(Heartily.)

Fivethirtyeight.com has McCain’s chances of winning at…1.9%! That’s the lowest it’s been since the site began. Nate’s planning to do one more presidential polling update around noon today.

Of course, silly us, we called to cancel our cable TV last week (so we could afford to have high-speed Internet both in Asheville and Tennessee), and they’re coming to pick up the cable boxes today. Thank god for the Internet; we’ll still be able to watch live coverage of the election results tonight.

Also: I have my fingers tightly crossed for No on 8 in California.

UPDATE: Fivethirtyeight.com posted its last polling update, and it drops McCain’s chances of winning to 1.1%.

I’m sending Mark to Ed Boudreaux’s to pick up take-out for dinner before he comes home from work. I plan on keeping myself occupied with painting a bathroom in the early evening, then we’ll heat up the food and get settled in front of the computers to watch the results roll in. Mmm BBQ and election results.

If you vote for a straight party ticket, you still have to cast a vote for president. For some cockamamie reason the straight party vote is for every partisan race except president. Mark and I were fortunate that we were told about this by volunteers outside the polling place, but a lot of people were walking right by the volunteers refusing to hear anything from them.

(In Texas, I hear, it’s the opposite—casting a vote for president and also selecting the straight party line option invalidates your vote.)

Early voting opens in North Carolina in the morning. Find your closest one-stop voting site.

Marc Ambinder posts on The Atlantic McCain policy adviser Doug Holtz-Eakin said that Sen. McCain would address the economy tomorrow. Is anyone else getting a sore neck from watching all of this?

Meanwhile, today Senator Obama spoke in specifics about his plans for the economy:

• Give businesses a new American jobs tax credit for each new employee they hire here in the United States over the next two years.
• Eliminate all capital gains taxes on investments in small businesses and start-up companies.
• Provide an additional tax incentive through next year to encourage new small business investment.
• Fast track the loan guarantees we passed for our auto industry and provide more as needed so that they can build the energy-efficient cars America needs to end our dependence on foreign oil.
• Save one million jobs by creating a Jobs and Growth Fund that will provide money to states and local communities so that they can move forward with projects to rebuild and repair our roads, our bridges, and our schools.
• Call on Congress to pass a plan so that the IRS will mail out the first round of the proposed middle-class tax cuts as soon as possible.
• Extend and expand unemployment benefits to those Americans who have lost their jobs and are having a harder time finding new ones in this weak economy.
• Eliminate taxes on unemployment insurance benefits.
• Waive the rules that currently force seniors 70.5 years of age and up to withdraw from their 401(k)s even when the market is bad.
• Allow every family to withdraw up to 15% from their IRA or 401(k) up to a maximum of $10,000 without any fine or penalty throughout 2009.
• Offer mortgage tax credit for struggling homeowners worth 10% of the mortgage interest you pay
• Change the unfair bankruptcy laws that allow judges to write down your mortgage if you own six or seven homes, but not if you have only one.
• Provide funding to prevent cities and small towns from having to choose between cutting health care and education services or raise property taxes.
• Implement a three-month moratorium on foreclosures for mortgages obtained through banks and lenders that are getting money from the rescue plan.
• The Treasury should not limit itself to purchasing mortgage-backed securities it should help unfreeze markets for individual mortgages, student loans, car loans, and credit card loans.
• Create an emergency lending fund to lend money directly to small businesses that need cash for their payroll or to buy inventory.
• Make it easier for private lenders to make small business loans by expanding the Small Business Administration’s loan guarantee program.

You can read the full speech here: http://www.demconwatchblog.com/2008/10/rescue-plan-for-middle-class.html and read the plan itself here: http://www.scribd.com/doc/6523359/Barack-Obama-and-Joe-Bidens-Rescue-Plan-for-the-Middle-Class

So. I’m looking forward to what McCain will present tomorrow.

And then the final debate, Wednesday night!

And then early voting opens in North Carolina on Thursday—guess what I’ll take time out of my day to do. :)

Remember yesterday when I said, “…so he doesn’t throw out one thing…and then have to turn around a day later and change completely the basis of it…again”?

From the New York Times: “On Saturday, his advisers were considering a range of economic ideas, one indicated. On Sunday, on the CBS News program ‘Face the Nation,’ Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a confidant of Mr. McCain, confirmed a report on Politico.com that Mr. McCain was weighing proposals to cut taxes on investors’ capital gains and dividends. ‘It will be a very comprehensive approach to jump-start the economy,’ Mr. Graham said, ‘by allowing capital to be formed easier in America by lowering taxes.’

“But McCain advisers later said they did not know why Mr. Graham said that.”

Have you ever seen a more clusterfuck of a campaign?

From Politico yesterday: “…Sen. John McCain is considering additional economic measures aimed directly at the middle class that are likely to be rolled out this week…. Among the measures being considered are tax cuts – perhaps temporary – for capital gains and dividend.”

Stop. Right. The fuck. There.

This helps the middle class how, John McCain? Capital gains and dividend tax only applies when 1) your taxable investments 2) are turning a profit. I don’t know about the rest of you middle-classers, but my (meager) taxable investments dropped 15% last week. Also, much of the middle class’s investment in the stock market is in 401K plans. It’s not capital gains tax that’s making people scared to stick their 401K money in the market, okay?

So basically, what you’re saying, guy, is LOOK AT MY NEW PIG! NO REALLY, IT’S A NEW PIG!

(I know that many people who live off of their investment earnings fit in the middle, and even lower, income classes, and I’m by no means against a reduction in investment taxes—I think the government should encourage people to save and invest by lowering the tax burden on that income. It’s not the reduction in capital gains and dividends idea that I’m attacking here, it’s the “Read my lips: no new ideas” thing McCain has repeatedly got going on…combined with the fact that THERE’S NOT A LOT OF MIDDLE CLASS INVESTMENT INCOME TO TAX RIGHT NOW, MR McWHATTHEFUCKERY.)

More: “McCain advisers hope that by being specific, he can pose a contrast to Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), who has been benefited from taking a vague but consistent approach to policy during the economic crisis.”

Except…didn’t I just read today in the Associated Press that “After consulting with Barack Obama, Democratic leaders are likely to call Congress back to work after the election in hopes of passing legislation that would include extended jobless benefits, money for food stamps and possibly a tax rebate”?

And “House Democrats have announced plans for an economic forum on Monday ‘to help Congress develop an economic recovery plan that focuses on creating jobs and strengthening our economy.’”

I know, I know: “House Democrats,” the article says, not “Barack Obama,” but do you really think Obama and his team is not going to be a part of the discussion and plans? Who do you think he is—Maverick McBush?

Back to the Politico story: “Officials could not say what [McCain's] package might include because more than 30 ideas have been put in front of McCain during the current crisis, and they said he has to choose what to unveil and when” …and perhaps his advisors need time to make sure he understands what he’s offering, so he doesn’t throw out one thing at a debate and then have to turn around a day later and change completely the basis of it…again: “The McCain campaign tweaked the [background document describing the housing plan] overnight Tuesday in a slight, but very significant way, removing a single sentence that indicated the government would buy mortgages from lenders at a discounted rate.”

…is that the government needs to spend our way through it, creating more American jobs as it invests—not in moar woar!* or bad debt—but in infrastructure, public transit, education, health care and alternative energy.

(*An administration with a modicum of diplomacy skills could actually use diplomacy as a first resort and troops as a last, thereby saving us a great expense in not only dollars but lives. Lives. Wouldn’t that be nifty?)

READ MOAR on government spending our way out of this—and don’t miss the responses. There’s some good discussion going in the “Read all letters” link at the end of the article.

Go Connecticut! Congratulations to all the loving couples who will be able to marry there now.

Today on the list of things that annoy me: correlations.

People with bumper stickers and/or personalized plates are 16% more likely to be angry drivers, according to a recent study. They’ve found, by surveying “hundreds of volunteers” that it doesn’t matter what kind of bumper stickers a driver has—”Namasté” makes you just as much of a loose cannon as “Yankee Go Home” or “My Other Ride Is Your Wife.”

Or maybe it’s bullshit, like so many of these “looks good on paper!” correlations are.

When I lived in New Hampshire I snarled and snapped every time I got behind the wheel. The only personalizion that car had was the trash on its floor. Nowadays Mark gets on my case because I don’t use the horn liberally (I like to save it for emergencies) and I don’t get frustrated enough to speed past people going slow in a no-passing zone or speed up to try and beat a red light.

Yet:

Why don’t we do a study to see whether people who double- or single-knot their shoelaces are more likely to be angry drivers? Automatic versus manual transmissions? Crap in the trunk or nothing but the spare and the jack? How about whether someone collects change in the ashtray or not? Dumps their ashtray out in parking lots? Eats fast food? Religious affiliation? Employment status? Married, divorced, single or widowed?

We could totally correlate all of those things to the likelihood of someone being an angry driver—and they’d all be just as useless.

My road anger dissipated when I changed jobs. I had to commute through a more traffic-dense area, but I enjoyed my job and the people I worked with. I was more relaxed going to and coming from work, despite having to sit in traffic longer. Maybe the amount of negative stress in a person’s life positively correlates to the likelihood that they’re a prick on the road.

In the meantime, just ’cause I have bumper stickers and pay the state the big bucks every year for my personalized plate doesn’t mean I’m a jerkoff in traffic.

Don’t believe the hype.

“The California Supreme Court struck down the state’s ban on same-sex marriage Thursday in a broadly worded decision that would invalidate virtually any law that discriminates on the basis of sexual orientation.” Read the full article.

The decision takes effect in 30 days. Congratulations to all the couples who will be able to marry this summer.

It’s distressing that we need such a day (I, for one, would much prefer “blog against slow drivers who can’t stay in their own freaking lane day”), but what really gets to me is that when I hear “torture” anymore, I think “U.S.” I think “waterboarding.” I think Abu Ghraib. I think secret prisons. WTF is up with that? Aren’t we supposed to be one of the good guys?!?

You should be aware that the Zen Stone 1 GB Mp3 player (and likely the 2GB version as well) will no longer function after you run over it with your car.

“Hello Ralph Nader. We are anonymous. Over the years we have been watching you.” Watch this (YouTube).

I’m fricking in love with the Garfield Minus Garfield site. What happens when you take Garfield out of the Garfield comic strip? “Friends, meet Jon Arbuckle. Let’s laugh and learn with him on a journey deep into the tortured mind of an isolated young everyman as he fights a losing battle against lonliness and methamphetamine addiction in a quiet American suburb.”

Which is better for the environment—reading the Sunday paper all spread out over the kitchen table or reading it online? Who knows. (My solution is to skip the Sunday paper altogether, unless I’m at Ultimate Ice Cream where I can read their Sunday paper spread out all over one of their tables. While I eat Kahlúa mocha almond ice cream in a waffle cone with jimmies. Bliss!)

And finally, Chris Jordan’s Running the Numbers. It only takes a moment to look, and it leaves an impression.