"Shoeless" Joe Of Iraq

So there is "Joe" the plumber, "Joe" Sixpack, and now....."Shoeless Joe".....who tossed two shoes at Bush today.

If I may offer my analysis.....the Iraqi PM....al-Maliki....was the star.

GW did the football quarterback shuffle and dodged shoe one and two. There was al-Maliki, who didn't dodge a single one and even put his hand up to catch the second one thrown.

I was pretty impressed, and think if you were ever going to recruit for a professional dodge ball team....I'd want this al-Maliki guy on my team. He won't step away from the ball....he'll step toward it.

Anyway, my two cents. And the political fallout from this....some dude will be famous for life, for throwing two shoes at Bush. If thats the best you can do to get famous.....you might as well be digging septic tanks for a living.

Electoral College Change?

A discussion erupted over the weekend amongst the press and some bloggers over the electoral collegee (since today is the actual voting day). Some folks had the mind that this might be the last time we ever use the electoral college.....expecting a massive change in four years. I sat there kinda laughing over this sense of thinking.

To make any massive change....one of two things would have to occur. Either we have a massive state-by-state vote which shifts a majority of the states to side with the popular vote idea. To get this, in my humble opinion.....would be almost impossible. But the other side of this shift could be a consitutional convention, which is something that both parties sit in fear of....with anything possibly up for change.

Who gains if we dump the electoral college? Third party groups would suddenly be able to influence five or six states, and push a major contender to a very low position. I would be able to push my influence across to the three west coast states on five central themes.....and probably downsize both the major political parties.

The second group to gain? Big states would easily attract the two political parties. States like Iowa or Kansas? Don't expect any visits from the top two candidates....unless its in Kansas City.

Would we toss this entire primary game? I would think this would be part of the total renovation package. Why bother with Iowa if the popular vote is the "edge" to the entire win. Why waste money on TV ad's in Mississippi or New Mexico?

For those who want "change"....you'd best ask yourself what exactly you gain. I can rig up any election with an entirely different set of values and rules in a matter of a week or two. For every shift you make.....I can make a counter-shift. We've had this electoral college system for over two hundred years.....perhaps you should ask yourself why, and then pause here long enough to consider the consequences of change.

Did You Know.....

Another one of my "Did You Know" series....from the questions at the People's Cube. I pondered them ever so lightly.

Did you know that "free" national healthcare will be paid for by somebody, probably you?

This is basically the problem of universal healthcare....it really isn't free. And for the fifteen million today who have no healthcare and can't afford it....you will have to contribute to the bucket...to make sure they get covered. This is the one part of the grand scheme that most folks don't grasp...someone is paying for it.

Did you know that the news presented on television and in the papers is arbitrarily selected by editors and there is no requirement that it be important or even true?

This is something that most Americans fail to grasp. Some guy will pick and choose whats going to be the top fifteen topics of "news" tonight for ABC News. He'll have the choice of telling a variety of stories, in various slants and angles. If he doesn't want to discuss some stupid senator who might be a democrat...that is the choice of the editor. The amusing thing is that he could add "fluff" to half of the article and make it basically untrue or simply skip over a dozen facts and make the story seem unimportant. Its left to you to fill the squares.

Did you know that the national media's fantasy that Barack Obama and Chicago's political culture have little to do with each other is less statistically probable than being struck by lightning or winning the lottery?

This is a odd question that the People's Cube posed and I sat over it for a while. Its remarkable that no one has ever discussed how politics in Chicago work...and the political relationship that Obama had for a decade in Illinois. If you were a nobody in Chicago...how would you rig the system to get ahead of the local figures? Would CNN like to explain that question? Would ABC like to take a chance and just tell us a weepy-eyed story? I doubt it...best to cover tornadoes and floods...thats always safe.