It was inevitable that someone would take this moment in the last night’s Presidential debate, when John McCain sounded like my grandmother used to sound as he berated Barack Obama*:
and do what people often do with an epithet these days, which is to wear it as a badge of honour:
Which led to the inevitable T-Shirt:
Amazing how the Internets let you respond that fast. Kind of changes the rules, doesn’t it?
*She also liked to scold my father and the rest of us by saying: “You monkey!” when we did something she didn’t like, like arriving 15 minutes later than she thought we should from a car trip from Baltimore to Philadelphia.
It’s probably a bad thing that Pam and I are both home, watching CNN.
The latest stunning drop of the Dow Jones Industrial Average has us both upset (her more than me, I think). Now, we’re in that ‘Can’t look away from this car crash’ mode.
This morning, we saw the head of Lehman Brothers, Richard Fuld, testifying to Congress. They brought up a slide, detailing the nearly 1/2 billion that he made in the last 7 years or so in salary, stock options, and who knows what else. Later, they showed helicopter flyovers of 3 of his homes in Florida, Colorado and California, as well as his $22 million Manhattan penthouse. I kep thinking of the line “It’s good to be the King”, said by Mel Brooks when he’s playing Louis XVI in ‘History of the World, Part 1″.
However, it was another Frenchman (or Frenchwoman) who came to mind a bit later in the broadcast. Wolff Blitzer had a call into Donald Trump. He asked the multi-billion dollar business magnate, socialite, television personality and John McCain supporter what Americans can do at this point. “Dream”, he said, “Dream of when things will get better.” He also spoke of how well he was doing, having closed a deal selling several properties to ‘The Russians’ and chuckled with Blitzer over the fact that he got his money before their market tanked as well. Earlier in the morning, I saw this comic, thanks to Darren Barefoot.
Marie Antoinette could not have put it better, Monsieur Trump.
I’ve been looking for something that will enable me to see, at a glance, just how the complexion of the US Election is turning. Is it really, despite what one hears, predominantly Red or Blue? Because the number of delegates in the Electoral College is in no way related to the size of the states (in land area, that is), simply looking at a colour-coded map gives you a skewed view of who’s actually ahead, at least at a glance. Relatively small New York is dwarfed by Montana, even though it has over 10 times the delegates.
The polls only tell you the popular vote, and as we all know by now, that is only a partial indicator of how the Electoral College will go. With so many states ‘in play’ as the news media puts it, paying attention to the Electoral College totals makes more sense.
I was determined to find a view of the Electoral College totals, by state poll, effectively giving you an fairly efficient and understandable view of the current predictions. I found it at vote2008.thetakeaway.org, and here is what it looks like:
You can mouse over areas to get a poll-by-poll prediction, but the important point is that you can see at a glance, the likelihood of one candidate winning over another.
There’s a smaller version (without the interactivity, but it is dynamically updated) as well:
This is an interesting convergence of my interests! (politics and information design, that is).
The Jed Report posted a short video that juxtaposes passages from the speeches made this past week by the two presidential candidates. While I know that it is possible to edit video in such a way that it makes one person look bad and another look good, I don’t think there was that much picking and choosing of worst/best moments in each of these speeches. And you don’t even have to listen hard to the words; just look at the speaking styles of each man:
The difference between the two in temperament couldn’t be clearer. If McCain is looking to be the strong leader who takes charge during a critical period, he’s going to have to work on less petulance and blame, and present a more calm, measured message. Like many, I was nervous about the meltdown in markets in the the US this last week and government takeover of AIG. I had also feared that typically uninformed American voters might flee to Republican John McCain during such a crisis because he might be a symbol of stability and maturity, like a father figure. Instead, in this speech, he’s more like a cranky old gent you have to humour during a meeting on the street, blaming others on the current state of affairs. Obama, on the other hand, is acting like the grown-up. After eight years of a man with a child’s mind inhabiting the Oval Office, a true adult would make me a lot more confident in the US’s ability to make their way in the world.
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