Better Banter

I never claimed to understand people. But I'm pretty mystified by just how poorly Ken Blackwell is doing against Ted Strickland with barely a month to go before Election Day. George Bush won Ohio two years ago, with the Iraq war "quagmire" playing nightly on every news channel in the runup to the election. Everything else being equal, Blackwell should take all the votes Bush got two years ago. But he's tracking 13-20 points behind Strickland. Why? Strickland still beats Blackwell among black voters, but Blackwell is doing much better with this group than Bush did. So it is definitely Bush voters who are turning away from Blackwell. Is it as simple as the election being a referendum on Bush? It's not inconceivable. Bush's approval numbers are down since the '04 election, so there may be a number of soft Bush voters who are experiencing buyers remorse. But that doesn't explain the entire gap. I think there are four additonal reasons Blackwell is doing po

I just saw the General Bedard Progress for America "War on Terror" ad. If you haven't seen this or the other two ads yet, be sure to check them out here . Incidentally, isn't the voiceover for the ads the same guy who did the High Life Man ads a few years back? I bought Miller High Life on occasion solely to support those ads. No chance the High Life Man would cut and run and vote Democrat this November. Great voice choice.

Florida Republican Mark Foley has resigned his House seat after damaging emails to a 16-year old congressional page surfaced. Page sent several suggestive emails to the boy from his personal email account. Wow. I'm not sure what's more unbelievable, that a 52-year old man would take steps to seduce a teenage boy, or that a U.S. Congressman would be so stupid as to do so via email. Good riddance, Mr. Foley.

In conducting some Google searches relating to the Private Francis Lupo story , I ran across Bill Gallo's review of Flyboys , the WWI dogfighting action flick in theaters now. Whether or not the movie is any good cannot be discerned by reading the review, entitled "Flight of the Ignorant," as Gallo is too busy reminding the reader that a) war is horrible, and b) the film does not do an adequate job beating this drum. The pilots in the film are dashing, heroic, and glamorous, and live far from the terror of the trenches. Gallo believes the result glamorizes war in general and WWI in particular. I have not seen this film but I think I can still take issue with his review on a couple of counts. First, that it "conveniently overlooks the ugliness of WWI." As for that other, less convenient World War I—embodied in the grim, futile slaughterhouses of Verdun and the Marne—well, there’s no point in revisiting that old mess, no use even thinking about the hundreds of th

... and it works in mysterious ways. Buried in a story about this year's relatively mild hurricane season is a bit of trivia [emphasis mine]: Knight notes other factors have also contributed to the positive outcome, such as cooler ocean temperatures . But he and others say westward movement of the Bermuda High or dissipation of the Atlantic low-pressure front could change everything. Obviously warmer oceans are caused by excessive heat. Is this one of those "hot water freezes faster than cold water" phenomena? I look forward to the liberal contortionism on this issue should any of them have the courage to address it.

Paul Duggan has a piece on Pvt. Francis Lupo (I blogged about this yesterday ) in Sunday's Washington Post that is well worth reading . It has a little more of an anti-war timbre than I'd like but it is nonetheless an informative and well-written feature.

Eighty-eight years ago, a young Cincinnati man was killed in France at the Second Battle of the Marne. Thousands of Americans lost their lives during this battle, but over the coming days many of us will turn our attention to this particular man, Private Francis Lupo, whose remains have been found and positively identified by the Pentagon's Joint POW-MIA Accounting Command and the Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory. Lupo will be buried Tuesday at Arlington National Cemetery. I first heard this story a couple of days ago, and have had a hard time putting it out of my mind since. My first thought was that nobody who knew him is alive today. To be found after so long, only to be received into the arms of strangers at home is a sad tale to contemplate. Yet it won't end so sadly. Lupo's neice, Rachel Kleisinger, who was born after his death, will be able to attend the military funeral. And I have a feeling that there will be no strangers at Arlington on Tuesday. Private

It's highly unlikely that the famed Citgo sign that can be seen beyond the left field fence at Fenway park is coming down any time soon. Yet a Boston city councilman has proposed replacing it with an American flag in light of comments made by Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez against the Bush administration (Citgo is run by Venezuela). The encouraging part of the story is that the councilman proposing the change is a Democrat. Given Charlie Rangel's and Nancy Pelosi's similar condemnations of Chavez, is there new hope that politics will indeed stop at the water's edge? I'm not convinced, but Rangel and Pelosi and Jerry McDermott of Boston have shown Chavez whose side they are on, and that is a gesture to be commended. When people do the right thing, we should be thankful they have done it, regardless of what we might suspect their motives to be.

Prominent in the news today is the story of the Democratic "victory" in California, where Republican candidate Brian Bilbray defeated Democrat Francine Busby for the state's 50th District Congressional seat. Of course, it's a moral victory, because Busby was close (4 points) in a Republican-leaning district. Closer to home, a similar bit of good news for conservatives has been spun as bad, namely that Bob Taft signed the TEL (Tax and Expenditure Limitation) into law. This is "bad news" for Republicans because the bill is less severe than a ballot measure proposed by Republican candidate for governor, Ken Blackwell. Creating legislation takes Blackwell's initiative off the ballot in November, the theory being that reaction to the TEL would be so negative as to drag down the ticket. Being a glass is half-full guy most of the time, I see a law that limits state spending increases to 3.5% per year a good thing. That it won't apply to local governments

Alright, I don’t mean that. But what on earth is George Bush doing? Gas prices are spiking again. Global demand of oil is rising, global supply is uncertain. One of the world’s leading suppliers, Iran, is in theoretical danger of having sanctions placed upon it. In a worst-case scenario, it gets attacked militarily. Either of these events will disrupt the flow of oil, and send prices skyrocketing. Facing that prospect, prices in the short-term will rise as those who can “stock up” do, thereby increasing demand and raising prices. Price is the antidote to shortage in a capitalist economy. As supply shrinks relative to demand, there must be an arbiter of who gets that precious supply. This can be done either by playing favorites and creating lists and preferred recipients, or it can be done via price, with the supply going to whoever is willing to pay for it. So, the price of oil goes up and the price of oil byproducts (gasoline, heating oil) also go up. So the middle class gets annoyed,