I am so freaking sick of getting recorded phone calls from Democratic candidates urging me to vote for them. What is the POINT of this? Is there really anyone out there who remains undecided the day before election day and suddenly a recorded phone call from Hillary Clinton is going to make them say, “Well, I was waffling before, but this settled it for me!”
If any of these people want to call me themselves and chat for a couple minutes, thatwould interest me, just as it does when local candidates come knocking on my door and want to talk about the issues and ask for my vote. But this recorded stuff just makes me want to go vote for whoever isn’t derailing my train of thought with these annoying interruptions.
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As someone who occasionally does some volunteer graphic design work for a local Democratic party district in Oregon, I have pleaded with them on numerous occasions to put a halt to those incredibly annoying canned phone calls. So far, nobody’s listened to me.
R. Maheras, we’ve got two parties because it’s winner take all. With products, if you buy one magazine, that publisher gets the profit from that one magazine sold. If it were like elections, the bookstore would take count of how many people wanted to buy each magazine. The mag with the highest number of votes would win, and everyone that wanted a magazine would get a copy of the winning mag. Were that the case, I can see writers pushing to get into the winning mag as often as possible.
Its the same with our political parties. Take the recently departed Foley…as a gay man, his personal lifestyle conflicts with a good portion of the base GOP platform. Yet he was supported by the party because he could win…and he likely turned from the Democrats to the GOP because he couldn’t win as a Democrat.
Each seat may be winner take all, but other countries have more than two parties and manage to function. Three or more parties in Congress might force the formation of coalitions to assign leadership positions in the House and Senate. That alone might foster more cooperation between parties as the party A wouldn’t be able to ignore parties B and C if they needed one or both of them to form a coalition.
The real sticking point would be that it would be harder to get a majority in the electoral college for president. In which case, I’d be pushing hard to amend the consitution to allow for runoff elections or scrapping the EC altogether.
My girlfriend and I use cell phones exclusively — no land lines. So we haven’t gotten these robo-calls. But I spoke with my parents last night and they’ve been getting hammered with ’em.
My girlfriend has been getting sick of the political junk mail, though. When she was coming home last night she saw a campaign volunteer for Hillary Clinton about to leave a leaflet for us. She stopped the woman and told her, “PLEASE don’t leave that for us. We already know how we’re going to vote, thanks.”
I cast my votes this morning. As I pulled the levers for each of my choices, I kept thinking, “OK, now I hope this guy will shut up for a while… and now this guy, too… yeah, and this guy, too…”
Posted by: Rich Drees at November 7, 2006 01:54 PM
“Bill Myers- The Cybermen wouldn’t help him. Santorum is a conservative Christian who opposes abortion, embryonic stem cell research, and Cyberization.
“He is not eligible for upgrade. He will be deleted.”
I know that’s how I voted…
The thing is, the Cybermen are a one-issue party. With them it’s all “upgrade this” and “delete that.”
The Borg are no better. “Irrelevant.” “Resistance is futile.” “From this time forward you will service us.” What the hëll kind of platform is THAT?
“OK, now I hope this guy will shut up for a while… and now this guy, too… yeah, and this guy, too…”
You may say I’m a dreamer…
How soon before the early voting results get leaked?
Ok, my final prediction– Democrat near sweep. The GOP comeback came too late. Dems take house with 25 new seats. Senate goes to 50/50 which would mean that Cheney will be very busy. Lieberman makes Democrats sweat that he may jump ship but he will ultimately stay with the Democrats.
If the Democrats even take the Senate I won’t be shocked.
On the other hand, if Steele wins the it will be a much smaller Democrat victory. If Allen loses it will be a Republican bloodbath. So we should know early tonight which party will be crying the most.
If the Republican, by some miracle, hold the House…expect the most vicious backbiting intraparty squabbling ever within the Democrats. But this is a very very unlikely outcome.
I’m back from the polls, and I screwed both parties by voting independent pretty much across the board. The one instance where I didn’t was a state senate race where the incumbent was running unopposed. In every other race, I voted for independents I knew.
We’ll see how my little drop in the bucket will affect the results. Now Mike Moore can bìŧçh at me about something else.
“I think you’re a democratic plant, trying to look like a stupid republican. Others think you’re a stupid republican.”
Well, I was going for just plain stupid. Period. Full stop. No party listing needed.
“Hulk Hogan and Rowdy Roddy Piper both retired last century.”
Geez…. I wish. It’s bad enough that they keep bringing Hogan back in to bash guys in the head with his walker. At least he still looks like he’s in the kind of shape to go in the ring. But they scared millions of people Sunday night by bringing piper, in his old black trunks and boots, in to tag with Flair and LETTING THEM WIN THE FREAKING TAG BELTS. It was not something you want to find photos of.
(Does Sideshow Bob voice) Ewwwwwwwww…..
I’m honestly surprised that Vince went for that. I know a bunch of guys in the rasslin’ biz, and most of them are about my age; this includes Rick Flehir and Rod Toombes, known to y’all as Flair and Piper. They know it’s a work, and Vince pays them well for their knowledge and stagecraft, because face it, professional wrestling is not far removed from its carnival sideshow roots.
I doubt seriously that Rick and Rod would do all that well in a straight shoot, but in a work match, where they’re supposed to win, they have a good a chance as the next guy.
Miles
Yeah, Miles, but they should still, work or not, think about how dumb it looks to have a guy that out of shape who hasn’t been in a ring in years come in and win belts off of the guys that Vince and crew SHOULD be building up.
I love Slick Rick from a long time ago, but he’s not the present or future of the biz. Piper even less so. Both guys still have a whole hëll of a lot to give to the biz. Just not in the ring and not as champs.
These guys learned the art back when you didn’t tell the public that it was an act. They learned how to make it look real and how to sell and tell a story in the ring in ways that a lot of the younger guys fail to do these days because they’re focus is on flashy moves and cool tricks (not always a bad thing if balanced). They should be teachers to a generation that REALLY needs to learn the craft better. I just think they could do that best from behind the scenes these days.
Plus, Piper REALLY needs some tan in the can before he ever takes his shirt off again. Geez, and I thought I was white.
Starwolf: And how many viable calls has it intercepted by mistake?
Actually, none! Live people can choose to announce themselves, I intercept without blocking (which is another feature).
Man, Webb over Allen, as the tally stands now, by only 1200 votes. More votes to be counted.
This is going to be one hëll of a long night in the Commonwealth.
This is going to be one hëll of a long night in the Commonwealth.
It’s going to be a long night anywhere where it’s a close race.
They just said on MSNBC that Santorum’s campaign has already filed a complaint alledging that votes for Santorum were either not counted or miscounted. Ahh, Santorum is one bûggër I can’t wait to see pack up and move out of his DC office.
Yeah, I saw. I’m doing the MSNBC online vid thing in the background.
God, did you see the results out of the Sunshine State? Harris did sooooo well.
The Fox News Zoo and Hannity must be weeping over that one. They pushed her so much on their network and his radio show.
Geez…. I wish. It’s bad enough that they keep bringing Hogan back in to bash guys in the head with his walker. At least he still looks like he’s in the kind of shape to go in the ring. But they scared millions of people Sunday night by bringing piper, in his old black trunks and boots, in to tag with Flair and LETTING THEM WIN THE FREAKING TAG BELTS. It was not something you want to find photos of.
If Piper were any whiter he’d be transparent.
Guy’s only got about 3 moves left but that’s only about 2 less than he had in his prime. He was never exactly Lou Thesz.
Flair, OTOH, can still pull a great match out of his saggy ášš.
Fox just called PA for Casey. Santorum…buh-bye.
MSNBC called Ct for Lieberman, but based on exit polls only–the actual vote counts I saw had Lamont slightly ahead.
I don’t know, after Florida I would think they might actually wait until the vote count reflects the prediction before calling it.
Chafee loses in RI (again, by exit polls). If true that eleiminates an interesting scenario–he’s the one republican who would have been most likely to jump to the Democrats in the event of a 50/50 tie.
Said tie is now less likely.
Yeah, I was about to post the same thing. They’ve called a few races now where the “winner” was 10% or so behind the “loser” and only a small amount of the actual vote in.
I don’t know, after Florida I would think they might actually wait until the vote count reflects the prediction before calling it.
One would think.
Florida aside, where there were enough irregularities to show that the exit polls probably had it right, they’re accurate.
But I’m still always amazed when they can ‘call’ a race when there’s only 500 votes officially counted, which is basically what happened in the Casey/Santorum race.
Here’s one thing that is very frustrating. the reason that polls are usually so accurate is that, unfortunately, we vote so predictably. That’s why people can “project” a winner with 5 % of the vote, sometimes, because based on voting histories, the rest of the state/district always votes a certain way.
I, for one, would like more people to confound pollsters. It would make for a more vibrant, thoughtful democracy.