Fred's Franks - In the News

When I started my blog, I linked to my brother-in-law's website for his new business - Fred's Franks. Since then, Fred has done very well selling hot dogs by the road outside of Boston.

Now, he's in the Boston Globe in a story about some local residents taking issue with his operation.

If you live in the Boston area, support the little guy trying to build a business - visit Fred's Franks.

Why Gas Prices Rise

I found a blog called Stolen Thunder with a great post on gas prices and what makes them go up. Not to brag, but I already knew most of the facts that DJ used; however, he stated them much more eloquently and precisely than I could.

Hat-tip: Polipundit

CBS Doesn't Get It

Once again, CBS is peddling false and incomplete information, and once again, Power Line and Little Green Footballs are there to call them on it. Actually, the story came from Ratherbiased.com, but the site is down as I write this.

Closer to home, the DP ran a story this morning about table placards at the CU student center warning students that if they didn't vote for Kerry, they'd be drafted.

Kerry and the Democrats are losing the 18-30 demographic and have resorted to scare tactics to gather some votes. As Hugh put:

That age group can smell a fraud 3,000 miles away. They are cynical as possible about marketing and ploys etc. They have taken the measure of John Kerry and judged him a poser. Bush by contrast, like him or not, is authentic.

The Future of the Republican Party

Art Green over at Conservative Eyes gives me hope that the future of the Republican party is strong.

According to his profile, Art is from Michigan and a Colorado Avalanche fan. When there is a hockey season, I bet things get real interesting for Art.

86 Amendment 36: Coors, Salazar, and Amendment 36

Check out a new post regarding the Colorado Senate race and Amendment 36 over at 86-36.

Blatant Deceit

Jim at Thinking Right has uncovered a Democrat plot to dupe young voters into thinking that Bush will reinstate the draft.

The problem is the members of Congress introducing the bill to reinstate it are all Democrats!!!

EC - Part 3

Check out Part 3 of the EC series on 86-36.

Defeat Amendment 36

I just got off the phone with the office of Katy Atkinson which is heading up the organized opposition to Amendment 36 in Colorado. I asked why there was no website or other media to tell voters about Amendment 36 and the damaging effects it will have for Colorado. The answer was that no money has come in to fund these efforts.

There are a couple of reasons for this:
1. People think there is no way this will pass, so they aren't giving money to defeat it.
2. Both Republican and Democratic parties are locked in their own races for President and Senate and House seats so the funds are not available to put toward defeating this Amendment.

The supporters of Amendment 36 are funded by the wealthy Klor de Alva from California.

If you oppose Amendment 36, the address to send contributions is:
Coloradans Against a Really Stupid Idea
Katy Atkinson, Registered Agent
1009 Grant Street #204
Denver, CO 80203
303-861-9440

Since these contributions are not for a candidate they can be from anyone, anywhere, and of any amount.

Donate today!!!

Wake Up, Colorado!!!!

Clay Calhoun has links to 2 articles run by the RMN about Amendment 36.

According to the RMN, the Amendment is winning 47-35.

Clay aptly points out:
It's time for all of Colorado to wake up and smell the coffee. Amendment 36 is a measure to reward the looser of an election with a participation ribbon. Politics, at the electoral college level, is winner take all. Participation ribbons shouldn't determine the President of the United States.

Spread the word: VOTE NO ON 36!!!!

Electoral College History - Part 2

Be sure to check out Part 2 of Pat Wilkes 4-part series on the history of Electoral College over at 86-36.

DP Opposes Amendment 36

First the RMN, then the DP, but we still need to spread the word: VOTE NO ON 36.

Colorado Amendment 36 - A Historical Perspective

The article below is the first of a 4-part series on the history of the Electoral College and the negative effects that Amendment 36 would have on it, if passed.

This article was authored by Pat Wilkes and sent to me via email. I'll post parts 2-4 as the week goes on.

PART 1 COLORADO BENEFITS FROM WINNER-TAKE-ALL ELECTORAL SYSTEM

In our November election, Coloradoans will have to decide on a ballot proposition that would award electoral votes on a straight proportional basis. The Electoral College has served us well over all our nation’s history, and there seems no reason to change it in Colorado except to satisfy current political resentment.

Forty-eight of 50 states have developed winner-take-all systems where the candidate receiving the greatest number of votes statewide receives all its electoral votes. The proportional distribution of electoral votes proposed for Colorado has never been accepted by any state.

States Important. The Founding Fathers created the Electoral College for two reasons. First, the EC was never intended to reflect the national popular will. The Founders insisted that the President be elected by the states, not by the people. They felt it important that the "sense of the people" be taken into account, but they gave authority to independent electors from each state.

In a pure democracy, said James Madison in Federalist No. 10, November 22, 1787, “measures are too often decided, not according to the rules of justice and the rights of the minor party, but by the superior force of an interested and overbearing majority. However anxiously we may wish that these complaints had no foundation, the evidence, of known facts will not permit us to deny that they are in some degree true…”

Mobocracy. The Founders were rightfully wary of direct election to the Presidency. They feared that a tyrant could manipulate public opinion and come to power. They were afraid of “mobocracy” and “popular passions.”

Madison, Hamilton, and other federalists believed that the electors would be able to insure that only a qualified person becomes President. They believed that with the EC no one would be able to manipulate the citizenry. It would act as check on an electorate that might be duped. The founders also believed that the EC had the advantage of being a group that met only once and thus could not be manipulated over time by foreign governments or others.

Second, the EC reflects the structure of the government over which the Great Compromise was fought to create a democratic Republic—it gives power and voice to smaller states which would otherwise be overcome and ruled by more populous ones. The Electoral College was crafted as part of the compromise made at the Constitutional Convention between larger and smaller states to satisfy the small states. The Framers rejected direct election not because they doubted public intelligence, but because they feared that the choice of president would always be decided by the largest, most populous states with little regard for the smaller ones. The EC was designed to protect a smaller state’s interest (like Colorado’s) against the will of a more populous state.

Those who want to abolish the EC say that it over-represents rural populations. However, this is exactly why it, as well as the United State Senate with two seats per state regardless of population, was designed. In fact, the Senate over-represents rural populations far more dramatically. There have been no serious proposals to abolish the United States Senate on these grounds—even from Hillary Clinton—so why should such an argument be used to abolish the Electoral College? Simply because the presidency represents the whole country? As an institution, so does the Senate.

Colorado is exactly one of the states that the winner-take-all system benefits. Proposed Amendment 36 would minimize Colorado's influence in presidential elections. Our nine votes are significant enough to pursue. But why would a candidate spend effort here if the most he could hope for is to flip a 4-5 margin into 5-4 margin?

RMN Says Vote No on 36

Glad to see the RMN opposing 36 this weekend.

As I've said before, I believe that given the facts, voters will strike down this amendment. However, my concern is a lack of voter education on the issue.

This column helped spread the word about the problems with 36.

Reggie Rivers' Take on 36

Reggie Rivers has this column on Amendment 36 in this morning's DP.

In this column, he states that:
"...your vote actually gets converted into an endorsement of the person you voted against."

He then goes onto give an example of a neighborhood barbeque in which food selections are based on a winner take all system.

Objections to this being an out-of-state attempt to garner a few extra electoral votes for Kerry aside and the fact that it would relegate Colorado's electoral status to that of Wyoming, here are my thoughts.

Since we're using simple analogies, I'd like to put another one out there for Reggie. I assume he'll understand this one:

In a normal NFL season, there are 16 games. In each game, the winner is determined by who scores the most points. Say your team wins 9 games and scores 20 points in each of those wins. In the 7 games that your team loses, you only score 10 points. At the end of the season, you've scored 250 points.

Another team wins 10 games and scores 7 points in each win, and loses 6 games and scores 3 points in each win. At the end of the season this team has scored 88 points.

Who goes to the playoffs? The team with the most wins, of course, even though they scored less points throughout the season.

Football and voting - not necessarily the same thing, but the point is that at the outset of the season, every player knew the rules and what it would take to make the playoffs. The rules didn't change during Week 7 of the season to give out proportionate wins and loses.

That's my main beef with Amendment 36: It changes the rules for electoral votes for an election that is already well underway.

Rivers' point is that if your candidate loses, your vote goes to the person you voted against. But that doesn't mean that your vote didn't count. It most certainly counted within your state. We do elections on a state by state basis because to do it using the popular vote on a national level would be a logistical nightmare, as described in this column by the WSJ Opinion Journal.

If every state in the U.S used the proportional system and the change came in a non-election year, I most certainly would agree to it, but for Colorado to make the change alone means that we'll be playing the game according to different rules than the rest of the country.

Blogging will be light

For the next few days as we move to our new house.

Be sure to check out: Hugh, InstaPundit, and Powerline for the latest on Memogate.

For the latest in Colorado politics, check out the gents at the RMA.

More Posts on 36

Darren Copeland from Colorado Conservative posts his thoughts on Amendment 36.

Hat Tip: Hold The Mayo

Also, from the Left, check out Kevin Drum's Washington Monthly article regarding Amendment 36 and how it could be this year's Bush v. Gore. More importantly, read the comments section.

What troubles me about this whole situation is that the only coverage this amendment is getting is on the blogosphere. OK, there have been some stories in the DP and the RMN, as well as coverage in other local papers, but there seems to be no concerted opposition effort that I can find. There's the Coloradans Against a Really Stupid Idea, but I see no website or advertising to spread the word to vote "No" on 36.

So Mad He Can't Blog Straight

Matt Yglesias is mad. He can't even give the blogs credit for breaking the RatherGate memo story. Of course, since Matt is now a member of the Old Media, he's got to defend the institutions that put food on the table.

So read this post from Matt's blog and tell me what's wrong:
"If I do a post tomorrow claiming -- utterly without evidence -- that John Ashcroft is a closeted homosexual and then two weeks later a New York Times reporter unearths (non-forged) photos of Ashcroft with his gay lover, did I 'break' the Gay Ashcroft story? Know, I didn't. I was just engaging in a little speculation driven by my partisan prejudices (I don't like Ashcroft) and a random bit of folk wisdom holding that strongly anti-gay folks are often closeted gays. "

Did you catch it? Instead of saying "No, I didn't," he writes "Know, I didn't."

This is a perfectly normal usage error, and for any blogger at home in his pajamas, I'd let it go. HOWEVER, Matt is a professional journalist and was the editor-in-chief of a weekly magazine at Harvard.

He should know (correct usage) better than to blog out of anger.

A New Blogger In Town

Mile High Delphi: Current Projections for Colorado and The United States. is dedicated to projecting the outcomes for the 2004 Election. Check this site out today.

Also added to the TyroBlog BlogRoll on the left.

Don't Do It, Jim!

It's Thursday afternoon and as I finish up my day, I know that somewhere in the bowels of the DP, Jim Spencer is writing his next Bush-was-AWOL-from-the-TANG column for Friday's edition.

The story has already gone bad. The blogs have already discredited 60 Minutes' story and shown that the authenticity of the documents being used to smear (that's a word the Left likes to use) Bush is subject to enormous skepticism.

Please Jim, for the sake of whatever smidge of credibility you have left, don't publish that column!

TANG - Again!!!

Here we go again. I can't wait to see Jim Spencer's next column in the DP about the Bush Texas Air National Guard story.

To counter balance the inevitable old media onslaught on this overdone story, go to Instapundit for the round-up. Also check out Tom Maguire for a fisking of Nick Kristof's latest NYT hit piece and Wizbang for a countdown of when 60 minutes will do a comparable story on Kerry's military service.

UPDATE: BUSH TANG DOCUMENTS FORGED???!!! Powerline has a compelling case against the documents used in the Boston Globe and 60 Minutes stories about Bush's TANG service.

Defense of the Electoral College

The WSJ’s Opinion Journal has an analysis of the Electoral College debate. A few key points:

1. Using the Popular Vote would not necessarily mean a candidate would win with a majority:
In six postwar elections--1948, 1960, 1968, 1992, 1996 and 2000--no candidate had a popular majority. If it's an outrage against majority rule that President Bush was elected while receiving only 47.9% of the popular vote, would it be that much less so if Mr. Gore had won with 48.4%? And what about Bill Clinton, who mustered a mere 43% of the popular vote in 1992?

2. The Popular Vote would encourage nasty recount demands and legal challenges in every county. While, "Let Every Vote Count," may be the rallying cry of voter reform activists, the practicality of using the Popular Vote would throw national elections into gridlock. The Electoral College serves the function of making each vote count within each state, while providing a feasible way of holding national elections.

3. Any Constitutional changes to the Electoral College would have to be approved by 38 state legislatures, most of which would be voting against their self-interests

The article also reviews Colorado’s Amendment 36, calling it:

…a transparently partisan effort to give Mr. Kerry a few additional electoral votes, and Coloradans, even those who support the Democrat, would be foolish to back a measure that would diminish their state's influence by taking most of its electoral votes out of play.

Playing the Numbers Game

Steve at Deinonychus antirrhopus breaks down the latest budget numbers. Guess what? This year's deficit really isn't the largest ever. Surprised?

Highest Budget Deficit: 1943 $486.2 billion.
Second highest Budget Deficit: 1945 $456.8 billion.
Third highest Budget Deficit: 1944 $448.2 billion.
Fourth highest Budget Deficit: 2004 $383.7 billion (estimated).

Note: All numbers are adjusted to year 2000 dollars.

My favorite part of this post is the end:

Now, this doesn't mean the current deficit isn't large. It doesn't mean that it doesn't signify some economic problems are still looming, or that we should simply ignore the deficit. What it means is that we have idiots reporting on economic matters. It took me maybe 30 to 45 minutes to find all this data and compose this posts and I'm not a journalist. These guys should be fired.

Hat-tip: Instapundit

UPDATE: Bill at HobbsOnline has more on this subject:

Here's some news from the presidential campaign that indicates that John Kerry has no clue what he is talking about. The story says Kerry pointed to the "record" $422-billion-dollar budget deficit predicted by the Congressional Budget Office as a new sign of Bush's inability to run the economy.

Memo to Sen. Kerry: The federal budget is not the economy. Repeat: "the budget" is not a synonym for "the economy."

Blatant Media Bias

The AP sinks to new lows as it erroneously reports that:

President Bush on Friday wished Bill Clinton ''best wishes for a swift and speedy recovery.''

''He's is in our thoughts and prayers,'' Bush said at a campaign rally.

Bush's audience of thousands in West Allis, Wis., booed. Bush did nothing to stop them.

Of course, we can't let this error go unnoticed. Listen to the audio. I don't hear any boos.

Hat-tip Drudge

UPDATE: Powerline is smacking the AP around for this.

Send Prayers and Support to Russia

Go here and send a letter of support to Russia in their time of tragedy. The terrorists who kill children have no place in this world. If they are willing to die for their cause, we should be happy to oblige them.

Michael Moore's Analysis of the Convention

USATODAY has further de-legitimized itself as a source for credible news by giving Michael Moore a forum for spouting his nonsense.

A couple of observations:

1. The desperation is beginning to show:

Kerry supporters and Bush-bashers should not despair. These Republicans have not made a permanent dent in Kerry's armor. The only person who can do that is John Kerry. And by coming out swinging as he did just minutes after Bush finished his speech Thursday night, Kerry proved he knows that the only way to win this fight is to fight — and fight hard.

If you have to start saying that only Kerry can beat Kerry, then you are teeing up the excuses for the post-game analysis. "Bush didn't win the election, Kerry lost it." Truly Pathetic.

2. Where was Michael Moore last night? His column was posted on 9/2/2004 at 10:33 PM. Which means that in order to write about the President's speech and Kerry's response, which would have ended around 12:30 AM Eastern Time, the USATODAY server has to sit somewhere west of the Mountain Time Zone. Or the post time was set back, but that wouldn't make any sense. Or Michael Moore wrote this column prior to Kerry's response and just anticipated he would come out swinging. I can't believe the Moore's tin-foil conspiratorial mind would leave this fact to chance. So, maybe someone can explain it to me.

Liveblogging the Prez

Wizbang has a great liveblog of the President's speech tonight, complete with commentary. My favorite entry is:

11:02: 'In 1946, 18 months after the fall of Berlin to allied forces, a journalist wrote in the New York Times, 'Germany is a land in an acute stage of economic, political and moral crisis. [European] capitals are frightened. In every [military] headquarters, one meets alarmed officials doing their utmost to deal with the consequences of the occupation policy that they admit has failed.' End quote. Maybe that same person's still around, writing editorials.' Nothing like a Presidential bitch-slapping of the New York Times. And when it's so richly deserved.

I concur.