If A Business Were Democratic….

I want you to think back to any job that you’ve ever had.

Ask yourself: if the operation of that business were decided by a democratic vote, how long would that business last?

I think if you’re being honest with yourself, the answer is not long.  Not long at all.

Imagine the staff at McDonalds holding elections every quarter to elect the next restuarant manager.  Imagine a candidate who promises to cut hours and increase wages without affecting profits.  Imagine a candidate who promises to increase wages but increase hours.  Imagine a candidate who promises to increase wages and cut hours to zero for the McDonalds employees who are “disadvantaged” (as arbitrarily designated by the candidate, once elected).  Which candidate do you think would win?

The answer is pretty clear.  How would that affect the business’s ability to make a profit?  To break even?  To continue operating?  To continue to pay its employees?

Just think about it.  Apply this thought game to your place of employment.

“But Evan!  A government is not a business!”

It is when it starts replacing business sectors with government provided services, like for example the mortgage industry or healthcare.  Why is it a business when it is traded on the stock market but not one when the government runs it?

The answer is simple: when a business is traded on the stock market, it makes money or it stops existing.  When the government runs it, it makes money, it breaks even, or it just raises your taxes to pay for itself.

“But Evan!  Industry is corrupt and run by CEOs that make millions of dollars while their workers lose their dreams!”

I think Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac shut the door on pot & kettle accusations of government vs. industry forever, don’t you?  How much were Freddie & Fannie’s CEOs making again?

Do you really want the government involved in an industry so critical to us all as health care?  Do you really want business better left to free market, competitive businesses to be taken over by the government?  What do you suppose the consequences will be when the government-owned & operated insurance agency responsible for insuring 100 million Americans goes belly up?

Please try to separate your emotional appeals from your rational brain when you cast your vote on November 4th.  If a politican makes you a deal that sounds awfully good – maybe even too good – well, you know where I’m going with this.  We may all agree with Barack Obama’s vision, but not all of us can see that his vision far, far extends his reach.  What he wants to do simply cannot – and must not – be done.  The fate of the United States of America is at stake.  His changes will be risky and irreversible.  When you pull that lever – if it’s for Barack Obama – please do so with the understanding that you are taking full responsibility for this when it goes south.  You will have no one to blame but yourself (and 50 million other Americans).

The World Depends On Us

If you are one of those “international citizens” who loves the rest of the world (particularly trendy white places like Europe) and strongly believes that the US is in decline and that China is going to become the world’s next superpower and et cetera et cetera et cetera, open your eyes.

Observe how the rest of the world’s markets are declining even more sharply than the United States because the United States is declining.  In other words, we are the only country that matters.

We drive the world’s economy.  This is unlikely to change in the foreseeable future.  Get your head out of your ass, forget your stupid idealized view of the world in which we are all one big global community, and reach the only possible conclusion that a thinking person can reach after watching the world rise and fall solely on the economic strength of the United States of America.  We are the world.  The rest of the planet does not matter.

A Good Read

Take a read at http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/lanier06/lanier06_index.html.

Very interesting deconstruction of the pulsating, twitching hive mind that is the Internet.  A great perspective on Wikipedia, too.

I wanted to comment a minute about anonymity on the internet, since it pertains to one of Jaron’s main contentions – the dehumanization on the internet.  I maintain this blog anonymously, or should I say psuedo-anonymously.  It would be possible for the adept internet user to guess with a high degree of certainty who I actually am in real life based on what metadata is available on this blog.  For example, I do not disguise my real first name or where I live, or my age.  But I am also careful to keep a certain degree of separation between what I write here (on this blog) and what I would write under my real name.  A comfortable level of plausible deniability, if you will.

Jaron laments the dehumanization of the internet a bit in his essay, suggesting that an anonymous hive is not a good thing.  That is true.  I agree with it in principle.  I do not necessarily like blogging anonymously.  I do have a non-anonymous blog (well, it’s not online right now because 1&1 Internet sucks ass) but the content differs wildly than what is on this blog.  Every time I post here, I feel like I’m hiding.

But you know what?  The truth is I am hiding.  I use this blog to speak my mind.  My mind is not popular.  That is to say, it is not politically correct.  If I said the same kind of things I say on this blog around the watercooler in the office I’d probably get disciplined for being “insensitive” or possibly even fired.  Although when I started this blog I never necessarily worried about something like that, I knew even when I started it that it had to be anonymous so I would have the freedom to say what I really feel.

And what I really feel is that freedom of speech is one of the biggest punchlines in American dialogue today.  No speech is truly free.  Even if the government won’t lock me up for speaking my mind, in many instances such a fate would be preferable to the consequences inflicted upon me by other parties.  For example, when I was in college, I once made the mistake of referring to my roommate and all his friends as the J Crew on an AOL away message.  I thought I was being clever, because my roommate and all his friends both wore J Crew almost exclusively and were also Jewish.  Apparently one of his Jewish friends who lived on my floor saw my away message and interpreted this as a hate crime.  I kid you not.  It gets better, though.  I was actually visited by police sent by the University because it was their “policy” to investigate any “accusation” of “hate crime” with police officers present.  Of course, my roommate, my RA, and myself had a quick little chat about how I was not a Hebrewphobe and that was the end of that, but I learned a valuable lesson.

One of the things that makes the internet great is its ability to tear down all the facades of political correctness because people can speak their minds without fear of consequences.  I can write openly about the plight of AIDS in Africa without being called a racist.  I can openly call for Hillary Clinton to eat feces and not instantly have every female democrat in my building loathe me and file complaints against HR for using the word “shit” at work.  (That hasn’t happened yet, but if a certain employee hadn’t left the company recently, I’m sure it would have – because apparently adults are subject to the same potty mouth rules as her 4 year old future gay son).

In other words, the only place where speech is free is the anonymous internet.  In today’s world, baby boomers and Gen-X’ers have been so thoroughly beaten with the political correctness stick that they can’t even drop their guard when posting anything on the internet even in an anonymous context – the fear of the witch hunt is to the bone.  But for my generation – the echo boomers – all you need to do is visit a site like 4chan or Encyclopedia Dramatica to see how we really feel.

The skeptics will say that the sites I mentioned are examples of the lowest common denominator of internet garbage and are “hate sites” (according to my company’s internet proxy), but that’s just open denial.  I’ve been an internet user for over 10 years – I grew up on the internet with people my age – and those sites are the truth.  Even those of us who don’t actively contribute to “widlly inappropriate” forums like those almost unilaterally find them hillarious and connect with them at a visceral level.

My prediction is this: when my generation – the echo boomers – ascends to political majority within the next 15-20 years, all of this “political correctness” bullshit will fly right out the window.  The true nature of human beings will once again no longer be taboo.  We will finally get tired of having to hide behind an anonymous user name on the internet and close shop on biting our tongues in real life.

The world swings like a pendulum.  We’ve swung as far as I believe America is likely to swing in the direction of repressing free speech via the political correctness facism, and the scenario I’ve just described, which is already happening in my generation, is where the pendulum is going to swing next – and just like the last swing, the next swing will be just as bad, but in the opposite direction.

My only hope is that we don’t get too hurt by a pendulum out of control.  Only time will tell.

Universal Healthcare Fails Already

RE: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,439607,00.html

Says Dr. Kenny Fink, the administrator for Med-QUEST at the Department of Human Services:

People who were already able to afford health care began to stop paying for it so they could get it for free.  I don’t believe that was the intent of the program.

Listen up, people.  This is standard operating procedure of the Democratic platform.  Good intentions, shitty results.

And why?

Because liberals in general like to imagine that everyone in the country thinks like they do.  Like benevolent, civic-minded, “let’s work together” selfless individuals who don’t mind paying close to half of their salaries to taxes because “it benefits us all.”

They proceed to implement foolhardy programs that cost taxpayer dollars on this premise and then, much to their surprise (and to the detriment of your bank account), reality rears its ugly head and the truth about human nature shines through.

Do you think these familes for one second thought about anyone other than themselves when they decided to stop paying for their own private health insurance so they could get it for free and blow the extra monthly income on cigarettes and Bud Lite?

No.  Of course they didn’t.  Very few people do.  If you are truly a selfless, civic-minded liberal, you are very much alone.

This is why large programs that rely on cooperation don’t work.  People don’t cooperate.  They do whatever’s best for them, and 99% of the time, what’s best for them translates to whatever keeps the most money in their pockets.  This is reality.  You can’t hide from these truths.

When enough people decide to abuse a well-intentioned program (like social security, like welfare, like the propsed universal healthcare) the costs become outrageous for everyone and it doesn’t work.

Take this into consideration: Hawaii is one of the smallest states in the nation and they tried Universal Healthcare only for children.  There were only about 2,500 kids insured by this program and even that proved to be too expensive.

“But Evan!”  you cry, “when the whole US works together, we’ll have much greater resources.”  Will we?

One of the primary rules of life is that if something doesn’t work on a small scale, it can’t possibly work on a large scale either.  If anything, the concern that you have is when something works on a small scale, you can’t assume that it works on a large scale.  Communism, anyone?

All I’m asking you to do is to please consider these unpleasant realisms when you cast your vote on November 4th.  Which candidate is more likely to face these ugly truths when forming policy and which candidate is more likely to turn away from the facts of life because they aren’t in accord with his grand vision for the great society?

A great deal of life, and a great many facts about humanity, cannot be changed by anyone or anything.  Hedging your bet on 300,000,000 coming together in accord to look out for each others’ interests instead of their own individual interests is as naive as you can possibly be.  I don’t mind you gambling with your own tax dollars, but please don’t gamble with mine.

For the love of God, please vote for John McCain.

Warhammer Online sucks

At the behest of some of my old WoW buddies, I tried Warhammer Online for a while.  I canceled my account before my free month ran out.  Here’s why.

The launch sucked.

I don’t want to hear all the fanboi excuses for this.  Yes, I pre-ordered.  Yes, it was the “head start.”  Yes, launches are always rocky.  Yes, WoW’s launch was rocky too.

But I’ll tell you what.  I played World of Warcraft closed beta.  I was playing World of Warcraft more than six months before the release.  And the WoW beta servers as of March 2004 were more stable than Warhammer’s head start servers.  And there was no wait.  Not so with Warhammer.  The server we picked had at least a 1 hour wait time past about 6pm EST every day of the headstart.  For a guy who doesn’t get back from work until 7pm and wakes up at 5am, this gives me maybe 3 hours a night and that’s if I’m stretching.  Spending 1 hour of that staring at a queue screen is unacceptable.

It wouldn’t be so bad if WAR didn’t have so many epic bugs.  For example: blue screens of death.  I haven’t seen a BSD in Windows XP except for some shitty Radeon TV Wonder drivers in 2003 since… well, 2003.  Somehow WAR managed to crap out on me randomly and BSD my machine.  With 1 hour queue times, one BSD and I was done for the night.

Another one?  Try using dual monitors and switching tasks.  If I alt-tabbed out of WAR – or in some cases if something stole focus like Adobe Acrobat whining about updating itself – WAR wouldn’t restore its window.  Kill process and spend another 1 hour in queue.  Are you freaking serious?

What Mythic fails to realize is that first impressions are huge.  Strike one.

The game’s quality is several orders of magnitude worse than World of Warcraft’s closed beta

Obviously WAR had a steep hill to climb to compete against WOW, which has been out since 2004 and has 10 million subscribers.  But the fact that WoW’s beta was more polished than WAR’s release really makes me wonder if Mythic had any realistic hopes at all.  I’m not even in the MMO business and I know how deadly it is to release a shitty, unfinished product early to meet budget deadlines.  Were they not paying attention to Vanguard?  That studio had MMO veterans on the staff and they dropped the ball entirely because they released early.

It’s hard to exactly why the quality was low without launching a long littany of little things, because that’s really what it boils down to – little things.  For example, every single character looks the same.  I could tell which class a character was merely by looking at their armor – since their armor was all the same.  Disciples of Khaine all wore the same stupid red robes.  I’m not even sure what the other classes are called because they don’t tell you in the player info (WoW’s tooltip, for example, says “So-and-so, level 7 Orc Rogue”, whereas WAR’s is just the name).  But I know the rogue-ish character wore a bikini.  Every time I upgraded my sword, I noticed that the sword stayed exactly the same.

The animations were poorly done and boring.  I could barely tell that I had cast “Fist of Khaine” because there is no animation whatsoever.  Most of the melee attacks have no visible difference between a regular swing.  Dual wield doesn’t even work for the Disciple of Khaine (only one attack was affected, by my reckoning).  There are too few skills – everybody always does the same thing – it’s even more predictable than WoW.

Mobs were stupidly easy, unintelligent, and had amateurish animations.  They chased you forever.  The only thing they ever dropped were seeds which rapidly clogged your inventory.  Of all the tradeskills they could have implemented, cultivation was about the dumbest choice they could have made.  Boring.

Even the RvR scenarios, while admittedly better than WoW’s, got extremely boring extremely quickly.  I had fun for about 8 hours and then it just became repetetive.  WoW’s problem is that combat is too short – you can get owned in 15 seconds by a rogue if he’s got a big gear advantage on you.  In WAR, battles can last forever.  The latter is definitely better but they’re both broken IMO.

Quests were the worst.  Even with the little circles they draw on the map for you, I could never figure out what to do.  In fact, if there is one thing that caused me to quit WAR, it was this.  The quest logs were extremely vague and stupid.  They would write one paragraph of lore that doesn’t give you any suggestion on what you’re actually supposed to do and then expect you to be able to finish the quest.  Lame.

Your character grunts when you jump.  What?  Who came up with that idea?

More classes, fine, but they are indistinguishable and don’t warrant strategy at all.  I never saw any players in RvR behave differently against different classes.  I was still “low level” but 15 out of 40 isn’t that bad.

I’ll admit that the PvP is good, but it’s not that good.  It’s not $15 a month.

The scenery is about as polished as EverQuest 1.  I was surprised I didn’t find any untextured, single-colored cubes laying around randomly.

Overall, it was just crappy.  It looked like Mythic tried to save money by hiring homeless people off the streets, sending them to a 3 day 3DSMax class, and setting them loose.

Anyone who reads this might just assume that I’m a WoW fanboi, but I canceled my World of Warcraft subscription a long time ago.  When I compare WoW, even with all its faults and PvP that I always hated, to WAR, WAR is shit.  Plain and simple.  There is no comparison.

I played WOTLK beta very briefly just to see what I was going to be missing and I wasn’t impressed, but it blows Warhammer Online out of the water.  If you have to choose, stick to WoW.

In fact just writing this review makes me miss WoW.  WAR sucks.

It’s Over

We’ve all listened to the liberals bemoan Bush for 8 long years.  They project a collective emotion that Bush will destroy the planet and everyone on the right is evil.  I had a hard time understanding this sentiment until recently.

I don’t have nearly the emotion vested in this election as the Obama fanatics – and of those I’m sure you know dozens.  But I do feel one emotion very strongly.  That emotion is malaise.  The future is not bright.

It’s so hard for me even to express what is wrong – what is going to happen.  Pelosi & Reid are going to lead Obama right off a cliff with wildly leftist legislation that can’t possibly do any good – it so rarely does – and this is going to seriously hinder my young adult life.  I am going to have to live through 8 years of a crap economy and high taxes because the majority of Americans are clueless.

I guess this is how liberals view the Bush years.  I see where they are coming from.  Bush has not been a terrific president.  I won’t demonize him as the left has, but he could have done a lot more.  His only focus became Iraq.  I agreed with his foreign policy but his domestic agenda – or lack thereof – and his spending were just awful.  McCain had an uphill battle to begin with and he’s just not doing enough.

My dad predicted that McCain simply doesn’t want to win at this point for fear of becoming Hoover the Second.  I don’t think the economy is going to be nearly as damaged as the Great Depression years, but with Obama at the helm he just may exacerbate it.  The next president has one job and one job only: keep and create as many jobs as possible.  Obama’s tax policies just won’t do it.  At times like these you want to favor businesses.  Businesses are the ones who create jobs.  Businesses pay you.

But unfortunately it’s worse than that.  The sadness I feel is that every year the population of America becomes dumber.  Every year they become weaker.  Every year they buy into more cockamamey ploys like “Universal Healthcare” and “tax cuts for the middle class.”  Every year they expect more from the government and less from themselves.  Every year they worry more about nonsense like global warming.  Every year they lower the discourse to empty words.  Every year they are more victimized.  Every year they engage in class warfare just a little bit more.  Every year they embark on a new social experiment despite the fact that every single one that was tried before has failed.  Every year they play blackjack with America’s future.

Whatever America has been, and whatever America has been doing, has so far worked.  We are the most prosperous and powerful nation in the history of the human species.  Yet the majority of us want to elect people who are gambling all of that to try something new, like gay marriage or free healthcare for everyone.  Why fix it if it isn’t broken?

There’s just nothing to say.  I realize that I can’t change the way a liberal looks at the world any more than they can change the way a conservative does.  My only consolation is that people become more conservative as they age, not the other way around.  Hopefully the baby boomers will too.  But they are all children of the 60’s, so who knows?

I am sad for America.  Too many of us are too stupid to understand how a country needs to be governed.  51% of America is digging its own grave while the other 49% is screaming at the top of our lungs for them to stop.

My official 2008 election prediction is in: Barack Obama with more than 320 electorals.

I hope that Obama is up for the job.  I hope he rises to the occasion and shuts down Pelosi and Reid and does what has to be done, not what he wants to be done.  He might surprise us all.

Gas is $80 a barrel

To everyone who wrote panic posts about gasoline hitting $6.00 a gallon by the end of the year:

To everyone in the media who wouldn’t shut up about $4.00 a gallon gas:

To all the pundits who predicted that oil would only get more expensive:

FUCK YOU

Gas dipped below $80 a barrel today.

I am still getting paid exactly the same amount of money I was in June.  The Dow will matter to me in 60 years.  Sucks to be living off 401’s, but those people don’t drive anyway.

I am a patient person, and I can’t wait until the market starts the upswing again because I am going to make a killing on stocks.  I didn’t panic when gas spiked because unsustainable trends are unsustainable.  It’s never as bad as you think.  If you were one of those douche bags who wouldn’t shut up about oil prices, why aren’t you talking about them now?  Maybe because it will be an admission of not having any foresight at all?

Remember this, morons.

Fine Scotches

I drink scotch.  I will often have a glass (5-6 shots) or a half-glass (2-3 shots) of scotch after dinner, around 9 PM.  These are the current bottles I have in my cabinet and my reviews thereof, in no particular order:

• Glenlivet French Oak Reserve Single Malt (15yo): I try to keep a bottle of this in supply at all times.  Glenlivet, Glen Fiddich, and Glen Morangie are all similar and are excellent examples of a premium Scottish single malt, but I find that Glenlivet is bottled at the right strength, and the oak finish adds to the flavor and the aroma.  The 12yo is an okay substitute if the French Oak isn’t available.  I don’t notice much of a difference between the 15yo and the 18yo except for almost $30 at most liquor stores.  I’ve gotten the 15 for as cheap as $50 and as much as $79.
• Laphroaig  15: this is also a single malt and is distilled in Islay.  Most liquor stores do not carry Laphroaig as it is more popular in Europe than the U.S., which is a shame because this scotch has a very unique peaty finish and leaves less in your mouth than Glenlivet.  It smells fantastic.  It costs around $70.
• Jameson blended (12yo): I originally purchased Jameson because it is one of the options for the mid-tier bar selection at our wedding reception and I wanted to make an informed decision.  Of the blended scotches I’ve had it’s the most expensive (around $30 if I recall) but is also the best.  It tastes closer to the single malts than the other blendeds I’ve sampled and carries less of the signature blended scotch aroma.  If you want a decent scotch for less than $50, or if you prefer blended, this is not a bad choice.  The bottle is on the small side, though.
• Dewar’s White Label Blended (12yo): this is the cheapest bottle in my collection and not coincidentally also the worst.  Since Dewar’s is the standard rail scotch served practically everywhere, a lot of people are familiar with the brand and even ask for it by name.  It is extremely weak in flavor as far as scotches go and I can practically guzzle this stuff when it’s served on the rocks.  Very light golden color.  I think all blended scotches smell bad, and Dewar’s has the strongest of the classic “blended” aroma.  If I drink Dewar’s straight, I always want to hold my nose.
• Cutty Sark Blended (12yo): another run of the mill blended.  I keep this around to serve to unsophisticated guests and only drink this if I’m looking for a quick buzz, not an enjoyable evening.  I would have a hard time distinguishing Dewar’s and Cutty Sark, so if you can’t have one, take the other.  Cutty Sark is a little less aromatic, a little deeper in color, and a tad stronger than Dewar’s.  If you like cheap blended scotch this is a better choice than Dewar’s.
• Macallan Cask Strength: this single malt lacks an age statement.  It is probably around 10.  Since this is a cask strength scotch, it is significantly stronger than the rest of my collection and it shows.  A little of this scotch goes a long way.  I picked this bottle because it described itself as red in color and I was intrigued.  It turns out that the red comes from a bit of chocolate used in the malt.  It comes through in both the aroma and the flavor to produce a very unique and enjoyable drink.  Newcomers to scotch might do well to try this bottle straight (no ice).  I always recommend letting all single malt scotches sit in your mouth for at least 10 seconds before swallowing, but with Macallan I’d say closer to 15-20.  With the added strength and the chocolate flavor, it adds a pleasurable warming sensation to your tongue, gums, and throat and the taste will linger longer.  This bottle cost around $55 and is an excellent choice.
• Balvenie single malt (21yo): This is the most expensive bottle in my collection and was given to me as a gift.  As such, I haven’t even tried it yet as I will reserve it for special occasions.  List price is around $135 to $150.  This was given to me by another scotch conniseur so I can only expect the best.

I have a policy whereby when I finish a bottle of scotch, I choose to replace it or not.  If I replace it, I also buy a different bottle that I don’t have in my collection.  If any of you other scotch drinkers out there have any recommendations, please let me know what you suggest.

The Electoral College is Not the Problem

Ever since 2000 people have been whining about the electoral college, because the implication is that whoeve wins the popular vote should win the presidency.  They conveniently forget that Bill Clinton did not win more than 50% of the popular vote in 1992, and most people agree that it is highly likely that had not Ross Perot taken almost 20% of the popular vote (mostly from Repbulicans), GHW would have won.  Slight details.

But anyway, I recently read an article that said something outlandish: “the electoral college is impossible to explain to foreigners.”

No it isn’t.  It’s very simple.

The United States of America is a federation of states.  When the country was first founded, states’ rights was (and still is, to some folks) one of the most important issues discussed in the federal government.  Federal legislature that all 50 states are required to implement is still a very hot topic in politics today (for example, gay marriage).  It’s part of the reason a lot of consevatives think Roe v. Wade is nonsense.  As so few people remember, prior to Roe v. Wade, abortion was legal in some states but not in others.  Roe v. Wade basically said that it is unconstitutional to make it illegal, so no states were allowed to make it illegal.  States were outraged, because then, as it is now, the majority of voters in many states did not believe abortion should be legal.  Thus, in Texas, for example, the minority opinion (abortion should be legal) became law against the will of the majority opinion (abortion should be illegal) because 4 men in robes in Washington D.C. decided to invent consitutional rights.

But I digress.  The concept that the United States is a federation means that for all matters federal, each state represents itself through congress.  Each state is allotted a certain number of seats in the House based on population of the state, and each state is allotted 2 senators.  These congressmen are charged with representing the interests of the voters in their state at a federal level.  Many people are confused on this matter, and seem to think that congressmen represent a party first, and a state second.  That concept is a bastardization of the very core of the “federation of states” concept on which this country was founded.

In the last hundred years, the country has become smaller in the sense that each of us is aware of not just what is happening in our own state, but in other states, and even the whole world.  Today, most Americans don’t really distinguish one state from the next.  For example, I was born in New Jersey and I now live in Maryland.  Both are mid atlantic states with comparable cultures and the laws between Maryland and New Jersey are almost identical, for all the purposes that would affect my life.  Even were I to move to states that are considered culturally different (like Texas or California), I probably won’t be conscious of the fact that I live in a different state.  I would say that I am American, not Texian, or New Jerseyan, or Alaskan, or whatever.

This feeling that American states are more or less interchangeable has allowed the individuality of states to fall to the wayside.  But our government still runs very much on the idea that each state is unique.

Which brings us back to the electoral college.  Originally, the president (whose role was far less important then as it is now – in fact, “national” campaigning for president didn’t start until the mid 19th century) was selected entirely by congress.  Each member of the House of Representatives cast his vote for the president, and they would do runoffs until one candidate earned more than 50% of the vote.

The idea behind this was simple.  You, a voter in your state, vote for your congressman.  He represents you to the federal government.  You rely on him to vote for the best presidential candidate who will most further your interests.

But this process was not federally mandated.  Each state chose how to put forth the votes for president before the Speaker of the House.  When the country was founded, having congressman vote for president was, from a purely logistical standpoint, far easier.  Trying to arrange national ballots for president when the fastest mode of transportation was the horse and carriage would have been nearly impossible, not to mention even more exposed to fraud than Diebold machines are today.

Eventually, the times changed.  with the introduction of railroads and telegraphs, not only was it possible for individual presidential candidates to campaign around the country via public appearances and by wire news, it was also possible for direct, popular elections to be held locally.  The results could be tallied by the local election judges and the results wired to Washington.

This led to a change in the presidential voting process for states.  Today, not all states are identical, but by and large, the presidental election is done this way: the state board of elections tallies the popular vote for each candidate.  Whoever wins the largest percent of the popular vote is granted 100% of the electors for the state.  (An elector is a fancy word for a vote at the House of Representatives.  In the old days, each congressman represented one elector.  Each state gets a number of electors equal to their number of House representatives plus 2, one for each senator).

This is actually the problem.  This is actually the reason why the electoral college is criticized.  This the reason it is possible for GW to lose the popular vote but still win the presidency (as in 2000).

There’s nothing wrong with the electoral college.  There’s something wrong with how nearly every U.S. state allots its electors.

There are some states that assign proportional electors.  For example, let’s say Maine receives 700,000 votes, and it has 7 electoral votes.  Let’s say Bob gets 400,000 votes and Jim bets 300,000 votes.  Maine could either give all 7 electoral votes to Bob, because he won in the state, or it could give 4 votes to Bob and 3 to Jim, because that reflects the popular vote more accurately.

Very few states do this.  Almost every state does an all-or-nothing approach.  This means that the presidential election is really 50 individual elections.  Those elections are weighted based on the population of the state.  Whoever wins at least 50% of that weighted combination of these 50 individual elections wins the presidency.

A few years ago, republicans in congress tried to change California’s election rules so that it assigned its electoral votes proportionately.  Since California has nearly 60 electoral votes (only ~280 are required to win the presidency), this makes a lot of sense.  When someone wins California 51-49, should they really get 60 electoral votes?

Especially when you consider that California is geographically equivalent to Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, and Maryland, the results of the California vote – essentially the entire west coast – are like the aggregation of 5 different states on the eastern seaboard.  Does that seem fair?

New York does the same.  All or nothing.  You win 51-49 in New York, you get 35 or 36 delegates.

You might ask why these states don’t change their methodology.  It would be more fair, right?

In order to do that, you need the state legilsatures to pass a bill making that change and a governor who will sign it.

In both New York and California, the two largest electoral vote holders, the state legislature is largely democratic.  They will never pass that legislation because they will never elect a democratic president again.  The entire democratic stategy hinges on the inherent unfairness of the this system.  Even though democrats usually win by 60-40ish margins in those states, that’s still 25 electorals in California that are being given to a candidate who didn’t earn them.  California and New York are the cornerstones of the democratic presidential strategy.  If they don’t get the 80 or 90 electoral votes from those states, they can’t win.

Of course, this begs the question – but if every state did proportional allotment, then Gore should have won in 2000!  He carried the popular!

That is true, but it is still possible, even with proportional electorals nation-wide, that Gore could have won the popular and lost the college.  But he would have had to win the popular by a very small margin.  Due to rounding (you’re taking votes in the hundreds of thousands, or millions, and rounding them down to votes in the 10’s), it’s possible to get rounded down in enough states that you win the popular but still lose the elctoral.

Another side effect of the all-or-nothing state allotment system is that it impedes voting.  I live in Maryland,  a state that always votes Democratic only because of Baltimore and PG counties.  Every other county in the state votes Republican, but the minorities in the cities vote for Democrats and thus our state always goes Democrat.  New Jersey was the same way.  It’s not really even worth my time to vote in the presidential election because there is no chance in hell that blacks in Baltiimore are not going to elect Barack Obama.  Except that since I talk enough about politics on the internet, I’d be a flaming asshole to not vote in opposition to univesal healthcare.

The problem is that states like California and New York refuse to do it, because their state legislatures are composed of democrats and it is not in their best interest to do so.  They also raise the very valid point that if they change to do proportional electoral allotment, other states, like Texas, don’t have to.  California and New York would concede minority votes to their opposing party, but Texas wouldn’t concede minority votes to them.

So unless it became federally mandated that all states must do it this way, it is not favorable for individual states to.  And such a mandate is a political third rail because it directly undermines states’ rights.  So it is not likely to happen.

But as you can see, the only reason that states won’t change their electoral college rules is because in every case it is unfavorable for them to do it.   In Texas, the state legislation is Republican and Texas typically gives all 35ish of its electorals to the Republican ticket.  Why would they want to change the rules so democrats get slightly less than half of those?  They don’t.

Why is the state legislature of Texas controlled by Republicans?  Because there are more Republicans elected to the state legislature.  Why is that?  Because in local elections, Republicans get more than half of the vote.  Do you see the problem here?

Every aspect of our electoral system is based on ever-smaller majority-rules contests that end up being compounded many times.  There are two solutions to that problem.  The first solution is how the country original worked: you only directly vote for your two representatives – your congressmen and your senators – and they vote for you in every other situation.  The other solution is what Athens tried, and any student of classics can tell you how well that turned out – and that is to enact what they called a forum which was that any Athenian citizen could vote on every issue.  There was no representation.

We are comfortable in our representative government.  Personally, I favor a return to congressional voting for president.  I believe our elected officials have a much better grasp of who would make a good president and why.  We wouldn’t see John McCain or Barack Obama on the ticket if that were the case.  It would also do wonders for eliminating the ridiculous media circus surrounding presidential elections.  Of course, it won’t matter because it’s against the interests of everyone to do so.  Millions and millions of dollars change hands as a result of these drawn out presidential elections that are essentially hyped up personality parades.  As long as money can be made on national presidential elections, the people who are making that money will do what they can to keep the election process the way it is.

The lesson to be learned from all this is something I consistently preach, which is that the electoral college and the election process is as it is because the people who make the decisions on how it works are looking out for their own best interests and are not interested in what’s fair or best for the nation.  They only care what will make them richer.  There is no place in this world for fairness, so leave your ideology in the womb.

Yawn

Does anyone else think that the circus that has become the 2008 presidential election has devolved into nothing more than a choice between who is likely to do the least damage to this country?

I like McCain and Palin better than Obama and Biden because I am terrified of the socialist agendas that can get realistically passed with a reigning democratic congress and a young democratic president who will look forward to a 50 year legacy that he’ll be worried more about.  I foresee Pelosi and Reid pushing Obama into signing legislation he may otherwise avoid.

On the otherhand, I haven’t seen a shred of anything out of McCain or Palin that makes me think that they would make the country better.  If that pair simply treads water I’d be impressed.  Again, still better than Obama since I believe he will get bullied by an inept congress into signing disasterous legislation.  Any plans for change Obama thought he was going to accomplish, like the dreaded Universal Health Care touted by Hillary and himself have been dashed, or at least mercifully postponed, by this economic crisis.  So again, the most we can hope out of Barack Obama and Joe Biden is that they tread water.

Since they are more or less indistinguishably incompetent, my expectations for whichever buffoon is elected, are extremely low:

• Don’t backtrack in the middle east.  Iraq and Afghanistan should be the same or more secure than today 4 years from now
• Do not allow Iran to acquire a nuclear weapon and support Israel if they launch a preemptive strike
• Avoid a major relations disaster with Pakistan
• Do whatever it takes to prevent domino bank collapses in the coming months
• Maintain or rReduce the government’s role in healthcare, do not increase it
• Do not raise taxes for anyone.  If we have a budget deficit, reduce spending.

That’s it.  I will vote for John McCain because I believe he is more likely to achieve those very mediocre goals.  Barack Obama, in an effort to help the people who choose not to or cannot afford private health insurance, will drastically reduce the service quality of the healthcare (and drive up the costs) for those of us who do.  Since I am among the 250 million Americans who do already have health insurance, the last thing I want is for its value to decrease.

Either way, I’m disgusted by this cast of clowns given to us by American politics as our only two choices.  It’s down to picking the lesser of two evils again, just as it was for a great many in 2004.  So much for change.