More Election Blather
I plan on updating this post throughout the day with whichever inane tidbits I run across. This is what would be called liveblogging if it were more coherent. I’m putting this all in one post so you don’t have to delete a whole bunch of posts today.
Yeah, I voted. Got in line at 9:55. Got out around 10:45. The lines were shorter than I remember them being last time. I think there were more machines this time, and I saw them wheel another one in while I was waiting in line.
Places allegedly giving away free stuff to voters: Starbucks (“Coffee for people who don’t like coffee”). Krispy Kreme. Chick-Fil-A (but not the one where I just had lunch. Bastards.)
And toys in Babeland is offering a choice of either a Maverick sheath or a Silver Bullet vibrator, for free, to people who have voted. You have to get it today in either New York or Seattle, though.
The Comedy Central webmasters have set up www.{thedailyshow,colbertnation,indecision2008}.com with JavaScript links instead of ordinary ones. Why do they hate tabbed browsers?
It’s raining here right now. Don’t let it stop you frokm voting: remember, if you catch pneumonia while voting, Obama’s health care plan will pay for your treatment.
More free food: California Tortilla.
Now I remember the other reason I don’t listen to AM talk radio, aside from the prevalence of insane wingnuts: the ads.
Right now, the Sean Hannity show played four minutes of commercials, cut back to Sean long enough for him to say that the evil libruls are intimidating voters and his show was the best source of election coverage, then cut back to commercial.
The Dow is up 3.24% so far today. This means the economy is recovering. Since voters trust the Democrats more to fix the economy, this is good news for McCain. Expect California and Hawaii to vote overwhelmingly Republican once the implications sink in.
Daily Kos’s Electoral Scoreboard is showing an Obama landslide in New Hampshire. Presumably this represents the twelve and a half residents of Funny Name, NH who make a point of voting at midnight on election day, the better to harvest attention from the quadrennial media swarms.
I think I’m having the political-news equivalent of a sugar crash, so instead here’s a hardware project that Randall Munroe certainly won’t endorse.
I flipped over to commercial talk radio from my beloved public radio a little while ago and was reminded why I almost never do that: It’s a total wasteland. There are two dominant formats:
Public Radio
Host: I’m [host] and this is a program on [subject]. I have two of America’s top experts on [subject] and will moderate a discussion.
[Discussion ensues. Host lets experts talk and simply facilitates microphone time]
Caller: I’m reasonably well screened, probably not totally insane, and have a question for the experts.
Experts: Thanks for your question. [interesting answer goes here]
Commercial Radio
Host: I’m [host] and I f*#king RULE! I have one person moderately knowledgeable about [subject], one complete lunatic, and one partisan hack from my preferred political party who pretends to an expert. I will not allow any of them to complete a thought.
[Discussion ensues, sometimes baffling, usually just wanking by the host]
Caller: I haven’t really been listening, and I don’t know what I’m talking about, but I will spend the next minute or so regaling you with a sermon on things that make me mad.
Experts: Well, uh…
Host: Amazingly, I agree completely with the caller, because he was carefully screened to make me look awesome. But that’s OK, because I AM awesome.
[cut to commercial]
And people wonder why I send money to NPR.
I hear what you mean. After ten minutes of Sean Hannity (by which I mean two minutes of Hannity’s show, and 8 minutes of ads), I switched over to my local NPR station, and it’s exactly as you describe.
Totally fixing on a minor point, but as someone who really doesn’t like coffee… I don’t like Starbucks either.
I had a 45 minute wait in line at 6 am, and I live in a pretty sleepy precinct; everyone in line agreed they’d never seen it that busy.
Paul:
I love coffee, and I don’t like Starbucks coffee. But it was free!