Author Archives: Bob Evans

Thoughts on the 2012 Election

 Well the election hascome and gone, the Republicans failed to dislodge an incumbent during a lackluster economy and gave up seats in the Senate, but managed to retain their control of the House of Representative.

Three states expanded marriage equality.

Two states have started directly challenging the Federal government on Marijuana.

One southern state turned back an assault on personal physical sovereignty. (I despise the idea of abortion rights, or women’s rights, there are no group rights, only individual rights; the right to decide which elective procedure you have or not done to your body is an issue of person physical sovereignty.)

A territory indicated a desire to become a state.

All in all it was an interesting night of results, so who are the big winners and the big losers?

 

LOSERS:

The Republicans Party: hanging onto just the house was not enough. The AC A is law and it will stay that way.  2014 Will see the exchanges and then the states that are resisting the exchanges will have to answer to their citizen why they can’t insurance.

Social Conservatives: A whole slate of pro-life candidates lost as their absolutist positions collided with a younger and more tolerate electorate.

Statistical Doubters:  If nearly every poll is pointing against your position, and you insist that all the polls are biased, you probably aren’t engaging with reality.

Mitt Romney: He sold his soul, became whatever he thought he needed to be, switched positions more often than a prostitute and in end lost.

 

WINNERS:

Barack Obama: He avoided the stigma of becoming a one term president. In a climate hostile to re-election he and his team worked the numbers and followed the path to victory.

Nate Silver: 50 for 50 on his state by state projections, and on target with his popular vote predictions. To a lesser degree the pollsters won, catching an unusual voting population that few expected.

The Gay Community: Marriage equality in three states, with popular votes, would be enough to declare a victory, but they also elected the first openly lesbian senator. The times, and the culture, they are a changing.

Young People: Derided as a fluke in 2008 they not only returned to the polls to vote, but increased their number. (I wonder how much Facebook and Social Media played in that. I saw a contestant stream of political messages and urges to vote. If peer pressure is brought consistently to voting then the young vote may be here to stay.)

Women: A record number of women now serve in the senate, including a first, an all female delegation in the House. They beat back attacks on their personal sovereignty rights, and increased their vote share.

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Sunday night Movie:Dawn of the Dead(1979)

THIEVES AND BAD GUYS: Thoughts on George A. Romero’s ‘Dawn of the Dead’

Speak of zombies and for most people the scenario conjured to mind is one with a world in ruins, scattered band of survivors battling mindless hordes of the undead intent on consuming all flesh. The filmmaker most responsible for that apocalyptic vision is George A Romero and his movie ‘Dawn of The Dead.’ Other filmmakers, Jorge Grau with ‘Let Sleeping Corpses’ Lie (aka ‘The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue’) and Lucio Fulci with Zombi 2 (originally titled Zombi, but renamed with the release of Dawn of the Dead in it Italy as Zombi.) hinted at a coming disaster as part of the finale of their zombie movies, but it was Romero and ‘Dawn of the Dead’ that first gave us a world lost to a tide of the dead. While the zombie genre encompasses everything from the horrifying to the silly, it is this movie, released unrated in the Unites States because of explicit violence, that is the towering work of art with much more to say that, shoot them in the head. Be warned, hereafter there be spoilers. Continue reading →

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Election prediction 2012

Well, here I am making my very public prediction for the outcome of the US elections this cycle. 2012.

I used my usual methods to predict the outcome. A method that has in the past been fairly accurate. I used aggregate polling to determine the baseline, and then I split up the remainder of the undecided based up the right track/wrong track figure. This cycle that means I am giving 60% (I round up to the next whole 10% interval) to Romney and the Repuiblicans, as that are the party out of power with the executive branch.

The results are most unusual and I’d say are likely to be wrong, at least in the popular vote,  however I am sticking to my methodology.

Popular Vote: Mit Romney 50.3 to Barack Obama 49.7

However in the electoral college things get hanky;

Barack Obama 275-290 vs Mitt Romney 248-263. Yes this is a misfire where the electoral college and the popular vote goes north and south. They are rare, but they do happen.

Here is the electoral map as I think is most likely:

What are your guesses my brave political commenters?

 

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Blu-ray Review: Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol

I do enjoy my Netflix account. It allows me to see films that I was unwilling or hesitant to view in the theaters and MI: Ghost Protocol is a perfect example of this effect.

I really enjoyed the first MI film, skipped the second, and found the third one entertaining, but not solid enough to entice me to buy it or see it’s sequel when it was released.

Ghost Protocol is a difficult film to discuss because it seems to exit in its own unique genre space. Continue reading →

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Final Debate Tonight

Tonight, just two weeks from the election, we’ll be treated to the third and final presidential debate. The subject, in theory, is foreign policy, but it wouldn’t surprise me if things wander a bit.

I shan’t be watching this one in real time as I have a meeting of the Mysterious galaxy Writers Support Group and I try to never miss a meeting. This support group has been a real factor in my improvement as a writer. Two years ago when the group started I had just finished my novel “Cawdor,” and looking back at the manuscript I can see such improvement in style that it surprises me.

So where do we stand in the Presidential election race?

As of 10/22

RCP: Romney +0.3

TPM:  Obama +1.5

Pollster: Romney +0.1

INtrade: Obama + $2.23

 

Last Tuesday the numbers were:

RCP: Romney +.04

TPM: Obama +1.1

Pollster: Romney +.03

INtrade: Obama +$2.37

 

This is a far cry from the numbers of 9/29

RCP: Obama +4.3

TPM: Obama +3.9

Pollster: Obama +4.4

Intrade: +$5.71

 

It looks to me that the race has settled down into a very close heat, and the fluctuations over the last two weeks have primarily been noise in the system. Romney’s advance after the first debate has pretty much held. Right now I’d give the popular vote edge to Romney, but that may not translate into being election due toAmerica’s unusual system of presidential elections knows as the Electoral College.

Just as in 2000 when Al Gore won the popular vote, but lost the electoral college we could have a misfire or even a tie. Of course a tie in this election would mean a Romney win as there are more red states than blue and each state would get 1 vote for determining the presidency. To make this an even more messed up situation the House only determines the presidency, the Senate votes for the vice-president. That means if the Democrats controlled the Senate we could have President Romney and Vice-President Biden.

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Thoughts on Novel Writing

For me, writing a novel is a lot like driving towards mountains. My outline points me in the correct direction and through the haze the distant peaks are dimly visible. I start out on the journey and those damn peaks don’t seem to move at all. Scenery passes by on either side, sometimes its tough driving and sometime it is lovely scenery, but my goal seem as distant and as elusive as when I started.

Then somewhere around the middle of the project, the mountains seem to close with a rapidity that is startling. At this point I afraid that I don’t have enough story and that before you know it I’ll be across the mountain range and my journey will be over far too soon. At this point I have to trust my outline, and not slow the writing with pointless meandering scenes.

The final stage is finding myself suddenly in the mountains, with loads more road to cover and no fearing that I have too much plot to cover in the remaining page count. Here I have to fight the urge to cut everything short, and work studiously at keeping all the elements I had planned on in the story.

Command and Control is now about 150 manuscript pages long, about 37000 words out of a target of about 100,000, and those mountains are suddenly closing in.

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Movement, but not much

So instead of waiting a full week to see if the polls have moved after the vice-presidential debate, I’m taking a look at them today as to remove any effect of the second presidential debate.

The numbers as they stood  six days ago on 10 Oct 2012

RCP: Romney +1

TPM Polltracker: Romney  +2.4

Pollster: Romney +1

Intrade:  Obama + $2.57

The same measurement today:

RCP: Romney +0.4

TPM Polltracker: Romney +1.1

Pollster: +0.3

INtrade: Obama $2.37

So three of the indicators moves in Obama/Biden’s direction, while the fourth moved in Romnny’s. What movement there was in Obama’s direction was weak and hardly indicative of a major change in the electorate, which seems to be the case in the movement towards Romney after the 1st debate.

Unless something breaks, this looks to be a tight race. There are only three weeks left before election day and for team Obama the stumble in Denver is proving to be one that is dogging their heels. With a weak recovery following a financial crisis  they had little room for error, and yet still went into the debate wholly unprepared.

I had read that the debate stand for Romney was John Kerry. Really? That’s a poor choice in my opinion, one I think that might have been a factor. (But certainly not the sole and or prime factor.)

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Welcome to post 1000

This is post number 1000, and being human I thought I’d celebrate this pointless achievement.

I’ve had this blog for just over 1200 days, starting it way back in May of 2007 2009. So I am averaging a post every 1.24 days or so. The posts have generated 1040 comments, so I am averaging just north of a comment per post. Nearly all from three core commenters, and then a smattering from others.

129 posts have been marked with the ‘politics’ tags, so I don’t appear the be a one trick pony, though politics will always be an interest if mine.

Movies in general are tagged 197 and 95 tags for Sunday Night Movies.

There has been a whopping 91,926 attempts to post spam as comments. Given that this blog is really a low traffic sight, primarily read by family and friends, I found the amount of spam truly staggering. Luckily the plug0in Askimet handles the filtering duties with real effectiveness and power.

When I started this blog I had hopes of breaking into novel publishing, and while that did not occur as quickly as I would have wished, it remains a steadfast goal that I will achieve with the love of support of my sweetie-wife and close friends.

Here’s hope that the next three years will continue to see growth and publication.

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Quick Impressions from the vice-presidential debate

I think that this was the first time I have watched, front to back, an entire vice-presidential debate. This has proved to be a volatile election and in this environment the side-show has the possibility of effecting the center ring action.

My quick impression is that Biden won the debate, he kept Ryan on the defensive most of the night, though this was by no means a blow-out like the first presidential debate. It was also close enough that partisan from either side will claim  victory.

One – of many- exchanges that caught my attention was Ryan on abortion. I am pro-choice, I do not agree with the concept that conception is the point at which we should be legally bound to recognize full human rights. Ryan’s answer though went beyond simply the mine field of abortion and into the nature of religious thought and its place in government. It goes too far into mixing the two.

RYAN: I don’t see how a person can separate their public life from their private life or from their faith. Our faith informs us in everything we do. My faith informs me about how to take care of the vulnerable, of how to make sure that people have a chance in life.

 

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