "The only thing worse for the Democrats than losing the White House, again, when it had the best chance to win in a generation, but to do so at the hands of Cheney and Lieberman. That would be cruel."
Sound impossible? It's not. There are at least a half-dozen plausible ways the election can end in a tie, and at least one very plausible possibility - giving each candidate the states in which they now lead in the polls, only New Hampshire - which went Republican in 2000 and Democratic in 2004, each time by just 1.5 percent - needs to swap to the Republican column to wind up with a 269-269 tie.
There are currently 10 tossup states, according to RealClearPol-itics.com, which keeps a running average of all state polls. If Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain wins Ohio, Virginia, New Hampshire and Indiana - not at all far-fetched - and Mr. Obama takes reliably Democratic states Pennsylvania and Michigan, and flips Colorado (in which he holds a slight poll lead), with the two splitting New Mexico and Nevada, the electoral vote would be tied at 269.
Absurd? Possibly, and there is not complete agreement among constitutional experts on whether a newly elected Congress or the currently sitting House and Senate would make the decision.
So try this scenario: The newly elected House, seated in January, is unable to muster a majority to choose a president after a 269-269 tie, but the Senate, which is expected to be controlled by Democrats, picks Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. from the Democratic ticket. If the House is still deadlocked at noon on Inauguration Day, Jan. 20, Mr. Biden becomes acting president.
Or try this one on for size: Neither the House nor the Senate fulfills its constitutional duty to select the president and the vice president by Jan. 20, so House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, California Democrat, becomes acting president until the whole mess is sorted out.
"That would cause all kinds of lawsuits: We would have 50 Floridas, and we might not know who the president is for two years," said Judith Best, a political science and Electoral College specialist at the State University of New York in Cortland.
The archaic system in the Constitution was set up in the days of oil lamps and horse-drawn carriages. After the presidential vote on the first Tuesday in November, electors have until the Monday after the second Wednesday in December, this year Dec. 15, to reach the state capital, where they cast their ballots for president.
The electoral vote is then transmitted "sealed to the seat of the government of the United States, directed to the president of the Senate," according to the 12th Amendment. If there's a tie, the 1804 amendment says, the House of Representatives "shall choose immediately, by ballot, the president."
"The Constitution says 'immediately,'" Mr. Hess said. "It's that word 'immediately' that makes me believe it's got to be the outgoing Congress that makes the decision, because we know that the Electoral College ballots are counted in December."
But despite the delicious possibility that Mr. Cheney would break a Senate tie to create a Obama-Palin White House, several other constitutional scholars say, forget the Constitution. They say the operative - and decisive - verbiage was set out in U.S. Code Title 3, Chapter 1, Section 15, in 1934.
"Congress shall be in session on the sixth day of January succeeding every meeting of the electors. The Senate and House of Representatives shall meet in the Hall of the House of Representatives at the hour of 1 o'clock in the afternoon on that day," the section says.
That, they say, means the new Congress would decide the president and vice president in the event of an Electoral College tie. Here's where things get dicey, though. Back to the Constitution, the 12th Amendment: " ... in choosing the president, the votes shall be taken by states, the representation from each state having one vote." That means that a state's entire House delegation gets just one vote each - California, with 53 House members, would get one vote; Alaska, with its one representative, would get one vote.
Florida, for instance, has 16 Republicans and nine Democrats. That means the delegation would (almost certainly) vote 16-9 for Mr. McCain, while Colorado, with four Democrats and three Republicans, would vote 4-3 for Mr. Obama.
In the current House, Mr. Obama would win - 27 delegations have a majority of Democrats, 21 have a majority of Republicans, and two states, Kansas and Mr. McCain's home state of Arizona, are evenly split.
But those numbers will change Nov. 4, and Paul Sracic, associate professor in the department of political science Youngstown State University in Ohio, said they could change dramatically. Of the 27 state congressional delegations with a majority of Democrats, 25 of them would switch to deadlocked or Republican control if two or more seats change to Republican.
At least 26 state delegations in the House must agree before the next president can be chosen. But even if Democrats maintain a majority, there would be pressure on Democratic delegations to vote Republican in states where voters chose Mr. McCain.
It took 36 ballots in the House to select Thomas Jefferson as the third president after the 1800 election ended in a 73-73 tie. There was so much animosity after that election that Aaron Burr, elected vice president, faced off in a duel with Alexander Hamilton, who had thrown his support behind Jefferson. Burr shot Hamilton dead in a duel.
The number of electors, 538, is equal to the number of senators - 100 - and representatives - 435 - in the Congress, plus the three electors added in 1961 when the 23rd Amendment gave the District a say in U.S. presidential elections. Thus, there have been 10 presidential elections in which a 269-269 tie was possibly, but it has never occurred.
"The probability of a tie in 2008 is about 1.5 percent, which is slightly higher than we calculated at about the same time back in 2004," said Mr. Sracic, who enlisted the help of the university's math department to come up with a possible 1,024 combinations with the current 10 states now considered tossups.
"What really strikes you is how easy it would be for a tie to occur. Take the 2004 map and switch Iowa, New Mexico and Colorado into the Blue column, which is what the poll numbers indicate. Then, take New Hampshire and give it to McCain, which is what two recent polls suggest is going to happen. There is your tie."
Pardon my french boy HOLY SHIT. Can you imagine possibly president Obama with Vice President Palin, my would that be a sight to behold. Hell, it may actually be good for democracy. If this happens it will make the 2000 mess look like a walk in the freaking park.
President Obama, with Vice President Palin? President Biden? President Pelosi? Call them the "Doomsday" scenarios -- On Nov. 5, the presidential election winds up in a electoral-college tie, 269-269, the Democrat-controlled House picks Sen. Barack Obama as president, but the Senate, with former Democrat Joe Lieberman voting with Republicans, deadlocks at 50-50, so Vice President Dick Cheney steps in to break the tie to make Republican Sarah Palin his successor.
"Wow," said longtime presidential historian Stephen Hess. "Wow, that would be amazing, wouldn't it?"
"If this scenario ever happened, it would be like a scene from the movie 'Scream' for Democrats," said Democratic strategist Mary Anne Marsh. "The only thing worse for the Democrats than losing the White House, again, when it had the best chance to win in a generation, but to do so at the hands of Cheney and Lieberman. That would be cruel."
Sound impossible? It's not. There are at least a half-dozen plausible ways the election can end in a tie, and at least one very plausible possibility - giving each candidate the states in which they now lead in the polls, only New Hampshire - which went Republican in 2000 and Democratic in 2004, each time by just 1.5 percent - needs to swap to the Republican column to wind up with a 269-269 tie.
There are currently 10 tossup states, according to RealClearPol-itics.com, which keeps a running average of all state polls. If Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain wins Ohio, Virginia, New Hampshire and Indiana - not at all far-fetched - and Mr. Obama takes reliably Democratic states Pennsylvania and Michigan, and flips Colorado (in which he holds a slight poll lead), with the two splitting New Mexico and Nevada, the electoral vote would be tied at 269.
Absurd? Possibly, and there is not complete agreement among constitutional experts on whether a newly elected Congress or the currently sitting House and Senate would make the decision.
So try this scenario: The newly elected House, seated in January, is unable to muster a majority to choose a president after a 269-269 tie, but the Senate, which is expected to be controlled by Democrats, picks Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. from the Democratic ticket. If the House is still deadlocked at noon on Inauguration Day, Jan. 20, Mr. Biden becomes acting president.
Or try this one on for size: Neither the House nor the Senate fulfills its constitutional duty to select the president and the vice president by Jan. 20, so House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, California Democrat, becomes acting president until the whole mess is sorted out.
"That would cause all kinds of lawsuits: We would have 50 Floridas, and we might not know who the president is for two years," said Judith Best, a political science and Electoral College specialist at the State University of New York in Cortland.
The archaic system in the Constitution was set up in the days of oil lamps and horse-drawn carriages. After the presidential vote on the first Tuesday in November, electors have until the Monday after the second Wednesday in December, this year Dec. 15, to reach the state capital, where they cast their ballots for president.
The electoral vote is then transmitted "sealed to the seat of the government of the United States, directed to the president of the Senate," according to the 12th Amendment. If there's a tie, the 1804 amendment says, the House of Representatives "shall choose immediately, by ballot, the president."
"The Constitution says 'immediately,'" Mr. Hess said. "It's that word 'immediately' that makes me believe it's got to be the outgoing Congress that makes the decision, because we know that the Electoral College ballots are counted in December."
But despite the delicious possibility that Mr. Cheney would break a Senate tie to create a Obama-Palin White House, several other constitutional scholars say, forget the Constitution. They say the operative - and decisive - verbiage was set out in U.S. Code Title 3, Chapter 1, Section 15, in 1934.
"Congress shall be in session on the sixth day of January succeeding every meeting of the electors. The Senate and House of Representatives shall meet in the Hall of the House of Representatives at the hour of 1 o'clock in the afternoon on that day," the section says.
That, they say, means the new Congress would decide the president and vice president in the event of an Electoral College tie. Here's where things get dicey, though. Back to the Constitution, the 12th Amendment: " ... in choosing the president, the votes shall be taken by states, the representation from each state having one vote." That means that a state's entire House delegation gets just one vote each - California, with 53 House members, would get one vote; Alaska, with its one representative, would get one vote.
Florida, for instance, has 16 Republicans and nine Democrats. That means the delegation would (almost certainly) vote 16-9 for Mr. McCain, while Colorado, with four Democrats and three Republicans, would vote 4-3 for Mr. Obama.
In the current House, Mr. Obama would win - 27 delegations have a majority of Democrats, 21 have a majority of Republicans, and two states, Kansas and Mr. McCain's home state of Arizona, are evenly split.
But those numbers will change Nov. 4, and Paul Sracic, associate professor in the department of political science Youngstown State University in Ohio, said they could change dramatically. Of the 27 state congressional delegations with a majority of Democrats, 25 of them would switch to deadlocked or Republican control if two or more seats change to Republican.
At least 26 state delegations in the House must agree before the next president can be chosen. But even if Democrats maintain a majority, there would be pressure on Democratic delegations to vote Republican in states where voters chose Mr. McCain.
It took 36 ballots in the House to select Thomas Jefferson as the third president after the 1800 election ended in a 73-73 tie. There was so much animosity after that election that Aaron Burr, elected vice president, faced off in a duel with Alexander Hamilton, who had thrown his support behind Jefferson. Burr shot Hamilton dead in a duel.
The number of electors, 538, is equal to the number of senators - 100 - and representatives - 435 - in the Congress, plus the three electors added in 1961 when the 23rd Amendment gave the District a say in U.S. presidential elections. Thus, there have been 10 presidential elections in which a 269-269 tie was possibly, but it has never occurred.
"The probability of a tie in 2008 is about 1.5 percent, which is slightly higher than we calculated at about the same time back in 2004," said Mr. Sracic, who enlisted the help of the university's math department to come up with a possible 1,024 combinations with the current 10 states now considered tossups.
"What really strikes you is how easy it would be for a tie to occur. Take the 2004 map and switch Iowa, New Mexico and Colorado into the Blue column, which is what the poll numbers indicate. Then, take New Hampshire and give it to McCain, which is what two recent polls suggest is going to happen. There is your tie."
Pardon my french boy HOLY SHIT. Can you imagine possibly president Obama with Vice President Palin, my would that be a sight to behold. Hell, it may actually be good for democracy. If this happens it will make the 2000 mess look like a walk in the freaking park.
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Where is the bottom for this market...
Man I could be venturing off into dangerous territory with this one. Economics is not my strongest suit, that being said I usually watch CNBC 1-2 hours a day (mostly Mad Money) and consider myself somewhat knowledgeable about the stock market. I am opening this up to anyone who knows anything about this type of economy. When and where is the bottom for this market? Will it happen tomorrow? Next week? Next month? Sometime in 2009 (god forbid)? What is the bottom for the Dow Jones? 10000? 9000? 8000? 7000? Or maybe even lower? That being said after watching the first few minutes of Cramer I think the Dow will bottom out at around 7,000 sometime around Halloween. I am trying to get some cash available because, and I'll be honest, I have dollar signs in my eyes right now. I'm drooling at the possibility of being able to make an absolute killing right now in the market. Stocks that have good bottom lines and solid "fundamentals" are being sold off in this panic frenzy are way undervalued at this point and they could go lower. As FDR said, "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." Fear causes people to do irrational things, irrational things lead to unintended results. Word to the wise, people who are confident and keep their cool (me and hopefully at least a few of you out there) will see a 100-1000% return on their even short-term investment if you do your research.
I'm back, sort of....
Hello to all who are actually still reading this blog. It has been forever since I posted here but alas I have not stopped writing (well typing I guess). To anyone who cares I have been continuing to do my daily journals for my book that I hope to get published sometime in 2009. I have also been a regular commenter on anti-strib. They have a blog I can only dream of having some day. I will be back to posting 1-2 times a day this week, maybe even later today.
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