Got Your New Ideas Right Here

Since he totally agrees with me and listens to me about everything I'm sure this is exactly what he'll deliver, but here's my version of the much reviled--days before he gives it--national address to schoolchildren that Obama's going to present Tuesday.

Dear unfortunate children of the U.S.--

You really shouldn't even be paying attention to me, as all us adults, we're all lying to you. We tell you just to work hard and you will have a good life and all the things you want to buy you will buy and you will be happier than Adam and Eve riding their dinosaurs in Eden. But it's not true. The world we're leaving you is going to hell in a handbasket, a handbasket filled with guns and hate and crazy. Even the people your parents elect to take part in government, the ones that are supposed to represent you, to work for you, says government can't do anything for you.

But it can do things for the obscenely wealthy--Tim Geithner's kids, if this is on at your private school, just go home. You're going to be ok, your dad's made sure of that. Most of the rest of you, however, better double up on your bootstraps, you've got a lot of lifting to do.

For not only do most of us adults lie about most about everything, what we don't lie about we're just stupid about. One of the liars makes stuff up--like we're going to kill old people--and then all the stupid ones nod their heads. One of the liars says government provided health insurance is socialism, and all the people on Medicare nod their heads. One of the liars says there's no global warming because it's cold for one day someplace, and all the people running from forest fires or drowning in the more violent hurricanes nod their heads. It's like America has become one giant rusted out hulk of a 1957 Chevy, and we're all the bobbing-head-dogs in the back of the car. That's up on blocks. In a field littered with the ripped up remainders from Regnery Publishing.

So what can you do about it, my unfortunates? Go read some books. Challenge your teachers. Maybe cry a little--I know I would.

But more than anything else, just stop listening.

(13 of 31 in the drive to 2500)

Woo-Hoo!

So there might be hope for the US of A after all.

And notice that McCain, in his quite gracious concession speech, gives some good oratory. I guess it's just easier to deliver the truth and he hasn't had the chance to do that in a while.

The Win in Darwinian

From Chris Clarke at Coyote Crossing.

The Dirty South

Don't know if you've checked out FiveThirtyEight over in the links yet, but it's a project by Nate Silver of Baseball Prospectus, in which he turns his astute ability to use and never abuse statistics (that is, he doesn't start a project trying to prove something) toward the 2008 election. It's very fascinating, not just for the numbers but for Silver and his cohorts' ability to write and analyze and not just toss out numbers. So, basically, it's BP for political junkies.

In an entry yesterday Silver runs through some numbers and gets to this brilliantly underwritten passage:

It seems to me that Obama's numbers in states like North Carolina and Georgia are liable to come in within a relatively narrow range. He'll do better than a Democrat like John Kerry did there, with substantial support from blacks (although Schaller is right that African-American turnout has not been particularly low), students, information-sector workers, and new migrants to the region -- as PPP notes, Obama is leading by 6 points among people who have moved to North Carolina from outside the state, but trails by 13 among people who were born and raised there. But where Obama is disliked in the South, he tends to be disliked a lot; his "very unfavorables" tend to be pretty high in the region.

Gee, wonder what it means that "true" Southerners not only don't like the black man, they very unfavorably don't like him?

The more things change, the more the Stars and Bars still fly over the hearts of Dixie.