Month: November 2006

Here’s how she saves it for the GOP.

JPod:

NOT ONLY ALL POLLS ARE GARBAGE BUT … the exit polls are garbage too. I’m not saying it’s not a Democratic night. I’ve made no predictions this cycle and I’m not going to start now. But these numbers are crazy out of whack, is my sense.

Chill, JPod. It’s early. And these numbers are not to be trusted. Why so touchy so soon?

These were wrong in 2004 and they’re early. Early exits are the least reliable. But if they pan out, it’s a bloodbath:

Casey 61 – Santorum 38

Cardin 51 – Steele 48

McCaskill 53 – Talent 46

Webb 55 – Allen 45

The mood is surly out there:

In surveys at polling places, about six in 10 voters said they disapproved of the way President Bush is handling his job, and roughly the same percentage opposed the war in Iraq. They were more inclined to vote for Democratic candidates than for Republicans.

In even larger numbers, about three-quarters of voters said scandals mattered to them in deciding how to vote, and they, too, were more likely to side with Democrats. The surveys were taken by The Associated Press and the networks.

But again: this election depends on actual votes in districts and states, not polls of the national mood. So beware.

Early exit polls stories that run with headlines like this do not suggest good news for the GOP. But they don’t prove anything either.

The vote of those under 30. This may finally be an election when young people actually vote in large numbers.

The haunting sights and sounds of  Tanita Tikaram’s "Twist In My Sobriety."

"So hard at best is the lot of man, and so great is the beauty he can apprehend, that only a religious conception of things can take in the extremes and meet the case. Our lifetimes have seen the opening of abysses before which the mind quails. But it seems to me there are a few things everyone can humbly try to hold onto: love and mercy (and humor) in day-to-day living; the quest for exact truth in language and affairs of the intellect; self-recollection or prayer; and the peace, the composed energy of art," – Robert Fitzgerald, Harvard poet and classics translator, from "The Third Kind of Knowledge, Memoirs & Selected Writings."

"[I]t is true that religion on a superficial level, religion that is untrue to itself and God, easily comes to serve as the ‘opium of the people.’ And this takes place whenever religion and prayer invoke the name of God for reasons and ends that have nothing to do with Him.

When religion becomes a mere artificial façade to justify a social or economic system — when religion hands over its rites and language completely to the political propagandist, and when prayer becomes the vehicle for a purely secular ideological program, then religion does tend to become an opiate. It deadens the spirit enough to permit the substitution of a superficial fiction and mythology for the truth of life. And this brings about the alienation of the believer, so that his religious zeal becomes political fanaticism. His faith in God, while preserving its traditional formulas, becomes in fact faith in his own nation, class or race. His ethic ceases to be the law of God and love, and becomes the law of might-makes-right: established privilege justifies everything. God is the status quo," Рthe great American Catholic, Thomas Merton, from his book, "Contemplative Prayer."

A reader writes:

Regarding Olivia Newton-John, your reader uses words written about her grandfather to belittle her. Classy! I will use those same words to point out that her life has "shined with intense beauty" as she has worked tirelessly in the battle against breast cancer.

We all have something to contribute to our age and I do not see the necessity of impugning the contribution of some while elevating the works of others.