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Ice This Thing

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In any close basketball game, the last few minutes take just about forever.  There are strategic time-outs to regroup and plan, and there are numerous fouls given by the team behind just to get the ball back.  An election is no different, and Hurricane Sandy is the timeout needed by Team Obama to ice the win.

But they had the lead going into it.  The economic reports coming out this week show the score very clearly, and it’s definitely Obama’s game to lose.  As the press starts to bubble how big the lead is and Romney starts to foul out, we can see how this developed very clearly over the long summer – as was noted in Barataria all along.

The real difference between an election and a hoop game is that not many people know how to keep score.

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Patriotism

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This is a piece first run for the election four years ago, updated a bit for today.

Election Day is not a national holiday, at least not in the traditional sense. But it is the one day that our nation asks something from all of us, even if it’s just a few minutes. If you follow calle ocho through Little Havana in Miami on Election Day, you’ll see a long line houses with the red white and blue of US and Cuban flags stretching off into the horizon. Families sometimes come together across generations, as with any holiday, before they go off to vote. Cuban exiles in Miami are a people that know what it means to be free because freedom and good times are often best measured against their opposite.

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2012 Predictions

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The election is a week away.  It’s time to make a few predictions and offer some analysis, if only so that everyone can make fun of me when this is all over.

Regular readers know how much disdain I have for the horserace that characterizes most of the reporting, but in the end it comes down to that.  Still, there are many issues revolving around the ability to call this thing properly that are fascinating, at least to someone too far into it.  My fondest hope is that at least some of them break in ways that defy conventional wisdom and shake things up.

Ready?

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Breaking the Oil Cycles

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News shown out over the highway in big glowing numbers – 3.289, a number lower than anyone had seen in a while.  That was the price per gallon of gasoline the last time the little purple car was filled up and piloted back down the highway.  A few months earlier it was 3.929 at the same station, about 20% higher or $7.68 over a tankful.  How can that possibly be?

Many things go into the price of gasoline, but the most important is the cost for crude oil.  Something around 60% of the cost at the pump is the raw material that fuels our lives, the rest being more or less fixed costs in refining, transportation, taxes, and profit.  It’s the price of oil that is notoriously volatile, driving the changes at the pump.  And something is about to be done about it, too.

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Work Creates All Wealth

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On a bizzy day, it’s time for another repeat.  This one is from October 2010, just before the Republicans took the US House.  I’m going to leave it just the way it is because I think the message is still important – but we’d be in a much stronger position if we too this to heart, IMHO.

As Democrats contemplate holding the minority position in Congress yet again, there are many ways we can handle it.  We could all sit in the back and throw stuff, much as the Republicans did for the last few years.  We could turn on each other and rip our own guts out in a festival of shame and blame.  Or, if we’re intent on really standing up to our principles, we can use this time away from being the responsible ones and understand what it is that we, as a party really stand for.

We have a lot to offer if we can only get it together for once.  But I, for one, think it’s going to take a much deeper understanding of our core values and what is really happening around us before we can make it happen.

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