Uhhh, welcome almost all?

Pssst!

What do you do when your blog gets linked to by a site that promotes the sale and use of assault weapons and makes references to prayer and belief in a mission (of sorts)?

And what if that site then generates a flood of readers who come to you because the site author has posted your blog, along with Michael Moore’s as ones deserving of…attention?

Hmmmmm, I’m thinking about the answer to the above.

All I need is an ashtray filled with cigarette butts and a plate of sushi and I’d feel complete

Yesterday I spent the day writing a paper that summarizes interviews I had conducted over the years in Japan. Basically that means I sat in front of my computer in flannel pajamas, hair pulled back messily, stacks of papers (did I really take notes once on a napkin? ..how me!) spread in varying degrees of orderliness, and pounded at the keys of my laptop all day long.

Today a friend wrote – Congratulations! The first draft of any paper is always the hardest! Is it just me then who thinks that the first draft is the easiest? It’s almost as fun as doing the interviews and collecting the information. How grand it would be to now retire the whole thing and go on to something new. Spoken like a true scholar.

Still, a celebration of step one is in order. How opportune that a pal, sensing my dismal mood of the week-end had said “we should do sushi soon” and I took her up on it today. I’ve never been to the Muramoto. I’m all about escapes. Japan seems plenty far.

Afternoon conversation in the faculty lounge

So how’s it going?
It’s been tough. We had a guy from Move On staying with us for over a month before the election. He worked so hard! Fourteen hours a day, every day…

At least he was successful here in Wisconsin.
True; and he said in the next election it will be so much easier because they now have a network in place.

It’s amazing how well-organized the Republicans were though... The right of the right always delivers their busloads right on schedule, from the pulpit to the voting booth.
Do you know what my theory is? I think that Bush’s fundamentalist beliefs are just a brilliant strategy, invented by the conservative Republicans so that they could reach that strategic vote.

You mean you don’t think GWB really is guided by God and prayer?
I think he acts the part well. You see, they knew, they KNEW that in order to keep the GOP viable in the face of an increasingly economically polarized nation, they had to get 100% of the Conservative Christian vote. And so they geared him for it. They had their man – he has very convincing facial expressions and he can speak down to people and talk of God and also get away with his prior record of drinking and carousing…He has, after all, ‘seen the light.’

Do you really believe that?
Uhhh, maybe.

Another hurricane heading for Florida?

Is it possible that registered Democrats, voting overwhelmingly for Kerry in all states, chose to turn pink and eventually red under the glare of the Florida sun? How could Bush have carried, by large margins no less, these Democratic counties? Is it another instance of our endlessly squabbling over return numbers (that have been turned in and tallied) because they produced a result we cannot accept? Perhaps it is more that we cannot fathom this one.

Tom Bozzo writes this at Marginal Utility:

I can think of some potential explanatory mechanisms -- stale party ID on old registrations, incompetent reporting of the registration data by the State of Florida, more evangelical-leaning Democrats, for instance -- but on the whole, the idea that Democrats largely stuck by Kerry (89 to 11, according to the exit polls; sorry, Ann Althouse) everywhere but Florida takes my credulity and drops it down a wormhole where it emerges in the Gamma Quadrant in no recognizable form.

Interestingly, the issue is with counties using optically-scanned ballots, which is generally considered the most reliable available voting technology. Though as a result, the optical scan jurisdictions would be under much less scrutiny than those using touch-screen voting. At least it should be straightforward, in principle, to validate the vote totals from the original ballots; I fervently hope someone with appropriate legal resources does so (hello, Florida Democrats)!

Emboldened, embedded, embittered

A headline in the NYTimes this morning reads: President Feels Emboldened, Not Accidental, After Victory.

Depending on your fate, you could wake up on this Monday morning and find yourself in a state of one of the three E’s.

If I were to do a documentary-type film of this morning, I would have a three-way montage. In the first frame, there would have to be a CNN-type clip from Iraq with the word Embedded underneath, followed by the words (from CNN.com) “thousands of U.S. Marines and Iraqi soldiers braced for all-out urban combat;” then in the second, we’d see a refreshed, smiling, raring-to-go image of GWB with the NYT reference to his “Emboldened” state of mind and their words: “re-election has already had a powerful effect on his psyche, his friends and advisers say;” followed, finally, by a clip of me (hey, it’s my film, for my own archives), tossing aside yesterday’s Week in Review with the tables that break down who voted in what way on November 2nd. I’d just stay with the “Embittered” label underneath the last frame.

I’d leave Kerry out of my film. Bad enough that anyone can now park in front of his house (yesterday it was reported that the minute he lost the election, he lost also the security detail that kept his street clear of unwelcome loiterers), he shouldn’t have to also suffer the indignity of being in my short film.

I’d end the documentary (it would only be about ten seconds long because I have only that much energy for it) with a flash to the text of the NYTimes, this time to the passage that picks up on my posted hubris contest from the other day (a not-so-impartial panel of judges decided that the winning entry may well be “megalomaniac”):

"The big danger is one of hubris," said David R. Gergen, a professor of public service at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard and a veteran of the Nixon, Ford, Reagan and Clinton White Houses. "There's a tendency after you win your second term to think you're invulnerable. You're not just king of the mountain, you've mastered the mountain. That can often lead to mistakes of excessive pride."