I’ve been complaining for the last few weeks to anyone who will listen that the increase from 5 Best Picture Nominees to 10 is a bad move, because it will increase the randomness — for lack of a better word — of the winner. When you have 10 choices, I argued, then a movie could theoretically win with 11% of the vote. In other words, the Best Picture of the Year could be a film that 89% of voters didn’t consider to be the best picture of the year.

Happily, I was wrong! The Academy is using a fantastic voting strategy called instant runoff voting (a.k.a. Ranked Choice Voting). IRV lets you rank your preferences, so that if your first choice is eliminated, your vote goes to the second or third choices, if they are still in contention.

Voting-reform nerds love IRV because it means you can register a preference for a candidate without “throwing your vote away” on a long-shot. If we had IRV in the 2000 presidential elections, for example, one could vote for Ralph Nader as #1 and Al Gore as #2. If Nader didn’t garner enough votes to qualify, the ballots that listed Gore in the second slot would be added to his totals.

1. In general, I thought the speech was solid — rhetorically, not a masterpiece, but it accomplished what it needed to.  I was most impressed by the President’s solid instinct to generally avoid the rhetorical cliches that too frequently pepper our political discourse; early in the address, I thought to myself “he’s giving someone else’s speech”, but then he moved past it.  Good job.
2. I was disappointed by the lack of focus on infrastructure investment.  $8bb for trains in Florida and California is great, but that will about pay for the environmental studies, and not much else.
3. Likewise, I was disappointed by the promise to cut spending starting in 2011 (with the exception of defense spending, of course — I mean, how could we POSSIBLY feel safe with fewer F-22s?).  I’ll do Paul Krugman’s work for him and say again that SPENDING CUTS IN A RECESSION ARE THE WRONG ANSWER!!!  [There, I used 3 "!"s, so you know I mean it.]
4. Last, I though the “guilt-trip-them-into-submission” approach to dealing with health care and the loss of the Senate supermajority was novel, but, yeah, when pigs fly. it’s sad how deeply cynical the GOP has become, but there it is.

As a special bonus, I’d like to offer a shiny new Sacajawea dollar to anyone who cares to produce a MST3K-style voiceover to Bob McDonnell’s GOP response.  I pretty much tuned this out after the “Sportscenter” reference.  Matski’s official fiance didn’t appreciate me, in my best North Carolina accent, trying my own soundtrack, so I need some help.   Here’s the line I started with: “He watches Sportscenter too! He must be a good man jus’ like me!” Really, Republicans?  Really?  America desperately needs a functioning opposition party that, you know, like, has ideas and stuff.  If you must have a sports reference, the GOPs current approach is something like “let’s show up at the field and just not play – that way, it won’t really be a forfeit, but we can’t lose the game either!”

So, all in all, a good speech, although I’m concerned at some of the specifics.  Probably most of them are throwaways anyway, so I won’t worry about it too much.

We’re well past the point where we can deny that access to basic health care is a basic human right in an industrialized country. Further, the failure to pass health care reform will demonstrate the extent to which our country is beholden to an obfuscating minority; the tyranny of the few over the good of the many.

It’s no given that a Coakley loss will mean the failure of health care reform efforts, but it certainly doesn’t make it any easier.

There are dark clouds gathering today. Let’s all keep our fingers crossed.

Nonetheless, Democracy (in this case, the torch’n'pitchfork “any bum but this one” variety) works its magic, and we’ll have a new mayor come next year — which is too bad, if you’re a fan of transportation and big infrastructure investments.  Warts and all, Nickels has been the Transportation Mayor, and I’m sure I’m not the only one who’s at least a little bit scared about What Comes Next.

So it falls to us, the electorate of Seattle, to figure out which brand of new will be less bad when it comes to transportation.  While the worst that could be said of Nickels might have been that he was a little too fond of mega-projects, both Joe Mallahan and Michael McGinn have serious flaws when it comes to their support for progressive transportation policy.

McGinn is notably anti-tunnel (I think he missed the point of Nickels’ support for a tunnel; namely, you HAVE to build the surface option to get to the tunnel, which you punt 15 to 20 years into the future … meaning it never gets built).  Heck, the man staked his entire campaign on it.  Beyond that, I’m not sure McGinn really has much grasp on transportation.  His campaign website makes some vague promises to “eliminate overcrowded buses”, but to me that’s kind of like Nickels promising that it’ll never snow again.

Mallahan, for his part, offers far more specifics.  You can read them here, but I’ll summarize: screw Paul Allen and other developers.   Mallahan sounds terrifyingly like the “Lesser Seattle” group that torpedoed every modern development in Seattle until they finally couldn’t deep six the light rail.   He’s anti-streetcar, anti-Mercer Project.  He’s pro-tunnel.  He’s pro-bike.

McGinn’s lack of specifics are troubling, but at least he seems to be pro-growth.  I say “seems to be”.  It’ll be interesting to see how the candidates do for themselves in the weeks ahead.

And, if nothing else, at least the City Council gets it.  Look forward to the era of the weak mayor, Seattle.

*Yeah, I know. We’ll also be asking one another “What was retirement again?”

In al-Qaida’s first response to Obama’s victory, al-Zawahri .,.. called the president-elect—along with secretaries of state Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice—”house negroes.”

Speaking in Arabic, al-Zawahri uses the term “abeed al-beit,” which literally translates as “house slaves.” But al-Qaida supplied English subtitles of his speech that included the translation as “house negroes.”

Proving that they’ve learned nothing about how NOT to destroy social capital from their adversary George W. Bush during the last seven years of struggle, Al-Qaida manages to alienate just about everything but the rocks with this one. 

And yet again it’s interesting to note how closely the rhetoric of the American right mirrors that of religious radicals everywhere.  Much like Americans who think Bush and Palin would be a dream ticket, al-Zawahri either doesn’t grasp the historical significance of Obama’s election, or feels completely threatened by it.

Detroit needs a turnaround, not a check.

Actually, the title of piece says it all –

Let Detroit Go Bankrupt

If this weren’t an op-ed, I might blame the editor for the attention-grabbing headline. But this must certainly be Mitt’s own work. Re: that presidency thing, thanks for playing, Mitt.

In all seriousness, I still haven’t made up my mind if I support a Detroit bailout or not. Assuming the companies are eligible for restructuring under Chapter 11, I agree with Romney that tough love is in the long-term best interest of the American auto industry and its workforce. But if it must be Chapter 7 (an idea which — upon reflection — seems more and more ludicrous to me), then it’s a different story.

Optimistic to say so this early, but shades of Tester/Webb.

Sarah Palin fell victim to a prank call from a couple of Canadians pretending to be Nicolas Sarkozy.

Four years from now, remember just how close this country was to electing a fascist idiot to the Vice Presidency.

Wild prognostication may be my special calling, but mind reading isn’t.  With that in mind, here’s Matski’s guide to the First 100 Days.

First, Obama’s got to tackle the wars.  This was a major issue [the central issue?] in the campaign as recently as a few months ago.  Announce a plan to withdraw from Iraq within 18 months, and likewise announce a troop surge in Afghanistan.  Let’s get this one over with and move on.

In addition, Obama’s got to close down Gitmo.  This is a horrible stain on the international reputation of the United States.  This is a relatively easy win of enormous symbolic importance.

Next, the new President is going to have to do something about the economy.  Conduct an “Executive Review” of the Paulson / Bernanke / Bush bailout plan.  Meanwhile, announce a fiscal stimulous package consisting of major infrastructure initiatives.  Let’s do this one quick before the GOP regroups around its pretensions to small government.

Finally, Obama will want to take some action on climate change.  My idea?  Tie much stricter rules on emissions to any bailout package for Detroit.  The UAW will be happy, Michigan, Indiana, and Ohio will be happy, and all of the greens who supported Obama will be happy.  And this is an easy one to do!

Obviously, there are a few things that are going to have to wait.  As much as I’d like to see massive, sweeping reform in health care, there’s no way I see anything meaningful happening in Obama’s first term.  If we’re lucky, we’ll get some Social Security reforms and maybe an expansion of Medicare.  Education reform is also going to be a tough nut.  The teachers unions are far too powerful, and Obama’s going to have his hands full with broader macro-economic issues.

My biggest hope is that with a Democratic Congress, we can finally overcome the partisan bickering that’s got this country stuck in rhetorical mud for the last 28 years and enact meaningful and lasting change, not just for ourselves, but for our children and grandchildren.

So Tom’s sitting in front of the TV at the conference center with a glass of wine. Okay, his third glass of wine. Of six. As CNN called Florida for Obama, Tom turned around and realized that the conference attendees were standing in a semi-circle behind me, six or seven rows deep. At laest half of the people at the conference watched Obama’s speech, and a large number applauded it at the end. Terrorist fist jabs were exchanged. Doesn’t sound like much, but it blew Tom’s mind.

Fantastic.

That’s quite the disclaimer at the end. True.