David @46:
25%? That's, um, generous. I generally tip 20% (post-tax, which is 8% or more where I live), more for something like breakfast where you stay just as long and spend less, but haven't ever heard of that as being considered stingy.
I've only tipped 15% once in the past few years, for really crummy service, when I made a point of calculating 15% to the penny. And, of course, I don't decrease the tip for the food, or other issues outside control of the waiter.
Ken, out here in CA and very much wanting all the Democrats to get out and vote No on 8, I would be furious if the networks called the race before the polls close out here.
Yes, in order to win now McCain would need to peel off Oregon and Washington. But you can wait another fifteen minutes -- there are some really important local issues out here.
The local NBC station is reporting low turnout in Orange County (CA). This is good news for No on 8.
Dichroic @28, what you want is nytimes.com . The "dashboard" has a tab for which networks have called what, and the main map has county-level tallies of total votes and %precincts reporting.
According to the Pennsylvania Elections information site only 4% of precincts have reported. That agrees with what the NYT is reporting.
It's still way too early to be calling PA. I agree it looks good, but it's not over yet.
Ken @282, Lake County (IN) is in the Central Time Zone, unlike most of the rest of the state; polls there close an hour later. It's also more populated, so votes will take longer to count than from rural counties.
Stop paying so much attention to the networks, guys.
The NYT (which is VERY conservative about calling states, and which shows county-by-county maps of where reports are in) has zero precincts in from Pennsylvania. Anyone calling it is basing their call based purely on polls, and not on votes.
@169, not at all.
"Polls closed" just mean that nobody else is allowed to get in line -- it doesn't even mean voting is finished. The precincts then need to count up the votes and report them -- you'll see numbers like "9% of precincts reporting". Early numbers are misleading not only because they're small but because they aren't uniform -- they're showing McCain with a lead in VA, for instance, but if you look at the county-level numbers on the NYT site you'll see that the more liberal northern part of the state doesn't have results yet. Similarly Indiana is shown as leaning toward McCain, but Gary, in the northwest part of the state -- right next to Chicago -- hasn't reported yet.
albatross @154
If you're bright enough to get a PhD in physics, but not quite good enough to stay in the field,
Not that it's directly relevant, but there are reasons for leaving academia that having nothing to do with being "good enough" to stay in the field. Wanting to live in the same state as your spouse, for instance (that was mine).
Dawno @42:
Prop. 8 I can only pray (is that ironic?) goes down in resounding defeat.
It's not ironic in the slightest; they've even made a "religious leaders against Prop 8" video.
I have to think -- and it may, granted, be wishful thinking -- that any attempt to tar the most popular woman in America will backfire badly.
Incidentally:
My partner just switched on Morning Edition as I was reading these comments. The first words I heard were "the word 'surge' is misleading". (The person speaking then proceeded to explain that 'surge' conjures up a wave of fresh troops, rather than people who've already been in Iraq for a year not getting to go home when they were supposed to.)
In 2001 there was an aurora visible from Tucson, AZ. I didn't see it -- with the mountains to the north and the orange glow of Phoenix confusing things if you avoided the mountains, but I know people who did. That probably isn't going to happen again even at the next solar max, however, because aurorae in the Western Hemisphere in general may become less frequent. The magnetic North Pole is moving very rapidly in the general direction of the geographic North Pole, and in a couple decades it will be on the other side, in Siberia rather than Canada, if the current motion continues.
Anthony @118, thanks for the clarification.
Seen locally (Pasadena, CA):
Bush Is Listening, Use Big Words
Is It 2008 Yet?
Anthony @69,
You don't get to tell me what constitutes being a "good dyke", and your criticism of people's family arrangements is no different in that respect from the CWA. I'm monogamous because I want to be, not because I'm aping traditional heterosexual relationships. Not that that's any business of yours or anyone else's other than myself and my partner.
I'm familiar with the radical queer view on such things and have no more patience with this attempt to devalue my relationship than with attempts from the other end of the political spectrum.
albatross @75:
I disagree that, from a standpoint of how he will be remembered, 9/11 was a "lousy card" for Bush. I have nothing but contempt for the man, but I don't believe even he rejoiced in the news of the tragedy; I do, however, think he immediately turned to figure out how to exploit it to forward an agenda he had previously formulated, rather than how to respond to the actual events of the day.
Remember the first few days after 9/11? The flag flying at half-mast over the Kremlin, the "We are all Americans" statements? A good president -- hell, even a mediocre president -- could have done a lot with that. We could have taken out bin Laden and the Taliban, with the support of the rest of the world, instead of doing a half-assed job of it while concentrating on Bush's real goals of laying the groundwork for an invasion of Iraq and getting rid of those pesky civil liberties here at home.
A tragedy on a President's watch doesn't necessarily mean the President will be blamed, or regarded poorly; the more usual response is for the public to give him a lot of slack and for almost any response to get him lauded to the skies as a "leader". Pearl Harbor didn't ruin Roosevelt's legacy, after all.
As Serge says, one of my thoughts shortly after 9/11 was that Bush now had a shot at a second term. It's hard to imagine in what manner an event that spikes a President's approval ratings to 90% overnight constitutes a "lousy card" for the man.
Is it that gays have a special obligation to not support anti-gay positions?
Yes, just as an African-American would have an obligation not to support policies of racial discrimination.
Or that anti-gay positions are sufficiently evil that you are willing to violate normal rules of not outing people in those cases. (Suppose a Democrat who was a prominent advocate of warrantless wiretaps and torture for terrorism suspects was also a closeted gay. Would it be okay to out him to get him out of power?)
Very much not so.
Outing is not about playing on the perception that being gay is bad, such that it can and should be used against anyone whose policies you oppose, or removing them from power; it's about HYPOCRISY. It is being able to answer their statements of "these people do not deserve basic human rights" with "you mean people like yourself, Congressman?" If they wish to make life miserable for gay people, then they must be willing to share in that misery. Outing in this case has the potential to be an effective tactic because closeted conservatives frequently feel the need to vote in an extremely anti-gay fashion to avoid suspicion. Once they're out, or outed, that need for "cover" is gone, and their position on gay issues may change.
The example of Rep. Jim Kolbe from Arizona is illustrative in this regard. While closeted, he had a dismal voting record on gay rights issues. After he voted in favor of the anti-gay Defense of Marriage Act in 1996, he was threatened with "outing", and chose to come out of the closet instead. His voting record on gay rights issues has improved dramatically since then (and he continued to win re-election and beat back primary challenges from conservative Republicans in his district, until he decided not to run this year).
Serge @48:
Arizona, at least, had an English-as-the-official language bill, which passed handily. Since I don't live in the state any longer I'm not familiar with the details -- I wouldn't even have known about it if we hadn't had friends from Arizona who happened to be in town on Election Day who were watching the returns with us.
| Year | Number of comments posted |
|---|---|
| 2009 | 2 |
| 2008 | 10 |
| 2007 | 1 |
| 2006 | 17 |
| 2005 | 4 |
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