Conservative Republicans in Congress may out-numbered but they may still be in the majority.

The real fiscal policy battle is going to be among liberal and conservative Democrats, the “Blue Dogs” as they are known, and they seem to think Barack Obama is one of them.

“Barack totally gets it . . . He is smarter than Bill Clinton and disciplined.” So says Tennessee Democratic Congressman Jim Cooper on the Thursday before Mr. Obama’s inauguration.

Sitting in his office a stone’s throw from where the festivities will take place, I ask about his role in the big transformation coming to Washington. He’s one of the leaders of a gang of moderate Democrats called the Blue Dogs. They’re meeting their first Democratic president in a while, and Mr. Cooper may have a big effect on the agenda. He smiles gently and says, “If we were to ally with the Republicans, we could swing any vote in the House of Representatives.”

The Blue Dogs gang is growing and is made up of a number of Democrats that didn’t vote for the first Stimuless Package, or the Big Three (…Two…One) Bailout, are against tax increases and actually favor “targeted” tax cuts.

So far they want to play nice with Lefty Pond Scum like Frank ‘n Beans, Pelosi and Reid, but this could be the makings of a surprise and possibly epic battle for the high ground.

If they are inclined to wrangle with Nancy Pelosi and the more liberal contingent in the Democratic Party, they will drive policy, especially as a check on spending. “Ideally the White House will see things our way, so they will present legislation on the Hill that we find acceptable,” Mr. Cooper says. “If they stray too much from that or if a certain part of Congress strays too much from that, then we may have to object.”

But is Barack one of them?

Obama To Hold Fiscal Responsibility Summit

Obama said that he has made clear to his advisers that some of the difficult choices–particularly in regards to entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare – should be made on his watch. “We’ve kicked this can down the road and now we are at the end of the road,” he said.

The question is whether Obama actually used the perjorative “entitlement” and whether his idea of “choices” is cutting benefits and/or forcing Social Security and other entitlements to do more with less…or just raising taxes.

If the Blue Dogs are right, we might actually have another Bill Clinton on our hands, one that won’t dip his pen in the company ink (Michelle would rip his head off I surmise), which given the fiscal policies of GWB, might be Change^© we fiscal conservatives can live with.

…albeit given the lack of choice in the matter for the next two to four years.

But what of the monster stimulus package? What doth the Chien Bleu say of that?

“…I think there are infrastructure things that are legitimate to spend money on,” like the interstate highway system. “For the stimulus package to work in the economy, you have to have long-term credibility. If people think we are inviting inflation back in, or if we’re not going to prudently manage the nation’s finances, the stimulus package is largely a waste of time.”

A great thing about Mr. Obama’s plan, he says, is the tax cuts. “I think stimulus can come in a variety of forms, but I think the key message is Democrats are not for tax increases. Democrats can be for tax cuts when appropriate, when needed, when targeted. We can argue about the type of cut, but the key element of this proposal was facing the payroll tax. That is the most regressive, most antijob tax in America and very few presidents in American history have touched it. And Barack is touching it in this package. That is an achievement of immense proportions in and of itself.”

I’m still not convinced this stimulus will stimulate anything and I remain skeptical of Barack Obama’s definition of a “tax cut.”

In the mean time, check out these quotes…from a Democrat no less…Blue Dog Cooper:

[The deficit is] even worse than most people think, he says, because of dodgy accounting used by the federal government.

“The U.S. government uses cash accounting,” he says. “That is illegal for any enterprise of any size in America except for the U.S. government. Every for-profit business, every not-for-profit business, every state and local government has to use real accounting except for Uncle Sam.”

Barack Obama is inheriting over $60 trillion of problems. This is not counting the bailout, or Social Security or anything.”

Standard & Poor’s reported that the U.S. Treasury bond would lose its AAA rating by 2012 because of the way Washington has been carrying on. America would have the same credit rating as Estonia and Greece, and then the same as Poland and Brazil, and then it would be like . . . Mexico. “Yet no one knows about this,” he says.

We will be watching Congressman Cooper and his Dogs.

Let the battle begin.

From the FOX show schedule description of tonight’s epi of 24:

Jack takes matters into this own hands.

As distinguished from all those episodes where he unimaginatively followed “the book” and didn’t rock the boat?

Bush commutes the sentences of Ramos and Compean, two unjustly-imprisoned Border Patrol agents:

In his final acts of clemency, President George W. Bush on Monday commuted the prison sentences of two former U.S. Border Patrol agents whose convictions for shooting a Mexican drug dealer ignited fierce debate about illegal immigration.

Bush’s decision to commute the sentences of Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean, who tried to cover up the shooting, was welcomed by both Republican and Democratic members of Congress. They had long argued that the agents were merely doing their jobs, defending the American border against criminals. They also maintained that the more than 10-year prison sentences the pair was given were too harsh.

Thank you, Mr. President.

Look – we don’t want to encourage the precedent of police lying about their actions.  But the two agents were scapegoated as part of a defense of an indefensible border policy.

Note to Twin Cities’ Leftybloggers:  Please, please try to get your facts straight when you want to try to noodle about with issues I genuinely care about.  You might get Haugenned.

Fair warning.

Liberal in the Land of Conservative writes:

HOLY CRAP, the Democratic leadership in Congress is pushing the Fairness Doctrine. Who are the magical creatures that can pass a doctrine without nary a bill in existence?

Dear LITLOC:  Congresspeople, thanks to the miracle of “voices”, the “First Amendment” and “the Media”, can say things outside the context of “bills”.  For example, they can tell a reporter “It’s time to reinstitute the Fairness Doctrine. I have this old-fashioned attitude that when Americans hear both sides of the story, they’re in a better position to make a decision.”  That’d be Dick “Turban” Durbin.  Bear in mind, he said that without authoring a bill on the subject.

Yet.

And – just so’s you learn something, LITLOC – let’s be clear; Congress needn’t pass a single bill to reinstate the “Fairness” Doctrine.  If Obama puts three pro-Doctrine members on the FCC Board, the “Doctrine” can become fact again by executive fiat; no legislation will be needed, beyond confirmation hearings.  This, indeed, is the most dangerous scenario for supporters of free speech; Obama (and the smarter Dems) don’t want to pee on the third rail by legislating censorship – but how much political capital do you think Obama will burn getting in the way of an allied bureaucracy doing it for them?

Seriously, I thought Mitch Berg was supposed to be the smart one.

Among conservative bloggers?  No. I’m the cute one.

Compared to Twin Cities’ leftybloggers?  In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.

Do your homework, kids.  You’re gonna need to.

Barack Obama has a dream of affordable broadband internet for every American household and six billion dollars of the Democrats stimulus package is earmarked to that end.

Broadband carriers say it’s too little and it will be too late.

“I was incredibly impressed how quickly the House moved,” says Shirley Bloomfield, senior vice-president for federal relations at Qwest Communications (Q), a Denver-based communications provider that serves 14 Western states. “They’ve got some good concepts. But $6 billion is not going to get you to ubiquitous broadband.”

…some communications providers warn that the package as designed in the House bill may get bogged down by too much government bureaucracy, and fail to create jobs quickly—a key objective of the federal stimulus.

…the House bill is focused on using grants, loans, and loan guarantees, but it doesn’t use tax incentives at all. Grants would likely take many months to be distributed, whereas some companies say they could act much more quickly if they knew they could receive tax credits for their investments. “With grants it is eight months of bureaucracy before any money gets to its destination,” says an official for a large communications provider. “If you are looking for a quick stimulus hit, tax credits would be better.”

Do you mind if I repeat that?

“If you are looking for a quick stimulus hit, tax credits would be better.”

Just as giving free money to banks doesn’t guarantee they will lend it out, internet network providers may not be interested in stimulus money conditioned with government mandates, further diminishing the stimulus’ potential impact on growth.

However, some organizations such as Public Knowledge are hopeful that open access will mean that network builders—such as Verizon Communications (VZ), AT&T (T), Time Warner Cable (TWC), and Comcast (CMCSA)—must allow rivals to use their networks at wholesale prices.

“You would be required to lease space over these networks the way we used to do.”

If this is the case, ITIF’s Atkinson warns that many broadband providers would not participate in the program. “You’ll effectively have a boycott,” he says. “You’ll see very, very few takers.”

Internet access is a boon to the free flow of information, education and free enterprise, but high-speed access is not a right of every American citizen. Spending billions of dollars so more Americans can access their email, update their Facebook page and surf porn more efficiently has dubious value for the incremental creation of jobs.

For the past couple of years, we’ve gone to the Minnesoros Monitor and “Independent” for shrill, frequently inaccurate, often risible lefty propaganda.

Fastidious fact-checking?  Naaah.

Now, as I’ve noted before, I’m not Catholic.  I’m a committed Protestant.

But when I see Paul “Not The Dumbest Writer The Mindy Has” Schmelzer writing a story with a hed like “Vatican body: Minnesota professor’s sin worse than genocide“, I figured it was “worth” a read (where “worth” equals “barely”, and “read” means “mining for fisking material”); emphasis added by me:

While Catholic bishops and priests can hear confessions about sins as severe as murder or genocide, the Vatican’s 830-year-old Apostolic Penitentiary is “reserved for crimes which are viewed by the Church as even more serious,” writes the UK’s Telegraph. In Rome this week, this secretive “tribunal of conscience” held a two-day panel to discuss what it does and how it works. Crimes so grave they can only be absolved by the pope include attempting to assassinate the pontiff, directly participating in (or funding) abortion or desecrating the Eucharist. The inclusion of that last sin seems to put University of Minnesota professor PZ Myers in a worse class of sinner, in the eyes of Catholics, than genocidal dictators. The Telegraph even mentions the atheist biology professor, who blogged about his desecration of a communion wafer last summer, although it’s not clear from the article whether his case was specifically discussed by the Apostolic Penitentiary:

So in other words, the headline creates a misleading impression that there’s a connection between Myers’ act of sophomoric vandalism and the Vatican’s discussion…

…but no matter.  It’s not unknown for “local” news sources to dig too hard for the local angle.

But here’s the real question – and I’m gonna need your help, especially were “you” are Catholics.  As when the Mindy tries to “report” about guns, economics, history, crime, money, or facts, their reporting about religion has always been not only one-sided, but usually wrong.  Schmelzer’s graf tickles my “stink test” sensor, but I don’t know why – because, again, I’m a Protestant.
So I’ll open this up for a group fisk by the assembled commentariat.   How does Schmelzer (or, one might reasonably presume, his overlords in DC) get this wrong?

For most of human history, humans have had to reproduce as fast as they could; children were the only 401K, and infant/child mortality was harder on that retirement plan than the recession is on your Roth IRA today.
Capitalism and the generalized prosperity that’s attended it in the past 150-odd years has changed that dynamic. In a sense relative to the rest of the world throughout history, capitalism and general prosperity has taken human  life from “nasty, brutish and short” to “relatively civilized, at least modestly comfortable, and where obesity is the biggest health problem among the poor“.

One of the blessings that’s attended these changes is the existence, throughout the world, of “cheap food”.  When I say “cheap”, I’m not talking about supermarket shelf price, by the way; 500 years ago, over 95% of the world’s population worked from dawn to dusk six or seven days a week trying to subsist.  Do you work two shifts seven days a week just to feed your family and live in a hovel?  Who does?  No – food is incomparably cheap these days, historically speaking, even if the price of eggs is getting kinda out of hand.

“Cheap food” has enabled the parts of the world still governed by dictators, petty overlords and warlords to sustain populations that would have been mathematically and logistically impossible 100 years ago.  Of course, the lack of actual personal prosperity, and the attendant uncertainty of life, has kept the birthrates in these places high (albeit lower than when I was a kid).  The presence of global media, communications and markets have also made life safer in the parts of the world run by despots, warlords, and amok bureaucrats; it’s a truism that no famine can take place in a nation with a free market and a free media (every famine in the past 100 years has taken place in places with neither); the globalization of communications and markets has made it possible for weathy nations (with their epic surpluses of food) to ameliorate the worst ravages of famines, the great population-leveler of days gone by.

So on the one hand, a tide that has been rising since the birth of the modern world has been lifting all boats.
On the other, this has led the world into two basic demographic paths:

1. “First World” countries, with safe, practically-boundless supplies of food and historically-unprecedented prosperity, find it unneccessary to reproduce as much – even, in the case of Western Europe, to fall below replacement level, leading in just a few generations (from the end of WWII to today)  to the specter of being demographically “upside down”, with average ages creeping up into the forties and retirees outnumbering working citizens, and thus having to choose between economic shrinkage (with its attendant ravages on taxes to support  “service”-heavy governments – but let’s not digress) or importing working-age labor from…
2. “Third World” countries, for whom the relative affordability of food (historically speaking) but the relative scarcity of economic freedom has led to populations that are booming, young (average age less than twenty in many countries) and, since they live in despotic, anarchic or socialist countries, underemployed and poor.

This might lead to a vicious cycle – as we’re starting to see in Western Europe, where ageing populations, which for almost two generations have been at zero or negative native population growth are having to import labor from other younger, poorer countries.  Who are changing the political face of these countries – sometimes against immense resistance from the natives, and all of the attendant strife.

(There are actually two vicious cycles:  overpopulation in the world’s current context happens when populations in un-free nations continue pre-prosperity growth rates; there’s a reason that Paul Ehrlich, overpopulation alarmist of the sixties and seventies, is largely a risible figure these days; widening prosperity (in a historical context) obsoleted his theory in many countries that he’d used as case studies.  Remember when people expected India to become a famine-ridden wasteland?).
The US’ average age is still relatively low – partly due to immigration, partly because our national birth rate is above replacement levels (and even moreso outside the “blue” states – which could reflect anything from lower standards of living or greater optimism in the red states, depending on your point of view, and it’s a digression we won’t follow in any case), but we have a “baby boom” moving through the pipeline that’ll drag things upward a bit in short order.  Still, the US is faring better than most, controversies over illegal immigration notwithstanding.

But here’s the question:  how does the “First” world react to the demographic fact that prosperity itself renders its populations older and less capable of continued economic growth?

1. The French model – work to pound immigrants into line behind a national set of standards set by the dominant culture (which, culturally, resists assimilation of immigrants)
2. The Dutch model – try (at least in theory) to carefully regulate and balance immigration to provide needed labor and skills without overly diluting the national culture (which is marginally less resistant to assimilation than France)
3. The American model – work to assimilate immigrants into a cultural system comprising a set of ideals rather than ethnic cultural norms
4. The Japanese model – actively reject all but the most desperately needed immigrants, and aggressively marginalize the few that do get in.
5. The Russian model – wallow in cultural depression and drink oneself into a stupor, and let your nation’s underworld fleece, terrorize, brutalize and co-opt the immigrants into a permanent, but distracted, underclass.
6. The Finnish model – watch your national median age skyrocket – but live in a place to which nobody actually wants to migrate.
7. The (ahem koff koff) model – subsidize fecundity.  Give tax breaks and/or other rewards to families that reproduce above the replacement rate, promoting measured growth and helping to keep the nation’s median age down to a reasonable level, to ensure future economic growth and national viability in everything from defense to beach scenery.

What’s a hypothetical, ageing society to do?

(more…)

Those neocons! Condoning torture!

The proposal Obama is considering would require all CIA interrogators to follow conduct outlined in the U.S. Army Field Manual, the officials said. The plans would also have the effect of shutting down secret “black site” prisons around the world where the CIA has questioned terror suspects – with all future interrogations taking place inside American military facilities.However, Obama’s changes may not be absolute. His advisers are considering adding a classified loophole to the rules that could allow the CIA to use some interrogation methods not specifically authorized by the Pentagon, the officials said, although the intent is not to use that as an opening for possible use of waterboarding.

Bad torturing neocons!

As far as the mainstream media is concerned, there is one standard of ethics for Republicans…:

In 2001, President George W. Bush nominated Chavez to a post in his cabinet as Secretary of Labor. Chavez was soon forced out because it was alleged that she had employed an illegal immigrant 10 years earlier. Subsequent investigation uncovered that Chavez had not, in fact employed the woman in question, but had sheltered her and given her some emergency assistance because the woman was threatened with domestic abuse. The woman, Marta Mercado, is now a U.S. citizen.

…and another for Democrats:

Contrast the political uproar and media storm over Chavez’ nomination with the quiescent reaction of our electeds in the halls of Congress and our pals over at CNN and the New York Times regarding President-elect Obama’s nomination of Timothy Geithner to be the Secretary of the Treasury.

Geithner, you may recall, is the man who may soon be in charge of trillions of our tax dollars who thinks paying taxes is only for the little people. While working for the International Monetary Fund (IMF) from 2001 to 2004, Geithner failed to pay self-employment taxes totaling more than $45,000 including interest. Interestingly, the IMF, an international entity, pays its employees’ taxes and even sends them a notice regarding the taxes owed.

“But it’s not really the same kind of thing!”

Well, yeah.  It’s actually more than the same:

Just to ram the point home that laws are meant for some and not for others, Geithner also employed an illegal immigrant as a housekeeper (“Haven’t we all?” the U.S. Senators conducting the confirmation hearing must be thinking to themselves.)

You might be saying to yourself “News flash, Berg; duh.  Of course there’s a double standard!”.  And you’d be right.

My real question:  under these circumstances – where the major media refuses to point out ethical lapses (to say nothing of double standards) on the part of the incoming administration, can you imagine them not trying to shut down talk radio and the blogs, the conservative alternative media that are the only people that ever really question Obama on anything?

The media is in a froth over BHO’s inauguration and high pre-approval ratings but Obama may find it difficult to fill the shoes given him by the people for whom he is…was…the people we…or they…were waiting for…or something like that. Sorry.

Public expectations for his performance in office far exceed those for any president in a generation.

On the eve of his inauguration Tuesday, the poll found that 65 percent of those surveyed believe Obama will be an “above average” president or better, including 28 percent who think he will be “outstanding.”

Which is all fine and good. In comparison…

According to previous pre-inauguration polls, just 47 percent believed George W. Bush would be an “above average” or “outstanding” president when he entered his first term, 56 percent thought Bill Clinton would be “above average” or better and 38 percent thought George H.W. Bush would be. The earlier pre-inaugural numbers all came from the Gallup Poll, except for Clinton’s, which came from the ABC News/Washington Post poll.

But check out these amazing predictions for Obama’s Presidency; breathtaking.

Seventy-one percent of those polled said the economy will likely improve during the first year of his presidency; 65 percent said unemployment will go down; 72 percent said the stock market would be on the rise; and 63 percent said their personal economic situation would improve.

From where we stand, a dog with a note in his mouth could accomplish that.

Some conservative economists say that additional stimulus may only prolong the grief at best, triggering runaway inflation down the road and resulting in an even more bloated federal bureaucracy.

“I think the economy will recover regardless of what Washington does. But the long-term effect here will be to reduce the standard of living of the next generation because they will be saddled with all this debt,” said Chris Edwards of the libertarian-leaning Cato Institute.

Even without the new spending proposed by Obama, the U.S. has a $1.2 trillion budget deficit this year, he noted. “If that isn’t already enough of a Keynesian stimulus, what is?”

Given some of the ideas put forth so far by the Obama administration, we may soon find ourselves wanting for that pooch.

It was Wednesday, January 18, 1989.

I was getting ready to head out to one of my bars. Wyatt was about to head out to his.  He’d just sent one of his girls – a bartender from a bar on University where he worked – on her way before Teresa came over for the night.  He was drunk and high.

After the blowup a few weeks ago, we hadn’t talked much.  I was looking for a way either to get him out of there or, perhaps even better, get me out of there.

I’d lived with roommates pretty steadily since my sophomore year of college. Some were good, some were insane – but this was getting ridiculous.  Maybe I can figure out a way to afford a place of my own, I thought as I heard Wyatt padding down the stairs.

“You got the rent or NSP for the last two months?”

He snorted.  “I told you I’d pay that when all the product gets moved”.  He walked on, apparently thinking that settled it.

I’ve heard that before, I thought about saying.  But what’s the point?
“Hey”, he said padding past my room again.  “I’m thinkin’ maybe all the guns in the house should go through me for safekeeping”.

“Uh huh”, I muttered, tying my shoes.

“Because I’m the only person in the house who knows how to handle them”.

“Whatever”.

He padded back upstairs.

I headed out to the car and started driving to work.

He’s dealing drugs out of the house.  AND he’s a moron.  And when, not if, he gets busted, I’ll end up in a world of s**t too.  What can I do?

Part of my brain strained to recollect the names of cops I could talk to, that I’d met while covering police stuff for neighborhood papers back in ’86 and ’87.

Nothing, another part of my brain thought.  Not a damn thing.  Ever.

…best analysis I’ve seen.

Sorry, Al.

I’ve heard people say the porn industry will have a surge during a down economy.

You’ll be OK.

Why Norm Coleman Will Win

As much as I razz Twin Citians for their whinging about “cold” and “weather” – neither of which hold a candle to Northern Minnesota, much less the Dakotas’ weather – I’ll make this admission here, to just you and I.

The fact that it’s 19 degrees at 9AM doesn’t bother me.  Not one bit.

…who, like me, ignores the “safety instructions” before flights…

 US Airways flight attendant Alin Boswell concurred: “This is why we go through training and go through briefing. That 60 seconds you have to go over the emergency card can make all the difference.”

…thinking of paying just a tad more attention next time?

Maybe just a little.

Instant Runoff Voting “won” a big battle this past week in court, and it looks as if Minneapolis is going to take a whack at the voting system.

In the wake of the recount, I think it’s a terrible idea; it is to the best of my knowledge impossible to conduct an actual recount of IRV elections, and if you don’t think you’ll eventually need to, you are naive enough to be a Minneapolis liberal.

But I’m not going to talk about that (yet).  I’m going to go after the voter-facing side of IRV (adapting a piece I wrote a little over a year ago in a Saint Paul online forum).
Background:  I analyze systems – software, hardware, processes, print publications, what have you – to empirically determine how usable they are.

And speaking not as a partisan, but as a professional whose entire line of work involves figuring how to make things easier for real people to use, there’s a truism at work whenever people design systems; the designer always thinks he/she has designed something so intuitive that someone’d have to be an idiot not to be able to figure out how to make it work as intended and designed.  It’s true for programmers writing websites, for executives designing processes for other people, for engineers building freeway ramps, for architects designing public spaces; everyone designs things to be blazingly intuitive – to people like them, other programmers, executives, engineers or architects.

And when those programmers, managers and engineers watch real people in controlled usability tests actually trying to do real-world things with those websites, processes, ramps and spaces, and making mistakes and doing things they were not intended to to, they tend to have one of the following reactions:

• “Nobody’s that stupid!”   But it’s not usually a matter of stupidity.  It’s human nature – especially if that human is not a programmer, executive, engineer or architect.
• “It’ll never happen in real life!”  But it just did!
• “Wow.  Who knew?  We gotta redesign this!”  These are the good programmers, executives, engineers and architects.

Although those who stump for IRV – the idea’s “programmers, executives” and so on – express it via rose-colored glasses (that, too, is human nature); they don’t say people who might hypothetically make mistkes voting in an instant-runoff election are “idiots”.

But I can see several places where confusion is potentially built into the system.

Allow me to walk through a fairly simple conundrum that faces usability people and, by the way, real people using real systems, drawn not from political ideology (of ANY sort!), but from the experience of someone who has had to ask these questions of programmers, executives and engineers for a living for the past decade.

Proponents explain the core of IRV pretty simply:

“you simply rank the candidates in the order in which you prefer them”

So when “simply” ranking, say, five candidates from top to bottom, do you number them 1-5, or 5-1?

Remember – in many Asian cultures, 1 is “better” than 5, while many people think bigger numbers are “better” than smaller numbers (like a hockey score).

And if you answer “that’ll be explained in the instructions”, please bear in mind that people – REAL people – tend not to read instructional writing, and retain even less for any amount of time.  That’s not the cynicism of a former tech writer talking (although it’s there!); the research on much explanatory writing, on forms or website, that people read and retain is comically small.

So – how do you make sure everyone gets the directions the same way?  Verbal instructions from poll staff?  Mightn’t those be potentially legally-problematic?
Will people be able to cast “Tie” votes if they have no preference?  Rank everyone “1” (or “5”), or rank five candidates “1,2,2,2,3” or “1,1,3,3,5?”, or “5,5,5,5,5”?  (If you don’t think people will try, think again!)  What’ll happen to the ballots if people try to do that?  More importantly, how will people KNOW the consequences of trying that, whatever they are, and whether it’s OK or (emphatically) not?

All of you who chant “count every vote”: how many potential disqualifiers do you see in the above paragraph?

Let’s move past “process”, to mechanism. On what medium do people cast their vote in an IRV system – a paper ballot?  Marked with what?  Pencil?  If they change their mind before submitting the ballot, how are changes made?  Erasing numbers? How does one know, for audit purposes, WHO erased the number, then?  What if they do a poor job of erasing (with older people with arthritic hands, this is not uncommon); how are ambiguities caused by poor erasing and faint handwriting resolved?

How about people who don’t erase, but scribble or overwrite?

And don’t bother replying “tell them to get a new ballot”.  That’s a not-insignificant part of the current voting instructions – and we all know how many “spoiled” ballots turned up in the Coleman/Smalley race, don’t we?
And let’s not forget that immigrants frequently write numbers differently than Americans do; I run into this myself, since I usually use German numbering, and sometimes people read my “1”s as “7”s, and my “7s” as “4”s (I cross my 7s, European-style); how are these ambiguities to be resolved?  And if the answer is “by telling immigrants to make sure they use American numbers”, do you realize the problems you’ll run into?

Indeed, how are the votes of the handicapped to be tallied?  How would someone with, say, arthritic hands vote?  (I won’t even ask the obvious question about voting for the blind; I’ll have to assume SOMEONE’s on top of that one).

And none of this even touches on the issue of “how the ballots are designed”.  And that is a huge issue. Remember – whomever designed the infamous Broward County Butterfly Ballot thought they had a perfectly workable, usable design!

——

Bear in mind that NONE of the issues I raised above is, in my decade’s experience as a usability geek, outlandish, or even especially far-fetched; certainly none of them are remotely political.  These are the sorts of issues someone in my field expects to see when any new system intersects with new users.  Smart system owners run usability tests before their system “goes live”, and fix the issues they encounter.  Dumb ones…well, thank goodness for them, since usability disasters keep me employed.

I’d be very interested in seeing a real, live, end-to-end, empirical test of an IRV system and all of its components – the ranking system, the ballot and media, the counting process, the system of explaining the process to new voters in various languages – and seeing how it really works in a reasonably-complex, contested polling.

I say “contested” for a reason, by the way; IRV seems to have only been tried in locales with relatively monobloc politics, from what I’ve seen.  Without trying to judge the politics themselves, professionally speaking, that’s not necessarily a thorough workout.

Answer those questions, IRV proponents (preferably never using the phrase “nobody’s that dumb” in the process; it’s not “dumb”, but it’s human nature).

Then we can move on to the other questions:

• How do you do recounts?
• Why do all of you lefties who spent from 2000-2006 whinging about how Diebold and its electronic voting machines were in the bag for the GOP square that with the fact that IRV tallies are entirely, 100%, irrevocably computer-based?

Sound off!

I’ve always prided myself on my command of trivia.  I have yet to lose a battle of Trivial Pursuit, and I tend to do pretty well at Keegans’ various Trivia nights.

And yet sometimes I wonder – what useful bit of information, like my kids’ social security numbers or the start-times of today’s various meetings, or the name of the guest I booked for tomorrow’s NARN show – has been crowded out of my mind by less-useful factoids that still clutter my brain.

Like, say, the 1978-era lineup of the band Chicago – a band I never liked much, and actively detested after, oh, 1979, but was in 1978 made up of Lee Loughnane, Walter Parazaider, Danny Serafine, Laudir De Oliveira, James Pankow, Peter Cetera, Robert Lamm and Terry Kath?   And no, I did not  have to google that.  Sadly, no, not at all.

Or the original lineup of Generation X – Bob “Derwood” Andrews on guitar, Tony James (later of Sigue Sigue Sputnik) on bass, Mark Laff on drums and a young Billy Idol singing?  Don’t need it.  Not a bit.  And yet there it is, stuck like those cases of Mason jars on my fruit room shelves.

Maybe I need a brainema.

Michael Yon’s lawsuit against Michael moore is going forward, albeit slowly.

Details?  Sure!

In his annual State of the City address, Mr. Bloomberg described New York as “shaken” but “not broken,” and he put forward a nine-point plan to preserve and create 400,000 jobs, which he said he could accomplish without new government spending.

Did you hear that Jimmy Obama?

I noticed the outside temp sensor in my car doesn’t measure below minus 25.

Even the Japanese think we’re crazy to be outside today.

Last week, I scheduled “Talk Like James Hetfield Dayaaaaaah” for January 22.

This was before I realized that the annual Blogs For Mirth Day celebration was scheduled for the same day.

I will therefore reschedule Talk Like James Hetfield Dayaaaaaah” for February 24.

Off to neverlandaaaaaah.

Karl Rove writes a butt-kissing mash note to his boss’ administration:

This may knock me off some Christmas card lists, but I can see a case for history being kinder to Bush than might seem imaginable now.

Yes, there are any number of better decisions he could have made. Foremost among them would have been to bring a quick and decisive end to the war in Iraq shortly after it began.

And yes, he appears to have been soft on big business, especially the oil and energy sector.

There are areas, though, where Bush has excelled.

He has faced a number of crises that either no president or at least few have had. First, he was commander in chief when the United States was attacked at home on September 11, 2001. He was decisive in his response and showed admirable leadership both at home and abroad.

The nation now appears headed for disastrous financial calamity, the worst since The Great Depression. His administration has been forceful in trying to bring calm and to allocate money to industries fighting to survive.

And the economic woes of this country — just like other monumental, sea-change problems — did not simply appear one day or go away the next. Sure, this happened under his watch but the seeds for our mortgage, home loan crisis and those of the domestic automobile industry collapse were sown long before Bush first took office.

His administration rid the world and a nation of Sadaam Hussein, a despot whose sordid, tortuous crimes against humanity are well documented.

He paved the way for democracy in Iraq and other countries. It is still too early to tell if democracy will stick in any of those places, but people who have never voted are voting and, among others, women have new found rights to education and liberation.

Well, that’s the best you can expect from a racist neocon neocon Israeli-tank-driving neocon torturemongering neocon neocon like Rove.

UPDATE: Whoops.  It wasn’t Rove at all.  It’s Richard L. Connor, at CQ.

I regret the misunderstanding.

Strib files for bankruptcy:

The filing comes less than two years after Avista Capital Partners, a private equity group, purchased the paper for $530 million.

It was widely expected after the paper missed multiple payments to its lenders. The Star Tribune in its filing lists assets of $493.2 million and liabilities of $661.1 million.

The news was first reported on the Star Tribune’s Web site and confirmed by publisher Chris Harte.

In a statement, Mr. Harte said, “We intend to use the Chapter 11 process to make this great Twin Cities institution stronger, leaner and more efficient.”

It could, at least in the short term, do just that.

In the longer run?  Hard to say.  More on Monday.

Speaking of the long run:  The newsroom union doesn’t think in it:

In response to the filing, the guild representing the paper’s newsroom employees issued a statement in which it criticized Avista for its management of the paper in the wake of a series of concessions by the union.

“It’s unfortunate that a New York-based private equity company has put the Twin Cities largest source of news and information at risk,” said Graydon Royce, co-chair of the Star Tribune unit of the guild.

Well, to be fair, even a Minneapolis-based family business would have had a tough time making a go of the Strib in this market.

So what can the Strib spin off to make money?:

1. Make it official:  Sell the Minnesota Poll to the Minnesoros “Independent”, forming an all-lefty-propaganda mill.
2. Spin off the sports section.
3. And Vita.Mn.
4. Sell tickets for the chance to pelt Chris Riemenschneider wtih rocks and garbage.

The Strib’s lawyers will no doubt appreciate more ideas; please submit below.

And let’s not indulge in too much schadenfreud:  there are quite a few good people at the Strib.  While the paper’s editorial fealty to the loony left – via Nick Coleman, Lori Sturdevant, the “Minnesota Poll” and a million puzzlingly-daft editorial stances – were a few extra barnacles on the anchor that sank the paper, I don’t wish unemployment on anyone.

Damn those accursed neocons for condoning, promoting and outsourcing torture:

President-elect Barack Obama’s choice for CIA director, Leon Panetta, served as White House chief of staff during the time the Clinton administration accelerated a practice of kidnapping terrorist suspects and sending them to countries with records of torturing prisoners, human rights organizations and former U.S. officials say.

Republicans on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence will question Mr. Panetta, chief of staff for President Clinton from 1994 to 1997, about what, if any, role he played in shaping the policy known as “extraordinary rendition,” a Republican aide on the committee said. Mr. Panetta’s confirmation hearing is scheduled for Jan. 27. The aide asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of the issue.

Damn them for inventing the tolerance, practice and export of torture of defenseless, invariably-innocent suspects!

The practice — which involves seizing a terrorist suspect in one country and taking him to another without formal judicial proceedings — also occurred under the administration of President George H.W. Bush and possibly even earlier, said a former senior U.S. official in that administration. However, it took place dozens of times under the Clinton administration and rose dramatically after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, according to human rights organizations and former national security officials.

The issue is particularly relevant given the incoming administration’s pledge to end harsh interrogation practices and what Obama campaign documents referred to as “outsourcing our torture to other countries.”

Damn them all to HELLLLLLL!

…at least be thanksful you didn’t take an unexpected dip.  A US Airways plane, disabled by a flock of birds, has apparently conducted a successful crash landing in the Hudson River.

According to [a reporter on the scene], survivors told her that about two minutes after takeoff, a loud “boom” was heard and the plane began descending. She reported seeing a flight attendant being taken away on a stretcher, though she said it appeared that was among the more serious injuries.

“It was just going down further and further and further and then all of a sudden it was gone,” a witness named Peter Chinchino told CBS 2. “I’m shaking, it was crazy. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. There was nothing wrong with the plane, it wasn’t wobbling, there was no smoke coming out of it!”

No deaths reported yet.

Those must be some amazing pilots; jets aren’t built to be specacularly-efficient gliders.