Open Mic October 26

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Get thee behind me, Satan and Novem­ber 6.

The last Pres­i­den­tial debate took place Mon­day, and the trains ran on time thanks to mod­er­a­tor Bob Schi­ef­fer. In an Indi­ana debate, Sen­ate can­di­date Richard Mour­dock stepped in a large, steam­ing pile of Todd Akin. Early vot­ing has begun in earnest in most states. Florida slips away to where Indi­ana and North Car­olina have already gone. Vir­ginia may be there already. Could Col­orado, New Hamp­shire, Wis­con­sin or even Ohio be far behind?

Don’t see an arti­cle on a par­tic­u­lar topic, but want to talk about it some­where? This is Open Mic. Talk about what­ever you want, but stay respectful.

We cre­ate a new Open Mic every week to give a clean slate, but feel free to add to this topic at any time.




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  1. MM–

    I wasn’t very clear. I meant par­ti­san pol​i​tics​.ie sup­port­ing your union means sup­port­ing the Demo­c­ra­tic party. They still should be able to lobby for indus­try related issues though.

    Anyway,inspite of Cit­i­zens United and all the hor­ror stories…supposedly Obama and many Sen­ate Dems are waltz­ing to vic­tory. So whats the problem?

  2. MoldyMe,

    I have sev­eral con­ser­v­a­tive friends who feel the same on polit­i­cal con­tri­bu­tions. At least one would add that even in pres­i­den­tial elec­tions the money must stay in the state.

  3. rg,

    I see it as part of the Law of Dimin­ish­ing Returns. The money can­not, is not, being spread nation­wide. It is being con­cen­trated in only 7–8 states. And each mar­ginal dol­lar spent is bring­ing less and less of a ROI.

  4. Moldyme: I’d sup­port that.

    My per­sonal belief is that no group or orga­ni­za­tion whose goal is to make money should be allowed to involve them­selves in pol­i­tics. This obvi­ously pre­cludes any busi­nesses or cor­po­ra­tions from involv­ing them­selves in pol­i­tics. This is why I gen­er­ally oppose any busi­ness­peo­ple who run for office. If busi­nesses stayed out of pol­i­tics, then unions could prob­a­bly stay out of pol­i­tics as well. But busi­nesses must get out of pol­i­tics first, because they are clearly more self­ish than unions. Unions act for the bet­ter­ment of a large num­ber of work­ing peo­ple, while busi­nesses act only to make money which typ­i­cally goes to an already rich few. Peo­ple are MUCH more impor­tant than money.

  5. DC said on Wedes­day:
    “Gallup’s Job Approval for Obama is ris­ing — he’s now at 53% approve, 42% dis­ap­prove. That’s for a 3-​​​​day rolling aver­age that over­laps the third debate. We won’t have a num­ber that is fully after the debate until Fri­day.“


    Now that Friday’s num­bers are in and account for Monday’s debate - 

    Obama 48% approve47% dis­ap­proveRom­ney lead­ing by 6 among LV’s and tied among RV’s

    what is your take?

  7. PNE,
    I sus­pect you’re prob­a­bly right.  But if we are right, what a fall from grace for Gallup who was once the gold stan­dard in polit­i­cal polling. 

  8. @MoldyMe,

    Yours are the most rea­son­able cam­paign finance sug­ges­tions I have read in a very long time. Unfor­tu­nately, we’d need a dif­fer­ent Supreme Court for any reform to be done.

    For myself, I think there should be a limit on cam­paign dona­tions. Use your rules about who can con­tribute and who they can con­tribute to, and then limit the dona­tion to $2000/​year. There is no rea­son a rich per­son should be allowed to have a louder voice than any­one else.

  9. @rgbact

    Anyway,inspite of Cit­i­zens United and all the hor­ror
    stories…supposedly Obama and many Sen­ate Dems are waltz­ing to
    vic­tory. So whats the problem?

    I don’t oppose Cit­i­zens United for par­ti­san pur­poses. It’s a bad rul­ing because that much money in pol­i­tics inevitably cor­rupts government.

  10. As I recall, ‘538’ weights Gallup data at 15% among the polls he amal­ga­mates into his track data.

  11. GROG,

    what a fall from grace for Gallup who was once the gold stan­dard in polit­i­cal polling.

    Indeed. But hav­ing such a legacy can become a ball and chain, too. And that appears to be the case for Gallup. They have been unable to evolve to accu­rately reflect the new makeup of the US. Or not. We’ll know soon.

  12. “Anyway,inspite of Cit­i­zens United and all the hor­ror stories…supposedly Obama and many Sen­ate Dems are waltz­ing to vic­tory. So whats the problem?“

    Two par­ties is not enough. Unreg­u­lated unlim­ited cam­paign spend­ing is fun­da­men­tally unde­mo­c­ra­tic and leads to cor­rup­tion. Hope­fully there will be a con­sti­tu­tional amend­ment address­ing this (and the anti-​​democratic laws dis­cour­ag­ing third par­ties) in the near future. But I ain’t hold­ing my breath. 

  13. Now that Friday’s num­bers are in and account for Monday’s debate - 

    Obama 48% approve47% dis­ap­proveRom­ney lead­ing by 6 among LV’s and tied among RV’s

    And today…back down to 46% approve. Quick slide from 53%. Any­one know if any­one else posts the dif­fer­nce between reg­is­tered and likely? 6 pts is a large spread for Gallup

  14. rgbact,
    The rea­son I don’t look at indi­vid­ual polls very much is that the noise can out­weigh the sig­nal. This is par­tic­u­larly true when the race is rel­a­tively close.

    I real­ize it’s fun to try to divine all sorts of mean­ing from indi­vid­ual polls, but it’s really lit­tle more than idle speculation.

    Frankly, I don’t think any debate street that first one has done much for either can­di­date. Which is hardly sur­pris­ing, since that’s been the case in nearly every elec­tion since they started ding those reg­u­lar tele­vi­sion debates.

  15. The Giants win the pen­nant!  The Giants win the pen­nant!  The Giants win the pennant!!!!

  16. … and yes, I know it’s the Series, but I couldn’t resist the his­tor­i­cal ref­er­ence.  Well done to the Giants, and to the Tigers, too (who swept the hated Yankees).