So the week started with Bush as the President of the USA and not much happening except getting ready for the inauguration. Then Tuesday happens, and it feels like a tornado is going through the government. In over 30 years of watching national politics, I do not remember this kind of change happening so quickly, in so many areas.

CNN is making a big deal about covering Obama’s first 100 days. But is seems that in his first 100 hours, he has already accomplished more than the Bush administration did in the last year. Just the first three days of Executive Orders shows the enormous difference between the former and present administrations.

Not everybody is happy of course. The Republicans have decided that their losses in the elections are proof they need to stand up and disagree with Obama more. I am not sure pushing back hard is a good idea at this time. It will probably be popular with their base, but not so much with the more moderate section of the population that they need to woo back. It does show a certain amount of chutzpah, which I wish some of the Democrats could learn to have. On the other hand, it may just be an inability to grasp reality.

And one very important Democrat understands exactly where the country is right now. And the President let the GOP know it during their meeting this morning.

But some progressives need to see about picking up some tin foil from their haberdasher. While the title of his article, Obama and Ted Kennedy See Plans Foiled as Caroline Withdraws? does end with a question mark, Steve Clemons writes it like he knows exactly what Obama and Ted Kennedy were planning. And what they were planning was a Machiavellian scheme to set up Caroline Kennedy for a run at the Presidency in 2016. His reliance on anonymous insiders and an inability to get simple facts straight (Senator Kirsten Gillibrand will have to run in 2010, then again in 2012 if she wins), as well as his apparent mind reading abilities, tend to count against his credibility.

And it is looking like the trial in Minnesota will not be too long. Coleman does not appear to be doing well even convincing judges appointed by Republicans that his legal arguments are correct. With luck, this might possibly be over by the end of next week. (Was that enough weasel words?)

I guess it all comes down to, right now it feels really good to be able to say President Barack Obama. I hope he continues as well as he has started.

I play the MMO City of Heroes. Started the first day it was released and have been on it ever since. I don’t always play a lot, but I do like jumping on and beating up villains from time to time. Or beating up heroes, if I feel like being a villain at the moment. (Mayhem missions are much more fun than Safeguard missions.)So they recently released a game client for the Mac. This does not really affect me, since I am on a Windows machine. But they have done a couple of ads to use in pushing the new client to a new audience. This one was just released and I had to share.

An obvious parody of the I’m a Mac/I’m a PC commercials, but in a fun way. The first one is also quite funny.

And if you are not a player, you should check it out. Easy game and very friendly to casual players. The forums are even friendly to visit.

Have you ever wondered about how things really work? Not things like the financial system, there is ample evidence no one understands that. But more important things, like bubbles bursting, or how a bowling ball is curved as it flies down the alley. Or how do they make baseballs.I love learning about this stuff. I ran across the television show called How It’s Made on the Science Channel and was immediately hooked. They show exactly what the title says, how something is made. They do shows on everything from springs, to accordions, to playing cards.

Each episode covers 3 or 4 different products, and they basically go into a factory and follow an item from start to finish. They do not always follow the entire process, some things are proprietary processes that the companies do not want publicized. But they do cover the basics, and it is amazing how complicated some things are. A spring is nothing to look at, but is not all that easy to make. But in some ways, the machines that make the springs are even more amazing. I can not imagine how people come up with the designs for the fabrication machines. And the process for creating a steel drum? All of that, to make those simple things?

Another show that is in the same vein, is How Do They Do It?, also on the Science Channel. They tend to cover more intricate things, and have not been around as long as How It’s Made. But they also cover entire processes, like how UPS delivers packages quickly (when they do) or how a prefabricated house is built and delivered. So while there is some overlap, the differences make it another fun show to watch.

Right now my favorite show about things we don’t think about or even notice, is Time Warp. They use high speed video photography to look at things all around us and see what really happens. My favorites so far are watching balloons and bubbles burst. It is amazing to see how the break in the skin travels around the curve surface. The two look amazingly alike, although the balloons do stay more cohesive since they are more solid.

Some things are more interesting than others. The stunt men doing the shooting scene was okay, but the whip end breaking the sound barrier was really neat. And I firmly believe that the women that were doing the fire breathing are crazy. Watching this stuff makes me wish I had an HD TV, because the more details, the better.

I don’t think I liking these shows means I am a geek. I am pretty sure I was a geek long before they were a gleam in their creator’s eye. Now that I think about it, there is a good chance I was a geek before their creator was a gleam in their parents’ eye. But I still like watching them.

They are still counting in Minnesota. All kinds of people, both on the web and on the news have made statements about the length of time it is taking. But everything I have seen seems to be showing that the election officials there are doing their best to be fair and unbiased. They want all the votes that should be counted, counted, no matter who they are for. That is the way things are supposed to work in elections in this country. And it is one reason I am against all electronic voting. Optical scan has some problems, but it does leave a ballot that the voter has marked, which can be physically looked at if there is a need. There is an election in Virginia’s 5th district, where most of the recount entails running the machines again to see what their memory cards say.

What happens if the number is different? How can it change if it is only an electronic record and no one has used the machine since the memory was read on election day? So the number on the DREs should be the exact same, with the only differences possible on the absentee or provisional ballots. Virginia has at least stopped buying those machines. Now they need to stop using the ones they have.

But back to Minnesota. Nate Silver, the wunderkind at FiveThirtyEight.com, has made a prediction about the election, Franken by 27 votes. I am not certain he is completely serious about that. But it does seem to be the number that his math leads to. Of course, he is a statistician, so there is a built in margin of error in his work. That just doesn’t sound as good as a post title. And probably wouldn’t get him mentioned on Olbermann, Rachel Maddow, or Huffington Post as often. Besides, what if he is right.

Right now, the Star Tribune is letting anybody that wants to get a look at what the Canvassing Board will have to go through when they start looking at things. Minnesota Senate Recount: Vote on the Franken-Coleman ballot challenges.

I didn’t get all the way through the original 599, but of the 100+ I did look at, most of them were challenged for pretty frivolous reasons. A large number were challenged for having an identifying mark, when the only mark that I could find was the presence of a write-in candidate. While a particular write-in could be used to identify a ballot (Lizard People anyone?) you can’t use that as a basis for not counting the ballot. Otherwise you nullify the entire concept of having a write-in. And these challenges were coming from both campaigns. They should both shut down that kind of thing and limit their challenges to things that actually make sense, like extra marks and unclear voter intent.

I understand the PR and political reasons for all the extra challenges, but it is really a wast of time and money, since the Canvassing Board will throw those challenges out. All it will really do is irritate them, when they should be the people you least want mad at you.

The first line in this story from USA Today is a telling indictment of someone who is widely considered a man of honor. “Sen. John McCain is scheduled to visit Georgia on Thursday to campaign for GOP Sen. Saxby Chambliss, and Sarah Palin may not be far behind.” It is not the fact that McCain is stumping for a Republican that is a failure of principles. That is expected from the person considered to be the head of the party. It is the man he is stumping for that is the problem.

Chambliss is the person that was responsible for running ads during the 2002 Senate campaign that attacked Max Cleland’s patriotism and commitment to the security of the United States. The ads were called “beyond offensive to me” and “[I]t’s worse than disgraceful, it’s reprehensible.” These aren’t the words of some liberal whiner. They are the words of Republican Senators Chuck Hagel and John McCain, respectively.

These were the same kind of ads that Karl Rove developed and used against John McCain during the 2000 Republican primaries in South Carolina. McCain said “I believe that there is a special place in hell for people like those.” referring to the people that used his daughter in push polls. But he had the same people working for him in his 2008 campaign.

And that same primary showed that McCain was not all that committed to his principles. The controversy over the Confederate Flag during that campaign resulted in him admitting “I feared that if I answered honestly, I could not win the South Carolina primary. So I chose to compromise my principles.”

For a man that is supposed to be a maverick, who promised to always tell the truth about his beliefs, McCain seems to spend a lot of time failing to actually follow his principles. He showed “poor judgement” in the Keating Five mess, lied about his beliefs regarding the Confederate Flag controversy in South Carolina, then hired people he earlier called reprehensible to work for him in his Presidential Campaign. And now he is campaigning for Chambliss, a man that uses any means he has to win.

Maybe all of this isn’t a failure of his principles. Maybe his principles are actually exactly what he has been showing us. He wants to win, and is willing to do anything he has to in order to do that. I do not know the man personally, I have to go with what is on the public record. And that record is getting more and more damning.

Yes, I know this is a bit late. Everybody and their brother has been talking about Tuesday and Obama’s win. I had given some thought to driving over to Chicago and standing outside the fence at Obama’s party. But I figured that they wouldn’t call the election until late, and I would have a 4 or 5 hour drive home afterward. So I decided to call the local Obama campaign back and offer to work on the GOTV effort Tuesday, then get a pizza and watch MSNBC and CNN after the polls closed. Then I got a call on Monday afternoon that changed my plans.

I voted in September, the first day it was available. I am pretty sure I was the first person in the county to vote, since they were still sorting out the ballots they had just received from the printer when I went in. While I was there, I offered to work at the polls on election day if they needed me. They signed me up for the training class and put me on the list of people to call if needed. They were pretty happy to have me, since there are not that many people registered as Democrats in this part of the country.

I knew they had me on their list, but they did not call, so I figured I was free to do what I wanted on the 4th. Then the Board of Elections called me at about 4:30 in the afternoon on November 3rd. Could I work the polls the next day, they had 3 people call in sick. I said yes so the next morning, I had to be at the Junior Fair Building at the County Fairground at 5:45 AM.

5:45 AM, heading in to work the polls on November 4, 2008.

Why would anyone think I was tired, just because I couldn’t hold the camera steady. The really bad part about needing to be there so early is the fact that my normal schedule has me going to sleep about 4 or 5 AM. I managed to get about 3 1/2 hours sleep before getting up and heading to the polling place. But I have a harder time handling lack of sleep than I did when I was younger. Imagine that.

The ladies I was working with were surprised to see me, apparently no one had told them the woman they normally worked with was not going to be there. But they quickly put me in her normal place, and showed me what to do.

People marking their ballots or waiting to do so at 10 AM.

Things progress fairly smoothly during the day. There were quite a few people waiting in line when the polls opened at 6:30 AM, and they quickly found their precinct table and got their ballots. Then there was a wait, since there were not enough booths for everyone at once.

It was not a long wait for most people, despite the size of the ballot. I got the impression that quite a few people were either just marking the races for offices and local issues or they had researched the Ohio constitutional issues before they came in to vote. I would prefer the second, since I rather like the idea of an informed electorate.

More people coming in, at about 4:30 PM.

The stream of voters was pretty steady all day long, at least for the precinct I was working in. We never had more than 4 people going through the process or waiting in line, but we seldom had more than 15 or 20 minutes without someone wanting to vote.

We didn’t mind this, since it really helped to keep us busy and made time fly by. With a 15 hour day working the polls, anything that made things seem faster was welcome. Even if it meant they interrupted us while we were eating at the table.

Waiting to drop ballots in voting machine, 6:15 PM.

On the other hand, one of the other precincts apparently had a bus load of people all come in at once. They had a line going out of the building waiting to get their ballot, then waiting to mark their ballots. And after they did that, they had to wait in line again to put their ballot into the scanning machines. I am sure some of them were less than happy about all the waiting, but I didn’t see any anger or hear anything about them being really upset.

Things really slowed down for us during the last hour, with only a few people coming in to our precinct. None of the precincts were really busy, there were only 3 or 4 people still voting when the 7:30 announcement that voting was over was given. Then came closing things down.

A precinct captain making certain that she had the correct procedure.

Besides making sure that all the numbers added in our books, we had to sort out and count all of the ballots. Since each of the machines had several precincts in it, that took quite a while. It didn’t help while you were counting when someone from another precinct would come over and give you a ballot that had been missed during the sorting. On one of those occasions, all 4 of us at our table had to start over after losing track of where we were.

How long it took each precinct depended on how many voters they had and how well the numbers matched. When you finished and were 2 ballots off, you were happy if someone showed up and gave them to you, even if it did mess up your counting.

Different precincts in different stages of sorting and counting ballots.

There were two women at our building acting as poll watchers. They wandered around all day, watching what was happening, occasionally asking questions and helping voters with questions they had. After the polls closed, I asked them who they were with and they told me the Democratic Party.

I understand the desire of the Democratic Party to make sure that everyone got to vote and the votes were counted accurately after 2000 and 2004. But having observers at places like Van Wert is pretty much a waste of resources. The people that worked with me were happy to help anyone vote, and did their best to make sure that everyone that came in wanting to vote had the chance, no matter who they wanted to vote for. I only know of one man that didn’t get to vote, he couldn’t remember the last time he had voted and he had not made sure he was registered before the deadline. And our precinct captain spent almost a half an hour making certain there was not way he could cast a vote.

I wouldn’t say I had a fun day. I enjoyed talking to the ladies I was working with, and I have always enjoyed doing things like this or serving on juries. I understand that makes me somewhat weird, but it is hardly the only thing. I may or may not do this again. It will depend on a lot of things, mostly how much free time I have. But I am glad I did it this time.

Leaving the building after the fun is over, 9 PM.

I guess I should mention this, since it was big news for the last day or so and will probably be news for most of today. It didn’t really tell me anything I didn’t know about Obama. I try to look at candidates and their positions before deciding who I will vote for. For those that are undecided or unsure about Obama, it probably did a good job helping them get to know him and his positions better. It may have helped some folks make up their mind or be more certain about their decision.

I think the one thing that really says it all about the current campaigns from both sides is this from TPM.

That is just the section that was produced for airing. It doesn’t include the last few minutes that were at a live rally in Ft. Lauderdale, FL. I haven’t seen that anywhere on the web that I can link to. But there is this commercial, which is worth watching.

The Republican party and McCain/Palin campaign have been really hitting things hard with their messages. It is apparent that they are really starting to feel the pressure of the polling numbers that are coming out daily. There is some movement in the polls, including some tightening of the race in the national numbers, but the state polls are not looking good for McCain and it is hurting the down ticket Republicans. Although several of them have managed to shoot their own foot, i.e. Michelle Bachman.

The most irritating Republican talking point is the idea that it is a bad thing to have both the White House and Congress in the hands of the same party. As someone who tends toward the middle of the road, I generally agree with this sentiment. It does help keep the country more toward the center of the road when the President and Congress have to compromise. Unfortunately, it can also lead to gridlock and necessary work not getting done when both sides refuse to compromise.

David Frum, a conservative political commentator at the Washington Post, has written an article with this talking point. He is really afraid of the leftist domination of the Democratic party and what it will do to the country. But Brad Delong, in a very short post called, I Call Bullshit on David Frum, did just that. If it is so bad now, why wasn’t it bad in 2000? or 2002? or 2004?

The interesting part of this tactic is that the Republican Party is using it to push voting for Republican senators and representatives. John McCain is using it to say vote for him. Considering the polling numbers for McCain, unless something really drastic occurs, it is doubtful his use of this message will do much. The Republican senators and representatives may have better luck, probably depending on how closely they have tied themselves to the McCain/Palin ticket.

Carl Huse and David M. Herszenhorn point out in The New York Times that even a veto proof majority in congress does not mean that everything can get passed. Both the major parties are in reality, coalitions of smaller groups that tend to work together. In a parlimentary system, neither would be nearly as large as they are in the US system. Blue Dog Democrats can easily align with fiscally conservative Republicans, with the blessings of their constituents, to block bills they think go too far.

One of the things that has hurt the Republicans this year, especially in the Presidential campaign, is that they seem to have forgotten they are a coalition. McCain/Palin seem to be working hard to pull in the social conservatives, but they are losing the fiscal conservatives and social moderates. And losing the moderates, whether fiscal or social, is a losing strategy in the United States.

Another meme that seems to be flowing through various comment sections on the web is that John Kerry was ahead of Bush in 2004 at this point and McCain can still come back. In reality, Kerry was mostly behind in electoral votes for the last month or so. He had some good polling days, much better than McCains to be honest, but Electoral-vote.com has all of their pages from the 2004 election up, showing that Kerry and Bush were close all through the last month, with Bush usually polling ahead. From the looks of his data, who won was almost random, depending on who had a headache when they got up and decided to skip voting that day.

In comparison, Obama has been leading on the Electoral-vote.com site since mid September just before the economy crashed, with his lead in electoral votes growing steadily. He makes it easy to compare the two campaigns with graphs on this page. Combined with the work that Nate Silver and compatriots have been doing at FiveThirtyEight.com, and it looks like it would take something truly catastrophic to stop Obama.

I wasn’t planning on writing anything today, or probably until this weekend. But I found this video and had to share it.

It certainly brings back memories. I just wish I wasn’t old enough to have them.

If you pay any attention to news programs and/or election news, it is easy to guess what is the top story of the day. That would be Secretary Colin Powell’s endorsement of Barack Obama for president on Meet The Press Sunday morning. I just watched it again, and it is  one of the most thoughtful and articulate listings of the current state of the country and the world, and what is needed to meet the problems that exist, that I have ever seen. The video is here on MSNBC.com.

This is all over the blogosphere of course. The Arena at Politico.com has a large number of comments, from all over the political spectrum, talking about it. There is also a variety of responses at Mike Murphy’s Swampland blog, some well reasoned, others much less so. Some on the left were very happy about the endorsement, others discounted it because of Powell’s history with Iraq.

CNN just had an interesting piece on an encounter outside a McCain rally. Someone was making some nasty comments about Islam, and passing out bumper stickers equating Obama with radical Islam and the Soviet Union. He was confronted by the American News Project reporter about what he was saying, then several Muslims and Christians that are McCain supporters started taking him to task. Then a McCain campaign organizer came up and told him that the McCain campaign did not support what he was saying and did not want him saying it there. The video is not the highest quality but it is a good story.

This is a very good look at the McCain campaign, showing them supporting moderates and repudiating some of the extreme points of view that have been outside their rallies in the past. The sad part is, Rich Sanchez was going to do an interview with the McCain staffer, but had to cancel because the McCain hadn’t given him permission to talk to the press. I can understand the campaigns wanting to make sure their staffers do not say unfortunate things. But it seems to me that stopping a story like this is counter-productive.

It is sad to see how McCain’s campaign has been using innuendo and smears to try and beat Obama. I didn’t like it when it happened to McCain in 2000, especially since he would have been my choice to vote for in the general election that year. (Yes I am a Democrat, but that doesn’t mean I turn off my brain and follow blindly where someone else leads.) His choices since then, especially the way he has ran his campaign this year, have lost him a lot of respect from moderates and even conservatives. He has to have seen this, endorsements like Powell’s, the Chicago Tribune’s, and the Salt Lake Tribune, show how much he is driving away the moderate conservatives. But he continues, using the same kind of negative campaigning that he once denounced so loudly.