Via Colby Cosh, this article in the Washington Post (registration required) by an American who moved to Toronto in 2000.

Living in Alberta is a lot better than what Ms. Jacobson describes in Toronto, but I'll always remember the first time I really saw the face of Canadian anti-Americanism. A school friend of my then-fiancee was ecstatic about the result of the Michael Johnson-Donovan Bailey race because Bailey's victory somehow meant to her that Canada had beaten America.

Got back into town tonight. We took three days to drive from LA to Edmonton, stopping in Fillmore, UT and Helena, MT. (Fillmore is in Millard County. Har har.)

We were delayed about three hours by a snowstorm; we lost an hour's travel by stopping early in Fillmore instead of pressing on (very worthwhile: we got a nice room while the inn was still mostly empty), and the next morning we had to drive slowly until we cleared the snow, about even with the Great Salt Lake.

Not much else to say. The world has been holding itself together surprisingly well for the last month.

Another random thought from about a month ago -- amend the constitution so that -

Each member of the House of Representatives is paid no more than an Army captain's base pay, and each member of the Senate is paid no more than an Army colonel's base pay.

Obviously it has to be an amendment, otherwise the legislature will just weasel out of it. The implications are fun to consider, though. I predict military pay will go up, starting with officers' pay. So defense expenditures will increase, especially on manpower. So we won't be able to afford as much of a military.

And maybe we'd lose some of the more obnoxious Congressmembers.

I don't think "Amend for Arnold" has the requisite momentum for 2008, nor do I think the Democrats would go along. But here's my favorite future history scenario regarding the 2008 election and amendments:

Democrats and Republicans broker a deal to pass a new amendment which
a) allows non-citizens to be president and VP and
b) repeals the 22nd Amendment (presidential term limits).

The result: Clinton-Clinton vs. Schwarzenegger-Rice in 2008!

Been watching movies, working, visiting, and enjoying the weather. I watched Knute Rockne, All-American last night, for example.

A good quote from last night -- "I'm a lapsed Protestant. Actually, lapsed United-Church-of-Canada. I'm not sure if there's anything lower than that... maybe a lapsed Unitarian?"

More to come maybe. Thanksgiving is coming up -- we have our turkey.

As I said earlier, I hope that any Supreme Court appointments that come up in Bush's second term will be handled by negotiation. For example, the Senate, President and Supreme Court could agree that four SC justices are going to resign en masse; that their replacements will be two conservative Republicans, one moderate Republican (picked by Olympia Snowe, for example) and one Democrat of the Democrats' choosing; and that there would be no filibuster of the confirmation vote. That's what I would do if I were in control of the confirmation process and wanted to do what was best for the country.

But a nasty thought occurred to me this morning.

If I were a Republican strategist seeking the best possible outcome for the Republican party, I would be aiming to destroy the filibuster privilege in the Senate.

I would do that by forcing the Senate Democrats to start out the next session by filibustering a Supreme Court nominee and preventing any other Senate business until the vote is called and the nominee confirmed. I would have the Republicans in the Senate call this issue before any other nomination, so that the offices of Secretary of State and (possibly) Secretary of Defense are sitting vacant while the Democrats filibuster the Supreme Court nominee and their continued vacancy can be blamed on the Democrats. They could say: "The Democrats in the Senate don't really care about the war on terror or our foreign policy. Look, they're holding up the entire government trying to force the President to appoint liberal judges!"

And in order to bring even more pressure on the Democrats to confirm the nominee, the President could make a recess appointment^* to the Supreme Court. The recess appointee would have to be conservative to maintain the 5-4 conservative majority, ideally very conservative. It would have to be someone willing to sacrifice any future political or judicial career for a less-than-one-year term of service.

Somebody like soon-to-be-former Attorney General John Ashcroft. Chief Justice John Ashcroft? Compared to Ashcroft, Bork would look positively liberal.

We may know quite soon if something like this is planned. The Chief Justice would probably be the one to resign, during the Christmas 2004 recess. Bush would name his nominee immediately and appoint his recess nominee just before the new Congress is convened and the filibuster would start more or less immediately.

But it wouldn't have to be this year. Assuming Rhenquist and the other justices who want to retire can hold out for one more year, there would be a year to test the waters and try to work with the Democrats. This recess appointment strategy would work just as well in 2006 as in 2005. The only pressure is to get it done before the 2006 elections when the Democrats might gain more seats in the Senate.

Let me make it clear that I would be opposed to this strategy. It would be profoundly unconservative to appoint a recess nominee to the Supreme Court, and especially to appoint a non-Supreme Court, non-Appeals Court justice to the Chief Justice's position. (Although the pressure would be just as strong if Scalia or (stronger) Thomas were appointed acting Chief justice and Ashcroft or whoever were recess appointed as an Associate Justice.) It would also be unconservative to dismantle the filibuster rule after over 200 years. For those and other reasons, I think the strategy I outline above would be bad for the country as a whole.

* I'm not sure that the President's recess appointment power extends to the Supreme Court. If not, this whole house of cards scenario comes crashing down.

Here's a short article about a voting machine error which caused a precinct to report 4258 votes for Bush when only 638 votes were cast in all.

I had hoped that it was all over on Wednesday morning.

I saw this on Google news:

Post-Election, Hollywood Seen as Liability to Left

and I felt sure that someone had submitted The Onion to Google's news spools. But it's apparently a real news story. Or perhaps an anti-news story?

Here's a nice article on CBS News' site (of all places) which gives the lie to the "moral values" explanation of the last election -- an explanation which is rapidly moving from conventional wisdom to indisputable fact.

In addition to the issue I raised earlier (that if you combine "Iraq" and "terrorism" then the combined issue -- "security" -- dominates "moral values" 34 to 22), Meyer has a variety of other arguments against the claim that "moral values" voters were particularly important in this election:
- only 22% of voters cited moral values as their greatest concern, up from 17% citing "family values" in 1996.
- what about a voter who votes Kerry because of a strong pro-choice commitment -- isn't that a "moral values" voter?
- what about all the other stark divisions by demographic or issue?

I understand why "Iraq" and "terrorism" are separated in the poll -- because "terrorism" is the name that Bush supporters give to the security issue, and "Iraq" is what Kerry voters call it. When combined, the security voters make up a third of the electorate, and break 60/40 for Bush.

If I had to rank my preferences for this election, they would be:

1. Bush by a lot (most preferred)
2. Kerry by a lot
3. Kerry by a little
4. Bush by a little (least preferred)

I'd rather there be a clear winner in a more-or-less landslide victory than any sort of a tight race. If it had to be a tight race, I'd rather see Kerry win because I think it would be better for the country in the long term not to have the Democratic party self-destruct. If the race wasn't going to be tight, I'd rather have Bush over Kerry because I can't trust Kerry to handle the war.

I'm not sure whether I got #1 or #4 so far. It's looking like #4. Even though the race is not being contested, I don't see any significant change among the anyone-but-Bush wing of the Democratic party. I don't buy the argument that it's too soon to look for it - if you are going to be gracious and supportive of a candidate you mistrust, I think you would need all the practice you could get -- and necessarily, would need to start immediately. I certainly planned to.

Something Awful tackles the big questions: (not safe for work - quite crude - follow link at own risk) Childrens' Books All Grown Up

If the Democratic party fractures, can the Republican party be far behind? The Republican party has made itself over into a coalition of those-who-are-harmed-by-Democrats: evangelical Christians, conservatives, businessmen, rednecks, racists, etc. Offhand these groups have nothing in common except 1) a desire for power and 2) the desire to keep the Democrats out of power. If the Democrats self-destruct, goal 2 is automatically achieved. Can the Republican coalition last, or will each interest group's pursuit of power cause it to break up?

John Kerry's concession was probably the most important act of political courage since 1900 or so. It certainly surpasses Nixon's 1960 refusal-to-press, given how much more prepared the nation was this time for a Florida/2000-style recount. (And good politics too: in the unlikely event that in ten days the Ohio Secretary of State calls it for Kerry in light of the provisional ballots, Bush will be under pressure to concede or look worse than Kerry.) Can Bush offer Kerry something in return? How about Colin Powell's job? It happens frequently enough in parliamentary-type systems, and might help heal the division of the country.

I'm not really optimistic about the division-healing thing. There are two types of things Bush could give the Democrats -- symbolic and substantive concessions. Symbolic concessions will be identified as such and therefore valued at nothing. Substantive concessions would betray the Bush supporters who organized, volunteered, and got out the vote in record numbers because they believed it mattered; if they see Bush giving something substantive to the Democrats (say, two Supreme Court nominees) why should they ever come out again?

Perhaps a compromise can be worked out on the Supreme Court. For example, a deal could be brokered where four justices resign at once, and the President nominates one Democratic and three Republican picks, whom the Senate immediately confirms. The details would have to have been hammered out beforehand. I think that level of dealing is unlikely, however. I see it much more likely for Justices to resign individually, and the Democrats and Republicans playing out an iterated Prisoner's Dilemma, each using a defect-first strategy. A long filibuster followed by a rule change? God, I hope not. But I predict that the cloture rule will be changed to a simple majority by the end of 2005. (The "nuclear option" of Senate filibuster rule changes.)

I was able to get a wide variety of radio stations on election night to listen to the election news. I had a FOX affiliate out of Portland and one out of Salt Lake City; KGO, an ABC affiliate out of the SF Bay Area (how's that for nice atmospherics?) and a CBS affiliate out of somewhere -- Seattle maybe, or Montana. We mainly listened to ABC.

This was my first exposure to Fox News. The Fox News people were pretty normal on election night, but the talk radio program they had on Wednesday around noon was stupid, hateful, and disgusting. I turned it off after less than a minute, because the caller was going on about how we ought to have sympathy for Kerry because he was married to Teresa. WTF?

I wonder if my California friends -- mostly liberals, living as they do in California -- think I'm that sort of conservative. I wonder why they would think so. What sort of a friend looks at you and sees Rush Limbaugh? (Alternatively: Michael Moore) No friend at all.

Here's a bunch of stuff I wanted to post last night but couldn't because the hotel I was at had a crappy internet setup. No particular order:

- If I watched more TV I would have more to blog about. Holy crap but that coverage was annoying

- Why couldn't they give margins when they were reporting on states? E.g., New Jersey? Also, why couldn't they give fractions of percentage points when giving margins? 49-50 could mean 49.4 to 49.5 or it could mean 48.6 to 51.4 -- the difference between a .1% margin and a 1.8% margin.

- CBS was smart not to call Ohio, because it made it possible for them
to call Nevada and/or NM for Bush without thereby calling the
election. Fox is unable to call NV without implying Bush

- I can die now, having seen everything: Dan Rather called himself a
conservative and CBC radio news called Ronald Reagan a centrist

- Bush is mathematically up in Ohio. I hope they don't wind up litigating it.

- Dan Rather wanted to make a big deal about the "fact" that the most
important issue was "moral issues", 32%. But there was also
terrorism, 19% and Iraq, 15%, (or reversed) and if you combine those
you get "Security", 34%. So their polling method basically sucked.

- If I were in Kerry's position I would do exactly the same thing - wait
until morning with a clearer picture.