musing minds

We had a little snow today. Freeze warning tonight.

We had to go purchase a new TV today too. About a week ago, suddenly the TV (a 7-year-old, 42 inch Sony rear projection set) went very red. The reset button and adjusting the set worked only so far. Then today, it went really red and there was no adjusting it at all. Here’s a picture of Megyn Kelly all pinkerized… Poor Megyn. I mean, I know it’s Breast Cancer Awareness month, but this just goes too far…

Poor Pink Megyn

Please contribute to the Susan G. Komen Foundation. My sister’s mother-in-law died as a result of her breast cancer last October.

So we went to Circuit City and purchased a 47 inch LG HD LCD to replace it. It’s very nice.

Trick-or-treating started off very slow yesterday. The hours for trick-or-treating were 1 – 5 pm. We didn’t see our first trick-or-treater until 1:52 pm. And it wasn’t one trick-or-treater, it was a crowd of about 15.

Lots of princesses and Batmen. Several werewolves with good masks. A very large gorilla showed up with two tiny princesses.

It was pretty steady until about 3:30 and it dropped off drastically with a slight flurry of trick-or-treaters around 4:40.

It was sunny, only about 50°F and quite windy bringing that temperature lower with wind chill. That may explain the lower turnout for trick-or-treating this year. For the past few years it’s been warmer – sixties – and sunny and we had steady trick-or-treaters during the full four hours.

Puppytini ™

she’s been chewing herself some (dry skin probably) so she’s had to have the ‘lampshade’ put back on. With it, she’s a perfect Puppytini ™ – well after I put the olive on a toothpick in “the glass”.

Is at Patterico.net… the link in my Daily Reads Blogroll listed as Patterico’s Pontifications – use this one.

1. I didn’t sleep well last night. Part of the reason was the six pound black cat curled up between my shoulder and my chin, purring her little head off, and emitting tiny, stinky cat farts….
2. I, and many others like me, don’t resent those who earn more than we do. We aspire to earn that much or more! And we work for it. For example, my husband and I earned degrees to help us earn more. I have a Bachelor’s degree in Business and he has a Bachelor’s degree in IT and a Master’s in IT Management with a Security concentration.
3. Do Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and the democrats in Congress realize that with their increasing taxes on “the rich” and spending huge amounts that they will end up becoming a sub-prime loan recipient? And that we, the taxpaying lenders, won’t be getting a “bailout” this time? And why $250K? I think that’s far too low. Many families making that in Manhattan or San Francisco are solidly middle class, not rich, because of the cost of living.

Is NOT this weekend. The last Sunday in October used to be the date to come off Daylight Saving Time, but it’s been changed. For this year, and future years, Daylight Saving Time ends on the first Sunday in November.

Fall Back November 2, 2008 at 2 am

Around here some towns have Trick or Treating for Halloween this Sunday from 1-5. Others have it on Halloween day itself. With the change in the end of Daylight Saving Time to the first Sunday in November, there’s just a little more light in the early evening for the children to go trick or treating.

Daylight Saving Time will start up again on the 8th of March, the second Sunday in March.

a cartoon from ALG:

Joe Biden was encouraging the crowd at his rally in Colorado today to vote early since early voting in Colorado goes on until October 31st. Shep cut away from Joe’s giving his website address for information on early voting and said:

Shep: We won’t interrupt him for the meat of his discussion, but Mary Ann Marsh, why is this early voting so important?

Mary Ann: Well it’s everything Shep. You have to assume that all these polls are much closer than they appear and as Major Garrett said in the earlier segment, any vote you can get before election day is a vote in the bank. You can count those. You can go into election day, know exactly how many votes you have and then based on models know exactly how many votes you have to get on election day. The big thing here Shep that you’ve got to keep in mind is, a good field organization is worth three to five points on election day. You can find three to five points on the ground on election day. So if these polls are close then that’s exactly what’s going to determine this race and you have to say, in that respect, Barack Obama should have the advantage.

This particular line piqued my interest:

You can go into election day, know exactly how many votes you have and then based on models know exactly how many votes you have to get on election day.

I was under the impression that early votes were counted at the same time that absentee ballots were counted, on election day.

So I called up the County Clerk’s office and asked just to make sure.

Early votes are held until election day. So are absentee votes. Then the moving company brings all the voting machines to a warehouse for processing. All the votes are processed at that time.

So, I don’t know how Mary Ann Marsh can know how many votes there are for any candidate. The most she can know is how many early voters there were.

Exit polling, notoriously unreliable, is even harder with early voting, too many places, too many days…

So far this morning I’ve heard Maria Cardona and Stephanie Cutter trying to explain Joe Biden’s remarks from Sunday.

Both are saying that with the world as it is today, whoever is elected president will be tested, especially with the “failed policies of the last eight years”.

Joe Biden said:

Mark my words. It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy. The world is looking. We’re about to elect a brilliant 47-year-old senator president of the United States of America. Remember I said it standing here if you don’t remember anything else I said. Watch, we’re gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy. (emphasis mine)

Maria and Stephanie are just trying to spin us away from what Biden actually said. The fact that Biden speaks only of Obama, not McCain is one reason; The “whoever wins the Presidency will be tested” line just doesn’t cut the mustard.

The other is the emphasized phrase above: “a generated crisis”. Joe Biden is telling his audience that one of our enemies out there will generate a crisis in order to test Obama. Creating something new, not just the world as it is today. Not just Iraq and Afghanistan. Something else.

Obama is running for Jimmy Carter’s second term. The world will expect Obama to react just as Jimmy Carter did.

UPDATE: Your Radio Equalizer has talk radio reaction to Biden’s comments and the Obama camp spin.

That’s a question I must ask when I hear him say this:

Mark my words. It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy. The world is looking. We’re about to elect a brilliant 47-year-old senator president of the United States of America. Remember I said it standing here if you don’t remember anything else I said. Watch, we’re gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy.