Read the Freaking Complaint, Why Don’t You?

I’m sure you’re all dying to hear Don Surber’s take on the Rod Blagojevich story, so here it is (in his annoying Q & A style):

Question: Is Democratic Gov. Rod Blagojevich going to resign?

Answer: Nope. His lawyer said he ain’t guilty. I don’t see a crime yet either. He did not sell the office. He talked about selling it, but he didn’t. Even a crook has to commit a crime before you arrest him.

Don Surber, meet the United States criminal code:

18 U.S.C. § 1349.  Attempt and conspiracy. Any person who attempts or conspires to commit any offense under this chapter shall be subject to the same penalties as those prescribed for the offense, the commission of which was the object of the attempt or conspiracy.

Attempting or conspiring to commit a crime is also a crime.  While the boundaries of conspiracy can certainly be stretched by prosecutors in some instances, in general it’s a good thing that, for example, a man can be arrested before the hitman he hired actually murders his wife, and also a good thing that he faces some kind of criminal punishment even though she wasn’t actually killed.

Also, while the selling of Obama’s Senate seat is what has everyone worked up into such a frothing frenzy, there are other allegations against Blagojevich for crimes that he actually went through with, not just crimes that he conspired to commit.  This is readily available information, if the Surb would bother to read the complaint (pdf).  Blagojevich’s scheming to sell Obama’s Senate seat is just the most recent example of the corrupt things he has been doing for years.  Allegedly.

Just Because

Still Rebooting from Nov. 4th

I’ve been enjoying this post-election world we’ve been living in for two and a half weeks.  Now that I’m no longer obsessively following the news moment-to-moment via whatever media source happens to be closest to me, I feel quite relaxed.  Haven’t had much of an urge to blog, though.  So here’s a lazy post just so I have something new at the top of the page, as much as I enjoy the picture of Obama telling everyone to chill the fuck out.

The Blog Readbility Test says that one needs at least a high school education to understand this blog.

Typealyzer predicts that my Myers-Briggs personality type is ESTP (Extraversion, Sensing, Thinking, Perceiving).  I have no idea what that means or whether it’s accurate, but famous ESTPs supposedly include John F. Kennedy, Teddy Roosevelt, Madonna, and Donald Trump.

GenderAnalyzer thinks there is an 81% chance that this blog is written by a man.  GenderAnalyzer is wrong, as there is a 100% chance that this blog is written by a woman.  The methodology is a mystery, but I’m intrigued by its prediction that the chances of Hippie Killer being a man are lower than mine (74%).  What does it all mean?

I hope your post-election life is treating you well.

Congratulations, President-Elect Barack Hussein Obama

Do It (If You Haven’t Already)

Where You’d Land if You Jumped to Conclusions

Despite my obsession with the presidential election, I actually have been reading other news.  Last week there was a report of a 22-year-old Sissonville woman who died after “falling” out of a moving SUV that was being driven by a friend of hers.  The report said that neither one of them had been under the influence of drugs or alcohol and the police hadn’t yet determined how or why she fell out of the SUV.  Today, the Gazette has details on who the friend was—turns out it was her boyfriend.  The police said “There are a lot of questions left to answer.”

I got a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach when I read that.  This didn’t occur to me when I read that it was “a friend” who was driving, but when I read that it was her boyfriend the first thing I thought of was Nilisha Gravely.  She was the Charleston woman whose boyfriend chased her into a Taco Bell and shot her repeatedly, killing her.  She had been riding in the car with him earlier that day when police pulled him over for a traffic violation.  It turned out that she had a restraining order against him at the time.  People, including Mayor Danny Jones, wondered why she would be riding around with her abusive boyfriend who was court-ordered to stay away from her and why she didn’t say anything to the cop when he pulled them over.

This is pure speculation on my part, but one reason a woman might jump out of a moving SUV is that she is trying to get away from her abusive boyfriend.  I’m not accusing this guy of anything, since there is no evidence of anything at this point.  To paraphrase something I heard Rachel Maddow say yesterday, I’m not jumping to conclusions, I’m just showing exactly where you’d land if you did jump.  Hopefully the police will be able to figure out exactly what happened.

Chairman of “Gators for McCain” is for Obama

Last week the New York Times published a story about college students who are supporting McCain.  Yes, all three of them.  (I kid.)  There’s a funny part involving a robot at the University of Florida:

The University of Florida in Gainesville is home to one of the country’s largest McCain student groups, with more than 1,000 members. Some of its volunteers stand for nine hours a day in a central campus plaza, pitching to students and selling T-shirts, their only source of campaign money.

The Obama group on campus, though, has hired a shuttle bus to drive Obama-supporting students to an early voting site 20 minutes away.

“Obviously, we don’t have the resources for that kind of thing,” said Joshua Simmons, 20, the chairman of Gators for McCain. “Right now, we’re just making sure that students know that this organization does exist, and that there are students out there who support McCain.”

As if to punctuate his point, Mr. Simmons was stopped midsentence while walking through campus recently and talking on his cellphone.

“What is that, a robot?” he said, exhaling noisily. “The Obama campaign has a robot set up in the plaza. It’s holding a sign that says ‘Powered by hope.’ Which I don’t think is entirely accurate.”

As it turns out, that’s not the funniest part of the story.  For that you have to read the student newspaper’s report on Joe Biden’s visit to campus yesterday.

Not all Republicans were there to protest.

“I wanted to see the next vice president of the United States,” said Josh Simmons, Gators for McCain chairman.

Simmons said he voted for Obama about two weeks ago.

“I’ve seen a different John McCain than the one I signed up to work for,” he said.

Simmons said he submitted his resignation Sunday night and will no longer be chairman for the group, which has more than 1,000 members.

“I expect them to be incredibly pissed off,” he said.

I guess ObamaBot successfully complete his mission.

(Via Steve Benen.)

Election Fatigue

Let’s just get this shit done already, why don’t we?

Joe Biden in Charleston, West Virginia

I saw Joe Biden speak this morning in downtown Charleston and got to shake his hand afterward.  (I told him to kick some ass.)  The whole West Virginia gang was there—Manchin, Rockefeller, Byrd, Rahall, and Anne Barth.  Here’s my super crappy cell phone photo of Biden.  H.K. got some much nicer ones with his digital camera, so I’ll try to post one of those later.

Jay Rockefeller said that the pollster he uses did a poll that shows Obama trailing McCain by one point in West Virginia.  I’m not holding my breath that Obama will win the state, but today FiveThirtyEight does show a 54% chance of an Obama landslide, so anything’s possible, I guess.

Oh, and we had to get patted down by Secret Service just to go into Taylor Books to get some coffee before the speech.

UPDATE:  H.K. posted some of his photos at Fifth Column.  Check ‘em out.

Math is Hard

There’s a new poll out today that shows Obama and McCain virtually tied in West Virginia:  41.33 to 41.67, respectively.  Here’s what Jake “The Genius” Stump had to say about it in the Daily Mail:

The poll, however, randomly sampled nearly twice as many Democrats than Republicans yet it still shows McCain slightly favored here.

Conducted over a two-day period last week, the group sampled 344 Democrats, 182 Republicans and 74 independents.

Oh noes!  The poll oversampled Democrats and McCain still came out on top.  Newsflash:  The reason they polled nearly twice as many Democrats as Republicans is because in West Virginia . . . drumroll please . . . there are nearly twice as many Democrats as Republicans!

Democrats remain the dominant voting force in West Virginia, adding 26,416 to their ranks since the 2006 general election to total 675,305. Republicans gained 10,467 voters during that time, and now number 353,437.

If you pull out your trusty calculator, you will see that 675,305 divided by 353,437 is 1.9—that’s nearly twice as many Democrats as Republicans.  The breakdown of the polling sample closely mirrors the breakdown of registered voters in West Virginia.

I’m not saying the poll is accurate.  I have no idea whether it’s accurate.  You’d have to ask Nate Silver about that.  I’m just saying the sample was a good representation of the West Virginia electorate, as far as party affiliation goes.  So there’s no need to offer a caveat that “the poll, however, randomly sampled nearly twice as many Democrats than Republicans yet it still shows McCain slightly favored here”.