With ZERO percent reporting, CNN is projecting Kerry the winner in Arizona

This reminds me of the election day party we had in 1980. It was to be dinner followed by a night of TV and rowdy comments of the football game type: “how about that Carter!” Dinner was over at 8, so were the elections.

The idea of an election day party ceased to be appealing after that: you never knew how long (or how short) they were going to be. Take the year 2000 – it would have been like the caricature of the never-ending Polish wedding. Would we have had to feed the crowd until the middle of December?

Tall and cuddly = a mismatch?

How can you explain the slanderous reporting that blasts away at the warm and fuzzy traits of tall people?? The NYT today says this about Kerry: “He will still never be cuddly. He is too tall, too gaunt, too lantern-jawed, too serious for that. His Iowa caucuses victory speech was solemn and windy, and he sat watching the Super Bowl on Sunday night with a band of firefighters from Fargo, N.D., whose union has endorsed him, tapping his right thumb and forefinger nervously against his teeth without making much effort to converse or connect.”

Is there an expectation that he should have been warm and cuddly with the firefighters?

Growing the pool of money

Krugman’s Op-Ed comment today is based on that tired but neglected truth: if you want something you can’t afford you can only hope for a sale or wait for an inheritance. Meaning: either the price has to come down, or the pool of money has to grow. The administration’s proposed budget relies, as we know, on cuts in discretionary spending. But think of it, what is the source of the deficit to begin with? Krugman writes:

The prime cause of giant budget deficits is a plunge in the federal government's tax take, which fell from 20.9 percent of G.D.P. in fiscal 2000 to a projected 15.7 percent this year, the lowest share since 1950. About 45 percent of this plunge can be attributed to the Bush tax cuts. The rest reflects the end of the stock market bubble, the still-depressed economy and — probably — growing tax sheltering and evasion...

So what will it take to get the budget deficit under control? Unless Social Security and Medicare are drastically cut — which is, of course, what the right wants — any solution has to include a major increase in revenue.
Many Democrats have called for a partial rollback of the Bush tax cuts, preserving the "middle class" cuts… that would help, but one hopes politicians realize that it's not enough.

Another major source of revenue could be a crackdown on tax loopholes and tax evasion, which has reached epidemic proportions. In particular, what's going on with the tax on corporate profits? That source of revenue is down, as a percent of G.D.P., to 1930's levels. No, that's not a misprint. And receipts are not growing nearly as fast as one would expect, given an economic recovery that has bypassed workers but given big gains to their employers. An administration that actually tried to make corporations pay their taxes might be able to find $100 billion or more each year.

I don’t even mind that I can never ever find any tax loopholes at all ever when I fill out the IRS forms on April 14th. This is always a source of amusement for others: ha, ha, ha, she’s a lawyer and she can’t find the loopholes, ha ha ha. However, I do mind terribly that last little comment “an administration that actually tried to make corporations pay their taxes.” You mean it doesn’t? And they don’t? I mind.

Middle-of-the-night questions

The phone rings at 1 a.m. and the voice of a person whom I like very much says “there are two huge mice chasing each other around my apartment!”
“I’m so sorry” I tell her, meaning every word.
“What do I do?” she asks, genuinely wanting to know.

But the fact is, I don’t know. I could say “call pest control in the morning and hide all your food in the refrigerator” but that doesn’t address the issue of the mice having a rock’n roll good time right in the middle of her bedroom floor right now.
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What to do…“Make sure they’re not rats” I want to say, but this seems mean and unhelpful.

Make a cheese trail to the door? Meow quietly and hope they’re mice of the low IQ type? Use a fly swatter? What? Really, nothing comes to mind.

Never assume anything

Today was “common law marriage” day in class. Typically this is a real breather lecture – the doctrinal law is vague and undefined, the cases are "sexy" and involve such notables as William Hurt, David Winfield (it took me years to learn that he was famous), Mick Jagger and Lee Marvin. What do they all have in common? Yes, okay, they’re all “has-beens.” But they also were in relationships where one person (always the woman) claimed a valid union (of sorts) and the other said no. All but Lee Marvin (do you remember “Cat Ballou” with Jane Fonda and Lee?? Crazy..) allegedly had components of a common law marriage.

So the class moved along in a fast and lively way (law students love digressions where you do Mick Jagger and Lee Marvin imitations—try it!), and we got through the boring and mundane as well (“what’s habit and repute and where did it come from?”), and I’m summing up with such terrific doctrines as the “putative spouse doctrine” and the “presumption of the validity of the later marriage” (can you believe how far courts will go to validate an absurdly defective if not outright bigamous marital relationship!), and it’s all cool, and I take my last sip of tea for the day (a must when lecturing first thing in the morning on a winter day), start gathering my papers and texts, and a hand goes up.
“Yes?” I ask with satisfied and confident smile of encouragement.
“What is common law marriage anyway?” she asks.

Stopped me dead in my tracks. I assumed we were all on the same page on that one. Doesn’t everyone know what a common law marriage is? Where was she in the 60s anyway? Oh, not born yet. That’s right.

Yes, well, I did then oblige with a definition, but after the Lee Marvin & Mick Jagger stunts, it seemed anticlimactic.