If you live in Nebraska, Florida, Virginia, or anywhere else in the country, you might see some headlines today about a special election in New York, to fill a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives.
We can understand that you might not think this race has much to do with you - and we don't entirely disagree. A simple mid-cycle replacement race for a single seat in the House shouldn't mean all that much. It shouldn't - but it does.
To start with, the 26th Congressional District of New York was vacated in February of this year when the married, conservative, Republican congressman was discovered to have e-mailed shirtless pictures of himself to a woman he met online. By itself, that incident would be just another unfortunate black mark on the reputation of a political party that continues to claim - laughably, at this point - that its members are more ethical or moral than members of any other political party.
That was only the beginning of this story, though.
Three candidates entered the race for this now-open House seat; a Democratic candidate, a Republican candidate, and a Tea Party candidate (who had, at different times in his life, been both a Republican and a Democrat). Even with three candidates, the political makeup of the district is so heavily Republican, it should have been a cake walk for nearly any solidly Republican candidate to pick up the open seat.
"Should have been" is the key. The other big key to this race may yet prove to be what the Republican candidate said that she would do to Medicare, if she were elected.
In short, she made it clear she would enact the plan put forward initially by Michigan GOP Representative Paul Ryan - a plan that would get rid of Medicare as it exists now, and replace it with a voucher program. That voucher program would force the elderly to try to get private insurance when they're over the age of 65 - but they'd get a voucher, which isn't worth the paper its printed on when no insurance company worth it's stock will take a 65-year-old with pre-existing conditions.
As Nate Silver from FiveThirtyEight.com noted on Monday, it's easy to draw some early conclusions from this contest - and many pundits have. However, the unique characteristics make it unusually difficult to forecast with any certainty who will pick up the most votes when the polls close later today.
Unlike Nate, we're willing to go out on a limb and declare who will likely be the biggest losers in this special election, no matter what the vote tallies are: the Republican Party.
The Tea Party candidate has virtually no chance of winning. He began the race with about 25% of the potential vote in early polls. He's now down to 12% in polling and is continuing a downward trend. Unless the election is somehow a massive landslide for the Republican candidate - which, based on polling, is a highly unlikely outcome - this special election will have been fought over a topic that forms the basis of the GOP's 2012 campaign strategy.
Even if the Republican candidate wins by a slim margin, this issue will have proven exactly where the GOP's political weak points are - with more than a few months for Democratic strategists to refine their attacks before the 2012 campaign season really heats up. If the Democratic candidate wins, the Democrats will win a long-time Republican seat and weaken the GOP hold over the House by one more vote. If the Democratic candidate wins big, it will show just how dangerous and divisive the Tea Party truly could be in 2012.
No matter what the vote count is, the Republican Party won't come out of this special election unscathed - an outcome we warned was likely to happen one day, if the old-fashioned Republican moderates didn't stand up to the fanatical members of the Republican Party.
Just winning isn't enough. HOW one wins is as important as winning. Sometimes, maybe more important.
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
Monday, May 23, 2011
Thanks, Coach.
When we began looking at topics for today's commentary, at first we considered commenting on the continuing insanity of the 2012 GOP presidential primary field. After all, there were three announcements of consequence over the weekend from that laughably sad group of clownish figures.
On Saturday, conservative Herman Cain, former CEO of Godfather's Pizza, announced he'd be running for President - and then promptly put both feet in his mouth on Sunday, all the way up to his ankles, when he made a major mistake on the subject of Israel and Palestine.
Meanwhile, one of the men primarily responsible for the economic policies that created the Great Recession, former George W. Bush budget director and current Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels, announced Sunday morning that he's chosen not to run for the GOP's 2012 nomination. Former Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty officially announced the opposite - that he IS entering into the 2012 GOP primary race.
Still, the subject that kept coming up was the announcement by University of Nebraska Athletic Director Tom Osborne that Husker baseball coach Mike Anderson and his staff had been let go.
As we've mentioned on occasion, all of our staff has different yet long-standing emotional ties to Husker sports. One of us even graduated from the University, in Lincoln. Paul draws HuskerNutz year-round, and we all wear our Husker red, no matter where we're living. Our web guru, Shawn, was even the Executive Producer of Husker Sports Radio, at one time. He once took an opportunity to swing the bat at Coach Anderson's pitching during "Media Day" batting practice - and Coach A. was mildly impressed.
All this may be true - but we can't fault A.D. Osborne for making the choice he did.
We respect Coach Anderson and the entire Husker baseball coaching staff, but running college athletics these days is a business in many ways. Anyone who argues otherwise isn't being honest with themselves or with you.
Running any business successfully means making certain benchmarks. In college baseball, that means a coach has to take his team to the College World Series in Omaha if he expects to hang onto his position long-term.
As we've often reminded others, college athletics is significantly more challenging than professional athletics in some ways. In college, it's not just a player's ERA or number of home runs that matter. Their GPA numbers count too - and on that front, Coach A. continued to knock it out of the park, all the way to the end of his career at Nebraska. Under Coach Anderson and the Nebraska baseball coaching staff, 72 players earned academic All-Big 12 honors, including 15 players this year, a record for the entire league. Coach Anderson and his staff demanded excellence from their players, on and off the field, and they usually got it.
Admittedly, with changes in the MLB draft and college baseball over the last five years, college baseball coaches have had a harder time than ever keeping star players from leaving school for the allure of the big leagues - a problem that also plagued Coach Anderson. Still, when the announcement was made over the weekend, there were no excuses from Coach A. and his staff - and that didn't surprise us at all.
Mike Anderson and his staff have been a class act for nearly a decade. They did a great job teaching, coaching, and getting Nebraska fans excited about baseball again, especially in the early years of Anderson's tenure.
As they head out of Hawks Field at Haymarket Park one last time, in our hearts, we're giving them one last round of applause, in true Husker tradition.
On Saturday, conservative Herman Cain, former CEO of Godfather's Pizza, announced he'd be running for President - and then promptly put both feet in his mouth on Sunday, all the way up to his ankles, when he made a major mistake on the subject of Israel and Palestine.
Meanwhile, one of the men primarily responsible for the economic policies that created the Great Recession, former George W. Bush budget director and current Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels, announced Sunday morning that he's chosen not to run for the GOP's 2012 nomination. Former Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty officially announced the opposite - that he IS entering into the 2012 GOP primary race.
Still, the subject that kept coming up was the announcement by University of Nebraska Athletic Director Tom Osborne that Husker baseball coach Mike Anderson and his staff had been let go.
As we've mentioned on occasion, all of our staff has different yet long-standing emotional ties to Husker sports. One of us even graduated from the University, in Lincoln. Paul draws HuskerNutz year-round, and we all wear our Husker red, no matter where we're living. Our web guru, Shawn, was even the Executive Producer of Husker Sports Radio, at one time. He once took an opportunity to swing the bat at Coach Anderson's pitching during "Media Day" batting practice - and Coach A. was mildly impressed.
All this may be true - but we can't fault A.D. Osborne for making the choice he did.
We respect Coach Anderson and the entire Husker baseball coaching staff, but running college athletics these days is a business in many ways. Anyone who argues otherwise isn't being honest with themselves or with you.
Running any business successfully means making certain benchmarks. In college baseball, that means a coach has to take his team to the College World Series in Omaha if he expects to hang onto his position long-term.
As we've often reminded others, college athletics is significantly more challenging than professional athletics in some ways. In college, it's not just a player's ERA or number of home runs that matter. Their GPA numbers count too - and on that front, Coach A. continued to knock it out of the park, all the way to the end of his career at Nebraska. Under Coach Anderson and the Nebraska baseball coaching staff, 72 players earned academic All-Big 12 honors, including 15 players this year, a record for the entire league. Coach Anderson and his staff demanded excellence from their players, on and off the field, and they usually got it.
Admittedly, with changes in the MLB draft and college baseball over the last five years, college baseball coaches have had a harder time than ever keeping star players from leaving school for the allure of the big leagues - a problem that also plagued Coach Anderson. Still, when the announcement was made over the weekend, there were no excuses from Coach A. and his staff - and that didn't surprise us at all.
Mike Anderson and his staff have been a class act for nearly a decade. They did a great job teaching, coaching, and getting Nebraska fans excited about baseball again, especially in the early years of Anderson's tenure.
As they head out of Hawks Field at Haymarket Park one last time, in our hearts, we're giving them one last round of applause, in true Husker tradition.
Friday, May 20, 2011
Friday Funday: It's The End Of The World - But We Feel Fine
As you may have already heard, a fanatical far, far, FAR right wing extremist in California has decreed that tomorrow (or possibly, yesterday or a few days ago, if you don't check your e-mail every day) is supposed to be the end of the world.
For a million little reasons, we're just not buying into the hype today.
For starters, even if you’re Christian and even if you believe in the rapture (or this particular model of the End of Days – there are many ), there are many different Bible verses that - as clearly as any other christian bible verse - lay out that the second coming will occur when pretty much no one is paying attention.
Since you're reading this, and since we put today's Daily Felltoon together, we're pretty sure we're all paying attention - which we think at least gives us all partial credit for saving the world today. So... Mazel Tov and thanks to you! Good job.
There's also the question brought up by a discussion of our staff members earlier this year: exactly WHEN is the end of the world supposed to occur?
Most Western media sources we've looked through seem to say it's supposed to happen on Saturday. But as far as we can tell, the insane maniac/devout fool who began this rumor thinks the rapture will happen at exactly midnight, Jerusalem time.
That puts the rapture square in the middle of the afternoon for basically all of the Western Hemisphere.
On FRIDAY afternoon - not Saturday.
Those of you that have to do end-of-week reports may be rejoicing at that news - but we really think you should hold onto your paperwork and hold off on doing your best Keith Olbermann impersonation. After all, the rapture may be tomorrow, but the end of the world isn't technically until October 21st, according to the California extremist.
Whatever you believe, we hope you live life every day as though there won't be another.
For all of us - like former Nebraska teacher and poet Bill Kloefkorn - that will eventually be the case.
Bill was a teacher, a poet, and a lover of words, all things that we admire and respect. He loved life, and enjoyed humor as much as anyone. We're fairly sure he'd agree with our advice, cliché though it is. He passed away Thursday, and we send our condolences to his friends, family, and all who knew him.
Not a single one of us truly knows when we're going to go, whether we get hit by a bus, or get yanked into the clouds by the rapture. [We're not Baptists, and at least one of us is Catholic, so we're pretty sure the folks who think the world is ending this weekend also think we're all going to Hell.]
We hope that, if nothing else comes from this non-event event, it at least brings to your attention that pithy, if not trite phase, to live life like you were dying. It may be a cliché, but someday that phrase will actually be correct for all of us.
We hope it's not this weekend though, as we have so many more things we'd like to experience in this world.
If we're wrong, and the rapture happens later today - or Saturday, midnight local time if you're in Jerusalem - we may be a bit delayed in getting out Monday's edition. Then again, since there will be fewer people on the internet and most of the internet techies we know are also likely to still be around, we could even get finished with our work early.
Guess we'll have to wait until Monday to see how it all turns out.
We hope you enjoy your weekend. Live a little. Or live a lot, if you get the time.
For a million little reasons, we're just not buying into the hype today.
For starters, even if you’re Christian and even if you believe in the rapture (or this particular model of the End of Days – there are many ), there are many different Bible verses that - as clearly as any other christian bible verse - lay out that the second coming will occur when pretty much no one is paying attention.
Since you're reading this, and since we put today's Daily Felltoon together, we're pretty sure we're all paying attention - which we think at least gives us all partial credit for saving the world today. So... Mazel Tov and thanks to you! Good job.
There's also the question brought up by a discussion of our staff members earlier this year: exactly WHEN is the end of the world supposed to occur?
Most Western media sources we've looked through seem to say it's supposed to happen on Saturday. But as far as we can tell, the insane maniac/devout fool who began this rumor thinks the rapture will happen at exactly midnight, Jerusalem time.
That puts the rapture square in the middle of the afternoon for basically all of the Western Hemisphere.
On FRIDAY afternoon - not Saturday.
Those of you that have to do end-of-week reports may be rejoicing at that news - but we really think you should hold onto your paperwork and hold off on doing your best Keith Olbermann impersonation. After all, the rapture may be tomorrow, but the end of the world isn't technically until October 21st, according to the California extremist.
Whatever you believe, we hope you live life every day as though there won't be another.
For all of us - like former Nebraska teacher and poet Bill Kloefkorn - that will eventually be the case.
Bill was a teacher, a poet, and a lover of words, all things that we admire and respect. He loved life, and enjoyed humor as much as anyone. We're fairly sure he'd agree with our advice, cliché though it is. He passed away Thursday, and we send our condolences to his friends, family, and all who knew him.
Not a single one of us truly knows when we're going to go, whether we get hit by a bus, or get yanked into the clouds by the rapture. [We're not Baptists, and at least one of us is Catholic, so we're pretty sure the folks who think the world is ending this weekend also think we're all going to Hell.]
We hope that, if nothing else comes from this non-event event, it at least brings to your attention that pithy, if not trite phase, to live life like you were dying. It may be a cliché, but someday that phrase will actually be correct for all of us.
We hope it's not this weekend though, as we have so many more things we'd like to experience in this world.
If we're wrong, and the rapture happens later today - or Saturday, midnight local time if you're in Jerusalem - we may be a bit delayed in getting out Monday's edition. Then again, since there will be fewer people on the internet and most of the internet techies we know are also likely to still be around, we could even get finished with our work early.
Guess we'll have to wait until Monday to see how it all turns out.
We hope you enjoy your weekend. Live a little. Or live a lot, if you get the time.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)