If the election didn't come out the way you wanted, despite the fact that you prayed long and hard for God to do the right thing, it might have been because God was busy elsewhere:
During the fourth quarter of the UCLA game, some were leaving through Gate B, where I work as a ticket-taker. An elderly man approached me and said, “Notre Dame can't even play marbles.” My reply was, “I'm still feverishly praying for a miracle, and we can win!”
Considering the way the election went Tuesday, you'd think it would be Republicans trying to reach out to the middle. But here's Evan Bayh, telling his party to avoid extremism:
Sen. Evan Bayh, a potential 2008 presidential candidate, told reporters from USA TODAY and Gannett on Thursday that most Americans don't know what Democrats stand for despite the party's electoral success.
Silly Wal-Mart is bringing back Christmas:
Wal-Mart has told its employees that it's OK to once again greet shoppers by saying "Merry Christmas" this holiday season instead of the generic "Happy Holidays."
CNN confirmed that Wal-Mart will announce Thursday that it plans to use the phrase "Merry Christmas" in products and around its stores this holiday season.
Huh. I did not know. There is a Veterans Day site on the Web. At the FAQ link, I find this:
Q. Who decides if a government office or business closes or stays open on Veterans Day?
Autumn comes around every year, does it not? And we pretty well know what happens in autumn, correct? But:
The city's Board of Public Works has approved buying a new machine to dispose of 50,000 tons of excess leaves next year.
Beginning next year, either Fox Contractors of Fort Wayne, which has a had city contract for leaf disposal for the past five years, or another company will be responsible for processing and disposing of 25,000 to 30,000 tons of leaves annually.
I would like to thank Indiana University for this health and wellness tip:
I hate to say it, since I've been a supporter of the new photo-ID requirement for voting, but it would have been pretty easy to commit fraud at my polling place Tuesday. It's one of the triple-precinct sites, which means at times the line of people waiting to vote snaked way out of sight of those escorting us to the voting machines. When we first went in, we were directed to go our precinct tables, show our IDs and sign the book, then go back to the end of the line, clutching our little pieces of paper with our precinct numbers on them, which we would then show at the voting machine.
Oh, God, two years of risking sight of Pat Bauer's hideous hairpiece every time I turn to the TV news. And wouldn't you know he just has to go after DST:
Bauer says Tuesday's vote will allow him to reassess the House prayer appeal, privatization and Daylight Saving Time.
So, the city of Fort Wayne and the United Way, having successfully eliminated manufacturing decline, downtown stagnation, teen pregnancy, moral decay and all the other problems that plague us, have now committed to wiping out homelessness in 10 years:
“This is not just a plan to sit on the shelf and get dusty,” Richard said. “This is not a strategic plan. This is an action plan.”
Is there a constitutional right to lethal self-defense?
Oddly enough, the matter hasn't been settled, and has been little studied by scholars . . . There's a smattering of other material on it, but quite little.
Since Indiana has strengthened its self-defense law, adding a no-retreat provision, this is of more than passing interest here.
A friend and I have a saying -- "No, no, no, I am the stupid one!" -- whenever one of us wants to admit a gaffe. Yesterday, that was me. After weeks of being consumed by the minutia of the election, I almost lost sight of, shall we say, the big picture. I intended to swing by to vote on the way home for lunch. About 4:30, though, I realized, "I forgot!" So I trudged out and hit the polling place about 5 p.m. Guess who else was there? Everybody else who waited until the last minute.
The Indiana Supreme Court has picked a firm for an $85 million project to link up the courts in the state's 92 counties:
Mitch Harper at Fort Wayne Observed has a couple of must-reads on election procedures. The first talks about how, in the Fort Wayne Community Schools Board at-large race, with 10 candidates seeking two positions, the winners could have a very small percentage of the overall vote -- a little scary considering that FWCS is the largest public agency in Allen County. Shouldn't there be some kind of winnowing process, a runoff election so the winners have a litle more of a mandate?
This points out one of the sad facts of life we've all had to live with in newspapers:
Today's language lesson from the curmudgeonly nitpicker: "Via" means "by way of," as in, "We flew from Indianapolis to San Antonio via Dallas/Fort Worth." It does NOT mean "by means of," as in, "I talked to Aunt Betty via telephone" or, "Uncle Sam informed me of my draft status via letter." OK?
The Onion nails it. If you're annoyed by those Chevy truck ads using the new John Mellencamp song (whatever happened to waiting at least a decade before turning a pop song into a commercial?), check this out:
The high quality and enduring value of the new 2007 Honda Accord has inspired roots-rock veteran John Mellencamp to write a stirring hymn about the working-class nation of Japan.
Now we know there might be some truth to what people have suspected for years about the weather and elections:
A new study of voter behavior confirms something political operatives have long suspected: rain hurts Democrats and helps Republicans. The study found that 1 inch of rain reduces overall turnout by slightly less than 1 percent and cuts the Democratic vote by 2.5 percentage points.
Suppose Steve Shine is looking out his window right now and thinking, "There IS a God, and he's Republican"?
On the other hand:
I've seen a lot of articles like this one in Newsweek trying to explain and/or predict the election. This particular one mentions stem cells, gay marriage, the right to die and abortion as "sleeper" issues that might be big factors. It doesn't mention illegal immigration, and most of the other analyses are strangely silent on the subject as well.
This article tries to fathom why so few Americans vote. It finally gets around to saying that the nonvoters just aren't "connected."
Most broadly, the poll found that nonvoters are not just disconnected from politics, but also from their communities. Nonvoters were less likely to trust others, to have a strong support network of friends and family or to know their neighbors than regular voters were.
Poor Ted Haggard, having to confess to being a "deceiver and a liar" -- and who apparently had sex as well -- must now redefine the rest of his life, in public. But some good comes from all tragedy. His ordeal has had the positive effect of encouraging another unfortunate to confess who he really is:
