Sharpen Your Pitchforks and Make Some Torches.

I have been traveling around the country, peeking into your windows at night and have come to the conclusion that each of you are sleeping too soundly. Apparently not everyone has the same combination of back pain and deep seeded paranoia that I have; so, with an impish grin on my face, I am taking it upon myself to force a little insomnia upon you.

While my hand-crafted tin-foil hat has many advantages (including a +5 to my wife thinking I am a dork), it is rather ineffective in shielding me from electoral college nightmares. Last night the newest individual state polling data was released; and with it, the nightmare that would be worse than having to sing karaoke with Cthulu, became a very real possibility.

Right now, if you give Obama and McCain whatever state they are leading in (we are talking the aggregate of the state polls) then the final electoral college count comes to 269 to 269.

A tie.

This really isn’t that far fetched a scenario. You don’t have to do a bunch hypothetical gymnastics to reach a 269 to 269 situation. Just a fairly conservative distribution of states to the candidate that is currently leading.

Soooooo, what happens. The simple answer (which you should have learned in elementary school civics) is that the House of Representatives would elect the President and the Senate would elect the Vice-President. On the House of Representative side, each state only gets one vote. So the delegations from each state would get together and a decide for whom they would cast their one vote. California would get one vote and Alaska would get one vote. The breakdown of congressional districts would make it appear that in the event of an electoral college tie, Obama would come out on top; but, I don’t think it would easy. For example, lets examine the situation of poor Nancy Boyda and Dennis Moore of Kansas. Kansas has four representatives, two Republicans and two Democrats. Can you imagine the situation Rep. Boyda and Rep. Moore would be in? Obviously being Democrats you would think they want to cast their vote for Obama; but, their state and most likely congressional districts would have just voted for McCain. In the end, while it will be tough, I think Obama would prevail.

On the Senate side it gets a little more complicated. Right now polls suggest that Democrats will control 55 seats come January. Also US Code Title 3 states that it will be the NEW congress inaugurated in January that would break ties. So no problem right? Biden would be elected as VP and we all open a bottle of beer in celebration. Not so fast. The electoral votes are delivered to Congress in December and Amendment 12 to the Constitution states that in the event of a tie in the electoral college Congress "shall choose immediately, by ballot”. The key word there is immediately. It doesn’t say January when the new Congress is in place; but immediately. Soooooo, the argument could be made (and would be) that US Title Code 3 is unconstitutional and that the existing Senate needs to elect the VP.

Currently the makeup of the Senate is 49 Republicans, 49 Democrats and 2 Independents. Both Independents tend to vote with the Democrats; BUT, one of them is Lieberman. That is right, the same Joe Lieberman that spoke at the Republican National Convention. If he cast his vote for Palin (which doesn’t seem far fetched) then we have a tie in the Senate. Guess who then casts the deciding vote.

Dick Cheney.

Made your blood run cold didn’t it?

For Your Consideration.

I thought you might be interested in seeing some artwork that Sophie produced this evening. After she drew each one she promptly informed me what exactly what it was that I was looking at.

I will provide you with descriptions (just in case the illustrations are not quite clear).

DOG







EYES







PLANE

Dealer inquiries can be addressed to Sophie's college fund.

A Republican Soliloquy

My apology to the Prince, I honestly mean no disrespect.



And yes, I am aware that I misquoted the second line; but Bill Shakespeare messed up and the misquote sounds better.

Return of the No Name Comic

As before. You can click on the comic to see a bigger version.

Land Ho!

I apologize fer takin' so long t' post a new blog, but as ye may be havin' read on Anna`s blog, we spent o'er wonderful tides in Kansas. I do be havin' many things that I be havin' about half written that I want t' talk about. More on th' election. Me take on Spore an' th' damn DRM attached. However, in th' meantime, ye be only goin' t' get this post. However, as an extra special treat, around lunch time, I will post a new webcomic.

Ye heard that correctly, ya lily livered swabbie, I be postin' a new webcomic!

Htrae Attacks!!

For the past few days I have been at a loss to explain John McCain’s pick of Sarah Palin as his Vice President. I just couldn’t wrap my brain around the selection because it just didn’t make any sense. Then suddenly this morning it all became clear. Sometime during this long presidential campaign, Htrae, or as it more commonly referred to, Bizarro World, as started an invasion of Earth.

For those of you not familiar with Bizarro World, it is the world from which Bizarro Superman hails, and its population desires nothing more than to be the opposite of Earth. The Bizarro Code states, "Us do opposite of all Earthly things! Us hate beauty! Us love ugliness! Is big crime to make anything perfect on Bizarro World!"

I am sure that many of you are asking why does Sarah Palin’s nomination prove that Earth is under assault from Htrae. Let me explain.

The Republican Party’s first President was Abraham Lincoln, a man that felt so strongly in the need to preserve the Union, that he waged a war against its citizens to fight the belief that individual states had a right to secede from the Union. Now the Republican Party has nominated a woman for Vice President that belonged to the Alaskan Independence Party, whose platform is based solely on the belief that Alaska has the right to secede from the Union.

John McCain has based his entire campaign upon the argument that he alone has the ability to make the thoughtful and wise judgment calls that a President is routinely forced to make. Yet his first presidential decision was to choose a woman that he had only met once and was never fully vetted. He went with his gut feeling.

The party that likes to bill itself as the party of “family values” has nominated a woman that is going to leave her five month old son with special needs at home so she can participate in a grueling presidential campaign. Her 17 year old daughter has become an unwed teen mother. While I personally don’t think either of these are any of our business, it certainly is bizarre that she is the nominee for the party of “family values”.

The Republicans like to talk about how the Democrats are weak on national security and foreign affairs, yet they nominate a woman that has stated that she really hasn’t given the Iraq situation much thought and that the only argument for her having foreign policy experience is the fact that Russia is close to Alaska. Apparently we are supposed to believe that experience works by osmosis.

In the comics the reader is never truly worried because Superman always shows up to save the day; but, unfortunately here in the real world we don’t have the Son of Krypton. The last line of defense for Earth to hold off the current invasion of Bizarro World is the boy of a single mother with big ears and strange name. Let us all hope that Lex McCain doesn’t get his hands on Kal-El Obama’s version of kryptonite.