NBA Danceoff

I vote Joey Crawford.

Performance Artist

Bill O'Reilly is one, apparently.

8 Pints Are the Breakfast of Champions

I never thought I would have two posts on the blog about Eric Bledsoe... let alone two in three days. But after the joke about his in-game consumption, I can't pass up an opportunity to show what all that liquid courage does for a man:

Competition Is Good

Kevin Drum has a piece today gathering together three separate stories about the problems caused by only two or three giant companies in various industries. The stories cover the meat-packing industry, the beer industry, and the publishing industry.

They all tell the same essential story: when an industry gets extremely consolidated. Consumers, other businesses, and the economy all suffer. Most of this consolidation began in the Reagan administration, but Democrats and Republican alike have allowed it continue. This is the problem with a political process that favors the powerful.

If Republicans would like to do something useful with all the hand-wringing about the election, they could adopt an actual "pro-competition" position. If Democrats want to beat them to the punch, that would be fine too. Government has two roles in the market system that are critical. One is ensuring competition. The other is protecting consumers and workers. Our government does a poor job of both.

Move Over Babe Ruth

Eric Bledsoe apparently has decided on an old school performance enhancing drug:

Cheers to that, Eric!

Friday Song Day

This time it is The Sheepdogs:

The House

I don't have much to say about this on a Friday afternoon, but it seemed worth passing along:

It can be a bit difficult to tally up the popular vote in House elections because you have to go ballot by ballot, and many incumbents run unopposed. But The Washington Post’s Dan Keating did the work and found that Democrats got 54,301,095 votes while Republicans got 53,822,442. That’s a close election — 48.8%-48.5% –but it’s still a popular vote win for the Democrats. Those precise numbers might change a bit as the count finalizes, but the tally isn’t likely to flip.

Of course, the total House tally is a meaningless number in terms of who runs the House. It would seem to suggest that the Republicans must have had an awfully successful redistricting plan though.

Missouri Hates Obama

A few weeks ago, I posted a chart that showed that Missouri had a larger shift away from Obama in polls than any other state except Utah since the 2008 election. Well, the actual election results showed the same thing. 

Romney received 10.2% more of the vote than McCain did in Utah. In Missouri, it was 9.6%. I believe, the next closest state was Indiana (I think) with a 5.3% shift. This is particularly strange in an election where Missourians elected a Democratic senator, governor, secretary of state, treasurer, and attorney general. In fact, the only state-wide office to go to a Republican was the lieutenant governor.

So, what gives? Why do Missourians hate Obama?

Why Republicans Were So Sure

There are pieces all over the Internet talking about why Republicans were so convinced they would win and were so shocked when they did not. The increasingly cocooned nature of the news on the right seems like the culprit to me, and watching Fox News on election night would seem to support that theory.

The whole question though seems particularly crazy when you consider that, if Mitt Romney was representative of the conservative id, that they already knew they had no chance at 47% of the electorate. At that point, Obama needed only to find another 3% of voters to agree with him (plus one, theoretically). The idea that he couldn't go find that is pretty implausible... But if this election taught us anything, I suppose it is that math and conservatism are not good bedfellows.

Who Would Have Been Better?

A lot of talk today about how Romney never really had a chance because he wasn't a good candidate, wasn't a real conservative, wasn't (insert whatever he wasn't). But, an article on Slate about how the right's extremism killed Romney contains this paragraph that I think indirectly makes a point about why Romney was really the only choice:

This failure began with the spectacle of the extended primary season, which was dominated by candidates with views far outside the political mainstream. Rick Santorum rejected the separation of church and state. Newt Gingrich challenged the notion of judicial supremacy. Michele Bachmann claimed the government had been infiltrated by radical Muslims. Donald Trump refused to recognize the validity of Obama’s birth certificate. Rick Perry wanted to take down more parts of the federal government than he could successfully name. In the debates, the country saw the GOP talking to itself and sounding like a bizarre fringe party, not a responsible governing one. 

So, which of these nuts was a better candidate that Romney? None of them. In fact, if any of the other Republican primary candidates had been the nominee, last night would've been decided a couple of months ago. Mitt Romney, for all his awkardness and missteps, was a very formidable candidate. I know plenty of liberals who didn't like him, but I know far fewer who thought he couldn't be a competent president.

Republicans are going to need to face up to the fact that Mitt Romney wasn't the problem, they are. They are going to have ensure that competent people run for office and can win in their primaries. And more importantly, they have to make sure that they don't hamstring their own candidates by making them act like baffoons before they ever enter battle with a Democrat.

Your Cable Media Choices

I had heard someone arguing recently that MSNBC has become as nakedly partisan as Fox News. These photos don't really prove otherwise, but they certainly are a data point in the other direction.

The homepages of the 3 major cable news networks at about 10:45 this morning:

I report, you decide.

Get It Together Missouri

I am a responsibly informed voter. Or maybe I am not, because today I found out my Missouri House District is not the one I thought it was. I believe I must live right on a line, but after 45 minutes of searching on Google, not one place can I find the updated District maps for Missouri with enough detail to see my district.  Now my fault for assuming I knew what district I was in, but...

What the hell? The Missouri Supreme Court upheld the new districts in March. So how is it possible that our great state hasn't managed to update the state House page by October with new maps?

Get it together Missouri.

Appendix

From Dog House Diaries.

The Political Significance of My Tastes

Well, there isn't any actually. However, Buzzfeed has a few pieces up explaining how I relate to the Obama and Romney voters based on my tastes in things like movies and food.

As it turns out, my preferences spread me across the spectrum a bit more than my politics do.

I am a

Media Liberal
Book Liberal
Booze Moderate Conservtive
Movie Independent
Music Moderate Liberal
Fast Food Moderate Liberal (Except I Love Chik-Fil-A sandwiches)
Food Brand Conservative
TV Show Non-Qualifier
TV Network Independent

But in reality I am the worst kind of liberal because most of the stuff on all the lists was more mainstream than anything I prefer. I am told snobbery equals liberalism, so there you have it I guess.

Quite an Endorsement

There have been quite a few tortured logic endorsements of Romney in the last week. David Frum clearly provides one of the best.

The question over his head is not a question about him at all. It's a question about his party - and that question is the same whether Romney wins or loses. The congressional Republicans have shown themselves a destructive and irrational force in American politics. But we won't reform the congressional GOP by re-electing President Obama. If anything, an Obama re-election will not only aggravate the extremism of the congressional GOP, but also empower them: an Obama re-election raises the odds in favor of big sixth-year sweep for the congressional GOP - and very possibly a seventh-year impeachment. A Romney election will at least discourage the congressional GOP from deliberately pushing the US into recession in 2013. Added bonus: a Romney presidency likely means that the congressional GOP will lose seats in 2014, as they deserve.

How To Keep Reality at Bay

Somebody puts out a report that refutes one of your core beliefs? Just get rid of it.

The Congressional Research Service has withdrawn an economic report that found no correlation between top tax rates and economic growth, a central tenet of conservative economy theory, after Senate Republicans raised concerns about the paper’s findings and wording.    

Easy as that.

   

November

So, it's November... Anything going on this month?