Posters the DNC Doesn't Want You to See

Okay, so I tried very, very hard to take the image I have posted twice now (the Obama image with the caption "hope," or "change," or "progress") and do a fine mix with some Maoist posters. Problem being, I don't know the first way to go about that. So instead I'm just going to post some pictures I've found and add my own captions to them.


I call this one "HOPE."

















I call this one "CHANGE."


















I call this one "PROGRESS," what with the factories belching smoke & "greenhouse gasses" AND a breast-feeding woman, in spite of being French. WOO!







I call this one "AWE-SOME."

In Brief: Polls, Then and Now

I keep looking for wee little glimmers of red-state hope (no pun intended...okay, maybe a little pun), but there is very little to which I can grasp at this point. Some polls seem marginally favorable, others detail such a wild distance that the preference of the pollsters glares a "brilliant" luster. So far the biggest little morsel I can chew right now is that infamous blunder, that Dewey defeated Truman. That morsel happens to taste like a fine steak...but I still have that nagging feeling that my waiter forgot my baked potato. And, damnit, I like baked potato.

How, you ask, feeling the same sense of either surging joy or silent, lugubrious declension (in my case: silent, lugubrious declension), do I know that my little, khaki Idahoan has been consigned an inauspicious demise beneath the vermilion glow of a heat lamp?

Gallup now has Obama's lead between 7-8 percent. Gallup tends to err closer to fact than most any other poll. Gallup's polling pictures one of the narrower projections amongst the more major pollsters. Many, in fact, have the figure closer to nine.

Here I'm making a projection, still hoping that the ghost of "S" can miracle me into wrongness...we're gonna see something similar to 1948, with a reasonably close popular vote, but an electoral college map so out of balance it may shift the orbit of the planet (hopefully, though, without Strom Thurmond or one of his disciples earning ANY EC votes).

That, on top a rather disturbing article I read in my morning rag citing that Obama and McCain are neck-and-neck in rural areas as well, with a precedent that the Republican candidate generally must garner 15% or more of the rural vote to offset that of the urban AND the fact that ONE SINGLE PROTESTER showed up (conspicuously, I add, since I was nearby but had to remain covert as part of my infiltration), and he supported Ralph Nader!!! Whew, that's a mouthful of ugh.

Yet there are some small golden glimmers out there, and time will tell if they are for the fool: one, that the rural vote seems to be so tight and yet the EC is still far from decided; two, a point that another Gallup poll tries to show is that, proportionally, the number of first timers is staying the same. That bodes well for the youth vote! But then I come back to the "fond" memories I have from four years past.

To tell you the truth, I have found my memory skewed. What I remember:

Kerry good, Bush bad. Kerry up big, Bush falls like nuclear warhead. Bush makes signs of comeback, Kerry up too big to overcome. Bush wins popular AND electoral vote, Kerry actually concedes within two months.

I then do just a modicum of research into the recent past and find:

September 6: Bush up 7; September 17: Bush up 8; September 28: 8 again; October 4: tied; October 12: Kerry up 1; November 1: pick 'em.

So, by and large, Bush actually lead most of the time, contrary to what my stupid brain was telling me (FIE ON YOU!), although it did show Kerry with the narrowest of leads about this same time last year, terminating in a technical tie. Of course, America doesn't believe in soccer and she doesn't believe in ties; although the narrowness of the polling was reflected, Bush prevailed by 3,012,171.

It seems like a mathematical equation. Then again, there was quite a bit of wishy-washy in the polling that year, too, so maybe, just maybe, there is some hope. But in the end "closeness" and "Bush" were nearly always consistent, and this year "leading" and "Obama" are nearly always consistent (as well as most normally occurring within the same sentence). So it's mathematical after all.

And that, friends, pretty much dashed my hope of seeing Nevada donning the only pretty red dress she has (see picture).

In related but other news, here's a headline, which, of course, I can't find again, from foxnews.com: 1 Percent of French Prefer McCain. OK, so if that doesn't prove how we should vote, I don't know what would.

Besides, we mustn't base our decisions upon the expressed wishes of people "over there." I would call it something akin to a rancher, requiring a "new" vehicle to help in the feeding of cattle, and settling upon a Prius because his buddy in the "big city" drives one and tells him that it saved him $1,028 in gas last year: it's simply does not fulfill the needs of the rancher, who will, in all probability, destroy the car in the 400 yards between the garage (aka: "car-hold") and the haystack.

Good weekend to all!

David Ward, and Riding the Coattails of "Change"

I just realized that I haven't posted anything, useful or otherwise, in nearly a month. Now I have been preparing a neat historical look, or examples upon which we may like to reflect before casting our votes, and I promise that will get done before the election. But for now, a little filler.

So, I just have to chuckle whenever I see David Ward's campaign materials around town here. CHANGE FOR RENO!!! As happy as I am that he's decided to use this quadrennium's most important (and misused) catchphrase to bolster his campaign, I find it delightfully ironic.

In 1995, the City of Reno began a new era when Jeff Griffin became the new Mayor. The years before, culminating with Mayor Sferrazza, had seen a dramatic downturn throughout the city. Major projects had been conspicuously neglected as the city, though ever growing in population, fell farther into the charnel. Some sectors of the city were slipping rapidly into dilapidation, and tourists and residents alike tended to steer clear of the downtown economic center. With Mayor Griffin (and continuing with current Mayor Bob Cashell), the city took the reigns and began a series of municipal projects intended to undo much of the damage that the previous years of negligence had inflicted.

What's so damn funny to me is how it reminds me of some remarks made by one of my heroes a few years ago.

"And now we hear talk that it's time for a change. Well, ladies and gentlemen, another friendly reminder: We are the change."

And that is not altogether different here. Our mayors and our very diverse city council have accomplished much in the past thirteen years, and yet there is much to be done. In reading over Mr. Ward's website I am taken by a number of items, not the least of which being his attention to term limits; I am generally in favor of the imposition of term limits. Also his concepts of dealing with the old Mapes site, the Kings Inn, the Woolworth's building, &c. reflect many screams I have been making for years now. Yet his Ideas for Change seem to reflect a number of Johnson/Carter-style social plans what are reminiscent not only of policy that lead to near economic devastation in the late 70's, but also of exactly what Mr. Reagan was talking about when he discussed his "change."

"We focused on hope, not despair. We challenged the failed policies of the past because we believed that a society is great not because of promises made by its government but only because of progress made by its people. And that was our change."

Truer words have been scant spoken. Yes, the economy, here and almost everywhere, is currently aslump, so this is not the time to be attempting major civil projects (bikes on demand, a Park-&-Ride, expanded municipal transit, &c.). This is a time for real action to improve ourselves, our economy, and our people; not so much a time to be focusing on pipe dreams of ambiguous change.