Live blogging Election Day

I’ll be interviewing Floyd County Clerk Linda Moeller on Monday after early voting closes at noon. From that point on, I’ll be live-blogging reports as you send them to me…by e-mail to destinationsbooksellers (at) gmail.com or you can call in your reports to 944-5116.

Please report any problems you encounter on Election Day and include your precinct tallies and general mood, etc. Let me know if it’s OK to tell readers who you are. I won’t necessarily use your name, but if you don’t mind, let me know. Otherwise, I’ll pass on your reports. Of course, you can also just add a comment.

Don’t speak for me, Sarah Palin

Sorry, folks. I put this up at Open Salon first, forgetting that all of you would like to see it, too. Please don’t tell Ann, but I think I’m in love with this Blues [previously, this said Flyers] fan.

UPDATE: Turns out it’s OK. Ann’s in love with her, too.

…and STILL on the job

You simply have to read this. It seems that Gov. Palin’s consignment shop, the alleged “source” of her normal wardrobe, caters to cross-dressers and the barracuda’s spotlight on the store is hurting their business. Choice quote: “I thought Governor Palin wanted the clothes for her husband, Todd. I don’t ask questions. Live and let live is my motto.”

Fair warning: If I say “The Onion” and you don’t know what I’m talking about, caveat emptor. This one is destined for the news-spoof Hall of Fame.

Feather-headed tonight, but still on the job

Starved for intelligent comment? Don’t expect much from me today.

Instead, let’s gather the best of today’s views from across the Interwebs, them pipes that Ted Stevens explained to us all. 

While I have nothing trenchant to contribute, I will note those pieces that I remarked on tonight by saying, ”Honey? Listen to this.”

Hendrik Hertzberg in The New Yorker:

The Republican argument of the moment seems to be that the difference between capitalism and socialism corresponds to the difference between a top marginal income-tax rate of 35 per cent and a top marginal income-tax rate of 39.6 per cent. The latter is what it would be under Obama’s proposal, what it was under President Clinton, and, for that matter, what it will be after 2010 if President Bush’s tax cuts expire on schedule. Obama would use some of the added revenue to give a break to pretty much everybody who nets less than a quarter of a million dollars a year. The total tax burden on the private economy would be somewhat lighter than it is now—a bit of elementary Keynesianism that renders doubly untrue the Republican claim that Obama “will raise your taxes.” Read the entire piece here.

Watch for the pull-quotes from actual spoken words by John McCain a few years ago and by Sarah Palin a few weeks ago.

Here’s David Carr in The New York Times column, The Media Equation:

It’s been an especially rotten few days for people who type on deadline. On Tuesday, The Christian Science Monitor announced that, after a century, it would cease publishing a weekday paper. Time Inc., the Olympian home of Time magazine, Fortune, People and Sports Illustrated, announced that it was cutting 600 jobs and reorganizing its staff. And Gannett, the largest newspaper publisher in the country, compounded the grimness by announcing it was laying off 10 percent of its work force — up to 3,000 people.

I live in a Gannett-ocratic town and folks, it ain’t pretty now. It’s hard to imagine what another 10 percent cut would do. Thank goodness for alternative newspapers, where true investigative journalism is found.

Juliet Lapidos uses Slate’s The Explainer to ask, “Will early voting skew exit polling?”

Here’s the answer.

Cool runnings from these Ohio and Florida polls.

And this five-point boost in Obama’s numbers in a certain southwestern state, home to the “Soenix Phuns” and “Darizona Iamondbacks.” More shocking than the trend line in my own Hoosier state.

Sarah Barracuda parachutes into my neck of the woods on Wednesday, fighting a rear-guard action to keep Indiana red. Here’s a metro paper piece, and here’s a community newspaper piece. May I note that our local paper currently lists this as the eighth most important story, right behind “Water company to flush mains in Southern Indiana.”

Flying under the radar is an FCC vote to free up the “white space” in the television broadcast spectrum to deliver broadband to the masses. Wired offers this entertaining take on an effort by some to put a halt to the vote.

The jury returned 7 of 7 guilty verdicts on Ted Stevens’ felonies, adding to the woes of minority leader Sen. Mitch McConnell. Jim Carroll blogs about it. Maybe it’s time to start getting used to the words “Senator Bruce Lunsford, D-Ky.

A personal friend of mine had to take the heat for a Democratic party screwup, as reported in this story by Dick Kaukas. Proof that not every dirty trick is intentional.

And locally, the Floyd County (Ind.) Republican Party Chairman is running to become one of our county’s three-headed executive commission. Dave Matthews, I’ll attest, is a nice guy, but this quote will definitely cost him votes that might otherwise have been his for the taking.

Matthews, 54, a UPS airline captain, is head of the Floyd County Republican Party. He said he wants to use his executive experience to “bring about needed changes” to the budget and other areas. He added, “Christians need to be more involved in government, and the county is in dire need of spiritual leadership.”

In fairness, here is part of his defense: There is really no way you can win a discussion like this. I do believe Christians have for too long not been involved in helping make a difference in our government. However, it appears that a specific comment was written in this article completely out of context with my thoughts and it does not reflect my true views of what a political leader should be.

I do not even remember saying that “the county is in dire need of spiritual leadership.” I agree that is what churches and ministers are for…not what we vote for in our political leaders.

If elected, I certainly do not intend to hold church services during County Commissioner meetings. And that type of comment would surely suggest that I do not think current spiritual leadership from our churches is sufficient….again, nothing could be further from the truth. Let me simply say that I believe a good political leader should be one who has a secure moral foundation from which to lead. Our nation was founded on that type of leadership.

Thanks to NA Confidential for the reporting.

To ramble or to reason, that is the question

dis-cur-sive

1. passing aimlessly from one subject to another; digressive; rambling.
2. proceeding by reasoning or argument rather than intuition.

Thanks to dictionary.com for the introduction.

I’ve always thought of myself as something of a word maven. By that, I mean that I love words and I love to use them. I collect them, in fact, and will use them as needed for precision, even at the risk of being misunderstood or, God forbid, being thought of as an arrogant pedant.

See. There’s one of those words. Pedant. Where I live, that’s the kind of word that will get you beat up in junior high school. Let’s just say that it’s not a word commonly used here…except by us pedants.

But “discursive” is a word that I don’t pretend to have mastery over. When I read it, I get its sense. It doesn’t put a roadblock in my path to understanding. I also know how to use it and when to use it (pardon me for a minute while I…let me look it up…yeah, that’s what I thought).

But wait, what’s this? “Discursive” means passing aimlessly from one subject to another; digressive; rambling. That’s what I thought. [for a brilliant example of discursive writing from the last century, read the David Foster Wallace's masterpiece, Infinite Jest. Or try out Margaret Atwood's newest book, Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth. Or just read Open Salon!]

I said, that’s what I thought! But what’s with that alternate definition? Proceeding by reasoning or argument rather than intuition?

How, in all that’s mavericky about Sarah Palin, can one word carry both of those definitions?
In persuasive writing, I try to proceed by reasoning or argument rather than intuition (2). At times, though, and especially when I’m tired, I’ll find myself passing aimlessly from one subject to another, digressing, even rambling (1).

I know I’m not a born entertainer because I’m proudest when I write 2ishly. But writing 1ishly might make my posts more likable, linkable, and memorable.

What do readers think? Definition 1 or definition 2? And I’d be pleased if you linguists out there could enlighten me as to how to reconcile these seemingly disparate meanings.

1 in 3 women has had an abortion by age 45

Ellen Goodman, writing for The Boston Globe, brings up a seldom-mentioned statistic that certainly colors our discussion of abortion.

In this column, she says:

Because we rarely see real women, it’s easy to forget that one out of every three American women has had an abortion by the time she’s 45. As Karlan said, “Look to your right. Look to your left. One of you has had an abortion.” Because we rarely hear from women, it’s easy to forget that over half those women already have children and are making their decisions in that family context.

We all know women who’ve had an abortion. For those who, without exception, see abortion as wrong, even as sin, that must certainly be a striking statistic. I’ll admit that I would not count that as one I knew beforehand.

I’m not one who believes the government has anything to say about a woman’s decision as to whether to carry a conceived child to term. At times, I’ve even pondered whether any man should have anything to say about what is, at root, a woman’s choice.

I don’t even know if Goodman’s reported statistic is true, though I have no reason to doubt it.

I do know that the next time I think about the topic I’ll think, as I always have, of the actual women who have, will, and do face the decision of whether to carry a conceived child to term.

What’s most disturbing to me is that those who oppose abortion are, to a dramatically significant degree, the same people who oppose birth control, the morning after pill, and sex education in school. To the extent that I, as a man, have anything to say about it, it’s abominable that anyone would treat the matter as an abstraction when it is our wives, mothers, and daughters who must deal with the consequences, no matter the decision, no matter the resulting consequences. There’s nothing abstract about it.

The nakedness of Internet journalism

Someone approached me this week applauding me for saying the things that people were thinking but were afraid to say.

This person said that, compared to other local bloggers…I mean, Internet journalists…my writing tends to go a step further…not so much in the quality of writing, but in stating my point without worrying too much about whether someone might take offense. And trust me, friends and foes regularly do take offense.The root concept of “provocative” requires the writer to provoke. To most people, provoking is something you do to the animals at the zoo, and it’s seen as crude, immature, and sadistic. To me, being provocative is necessary to provoke and promote discussion.

So, I’ll take the reader’s comments as a compliment. Being provocative may not make me popular, but then, popularity is overrated.

There’s a certain “nakedness” about blogging that can stifle free expression. If a writer is constantly worried about offending someone, the product and frequency and freedom of thought will suffer.

Jay Newton-Small of the Washington Post refers to Timothy Crouse’s The Boys on the Bus, a chronicle of the 1972 presidential campaign told from the view of the press.

In the first chapter, the author describes the pecking order of print journalists. At the top of the food chain are the wire-service reporters, particularly the reporters from the Associated Press, the oldest of news organizations — those hard-bitten, vigilant correspondents who set the agenda for everybody else.

“Wire stories are usually bland, dry and overly cautious,” Crouse wrote. “There is always an inverse proportion between the number of persons a reporter reaches and the amount he can say. The larger the audience the more inoffensive and inconclusive the article must be.”

This isn’t, however, a post about me. All weekend I’ve been trying to find the words to wrap around what Andrew Sullivan had to say in the November issue of The Atlantic.

Here’s what Sullivan had to say about the singular form of writing that is blogging: It is the spontaneous expression of instant thought—impermanent beyond even the ephemera of daily journalism. It is accountable in immediate and unavoidable ways to readers and other bloggers, and linked via hypertext to continuously multiplying references and sources. Unlike any single piece of print journalism, its borders are extremely porous and its truth inherently transitory. The consequences of this for the act of writing are still sinking in.

I’m not a particular fan of Sullivan’s. His politics aren’t my own. But his watershed commentary in the newly redesigned Atlantic spoke to me. It was…provocative. Evocative. It stimulated a weekend of thinking about the form and a weekend of scolding myself for not putting my thoughts out there.

He continues: No columnist or reporter or novelist will have his minute shifts or constant small contradictions exposed as mercilessly as a blogger’s are. A columnist can ignore or duck a subject less noticeably than a blogger committing thoughts to pixels several times a day. A reporter can wait—must wait—until every source has confirmed. A novelist can spend months or years before committing words to the world. For bloggers, the deadline is always now. Blogging is therefore to writing what extreme sports are to athletics: more free-form, more accident-prone, less formal, more alive. It is, in many ways, writing out loud.

More pull-quotes:

The form (blogging) is a “painfully public and immediate one.”

And this: “The blogosphere may, in fact, be the least veiled of any forum in which a writer dares to express himself. Even the most careful and self-aware blogger will reveal more about himself than he wants to in a few unguarded sentences and publish them before he has the sense to hit Delete.”

Go read it. Here’s the link again. It will be 20 minutes well spent.

Five Guys meet the Sewer Board

As reported by Daniel Suddeath in this Tribune story, the growing burger chain called Five Guys Burgers and Fries covets the New Albany market. Their experts determined that they could make the most money at the least cost by locating one of two New Albany stores outside of the city limits.

I’ve never had an opportunity to sample their wares. It may be the best food in the world. The owners may be the finest people ever to walk the face of the earth. They’re not local, so the profits will not circulate in the city.

The sprawlgasmic boil that sits on New Albany’s left shoulder (Charlestown Road beyond the Lee Hamilton Expressway) was their choice. Ignore the fact that 100% of the city lies to the west and south of the site. Ignore the fact that dozens of good locations lie southwest of the Interstate exchange.

Having chosen that location, they (or their potential landlords) want the city’s sewer utility to give them a break off the rate card for sewer tap-ins. They could locate inside the city to get the break, but they want city ratepayers to subsidize their decision to locate elsewhere.

I don’t wish this new chain ill, but it seems to be an absolute no-brainer decision that the future prosperity of our city requires a commitment to encourage development where there is already adequate infrastructure. “Building in” is the 21st Century mode, not building further and further outward.

Congratulations, sewer board. That’s what we mean when we use the word progressive.

Hitchens post: Walkin’ back the defense of Palin

Christopher Hitchens takes no prisoners. I’m convinced he is not a sociopath, but at times he “plays one” on TV and in print. Having read Hitchens for more than a decade, I’m persuaded that his goal as a public intellectual is to never be pigeonholed, never be predictable.

On Slate.com today he took his sharpened quill in hand to walk back his previous defense of Sarah Palin, or, rather, he issued a recall of his previous criticisms of those who almost immediately declared her an unfit candidate for national office.

Hitchens dismisses the “experience” argument, still. But he lays his own reason for doubting her capacity to serve as vice president: It’s that she quite plainly lacks intellectual curiosity. It is not snobbish to harbor grave doubts about somebody who seems uninterested in reading for pleasure or recreation and whose only interest in her local public library is sniffing round its shelves for books that ought to be removed for expressing impure ideas.

Read his entire post here.

Sarah says: Vote for the Democrat

I’m not particularly concerned that the Republican National Committee has shelled out $150,000 plus for Sarah Palin’s wardrobe and makeup. I’ve commented elsewhere that it’s fine with me.

But Republican partisans might be concerned about Gov. Palin’s free wardrobe allowance. Apparently, someone at a Reno, Nev. rally gifted the governor with this scarf, which she proudly donned.

Subtle, eh?

Here’s the source.