As others have pointed out, the Iowa caucuses are, or should be, a joke. Like the August straw poll, they seem to have a lot more to do with gaming the system (by making sure your supporters are overrepresented – by any means necessary – in the tiny group of people who actually turn up to caucus) than getting any real sense of popular support. Neither Moira nor I have any enthusiasm worked up for any of the candidates, of any party; we haven't been making any plans to go to the caucuses at all. But, what's that poor, bedraggled thing tugging at my coat hem? Ah, it's my emaciated sense of civic duty! Mister Dave, you've got to go and vote! You've just got to! Ahhh, ok. Maybe.
But for whom? As I noted, enthusiasm here in the Casa is lacking. At best, I can muster up "Well, an X presidency probably wouldn't be disastrous..." but that's it. There's no one to caucus for. I tried out this handy-dandy candidate selector, just to see if there was anyone who claimed to represent my views. It's a bunch of multiple-choice questions apparently pulled from candidate position papers, so of course my preferred answer to many of the questions would be "None of the above", as the offered choices aren't what I'd prefer.* Complete alignment with a candidate results in a score of 45, but I never got more than a 9 for any candidate. I tried running through it several times, as Squishy Liberal Dave, as Caveman Conservative Dave, as Aspergery Libertarian Dave. The combined ranking of candidates looks like:
- Giuliani 9
- Edwards, Kucinich 7
- Huckabee, Richardson 5
- Clinton, Dodd, Hunter, McCain, Romney, Thompson 4
- Biden, Gravel, Obama, Paul 3
So, position-wise, I guess I kind of agree with Rudy on things, more so than with anybody else. But in terms of personality and temperament, would he make a good president? Reports are mixed on that one. So my enthusiasm, it is blunted. Dulled, No, actually, if my enthusiasm for Mr. G. could be analogized to cutlery, it would be an old butterknife, or maybe one of those plastic jobs.
But maybe I'm looking at this wrong. How about if I caucus against someone? So I could go to the Democratic caucus, and support someone other than John Edwards, probably Obama or Hillary!, just to drain support away from him. There's the ticket! Except that the Democratic caucuses are a procedural nightmare. Just... stupid. There's no other word for it. I am not going to put up with that. The Repubs, on the other hand, have a straight-up, secret ballot. And they're caucusing within walking distance of our house. Hmmm..... a quick party affiliation change may be in order....
Until then, though, time to drink some champagne.
*Also disregarding the possibility that the candidates don't really believe the positions they are espousing. Or that the selector isn't misrepresenting the candidates' views.
I have not called you a "f***ing theocratic wanker with the same value as a parasitic nematode worm" purely because of the general bonhomie of the season.
—Commenter 'Nick M.', Samizdata
I constantly remind my children that they are a terrible drain on the planet. Sometimes they cry. I think it’s good that they share Gaia’s pain.(Satire alert!) Okay, it wasn't written today. But I found it today, so I couldn't very well have posted it earlier, right?
- 1 Edwards sign
- 1 Huckabee sign (Sorry, but "Huckabee" as a name has the lowest gravitas-quotient of any recent candidate. It sounds like it ought to be a Teletubbies spinoff: "This Saturday morning, it's The Huckabees! Chaos and comedy erupt when Baby Huckabee loses her dolly, and Happy Huckabee and Mopey Huckabee learn a heartwarming lesson about sharing..." Trivial and petty, I know. But still...)
- 1 "I support George W. Bush" sign (Now there's one quixotic personality.)
UPDATE: Is the Register having an effect? 2 new Clinton signs have sprung up just today...
But, they may be somewhat counteracted by an Edwards sign, 2 new Huckabees, and a big Tancredo sign on the way to Lowe's (which has a miserable assortment of Christmas trees this year, btw).
Regarding my disdain for the Huckabee moniker, the Ranting Offspring says that for her, Tancredo is the guy with the greatest name-ickiness factor. "It sounds like some kind of horrible food", she says. We debate what kind of food a Tancredo would be. I think something like Beef Liver Tancredo. She says something more like Refried Tancredo. I suppose Huckabees could be some kind of candy, probably little stale-tasting gummy things that get caught in your teeth.
Dubuque is the only major town in Iowa's portion of the Driftless Area, a portion of the upper Mississippi Valley that escaped glaciation during the most recent ice ages. The glaciers had a tremendous dullifying effect on Iowa's topography, planing off the tops of hills and filling valleys with gravel and ground-up rock, resulting in the monotonous rolling hills that predominate much of the state today. But in the northeastern corner of the state, the Mississippi was left free to cut its valley into the bedrock, resulting in unusually steep topography, unique microclimates, and the oldest rocks in the state. In addition to the lure of hills! and rocks! was the pull of Iowa's only National Park unit, Effigy Mounds National Monument, and the reputation (around here, anyway) that the northeastern portion of the state has for good fall leaf color.
So we headed off for a three-day weekend, and arrived in Dubuque a little before sunset. We had a little bit of difficulty finding our lodgings, because the Google Map directions we printed out were a monstrous pack of lies as far as the actual street location of our motel was concerned – the directions spun a tall tale of streets that did not exist, or travel against the traffic on one-way streets, that sort of thing. But we overcame the map in the end, and wandered over to the city's spiffy new waterfront promenade to watch the barges go by.
The promenade was pretty and nicely designed and all that, but it has one big problem; there's nothing to do there. It's a beautifully crafted brick walkway along the top of the levee, but it starts nowhere and goes nowhere. Well, it kinda sorta starts near the parking lot of the local casino (insert Sideshow Bob-like exclamation of defeated disgust here), then runs under the prow of the town convention center, then sputters out behind a defunct brewery that's trying to make a comeback as a tasting room for a local winery. But we had assumed that there would be a multitude of restaurants, bars, life. There was only one, and at that one a live band was doing the worst possible rendition of Peaceful, Easy Feeling that could exist in this, or any theoretical, universe. We could not eat there.
- 4 Clinton signs
- 3 Obama signs
- 2 Ron Paul signs
- 1 Romney sign
*Assuming a few extra boxes stuffed with "Sí" ballots don't conveniently turn up, that is.
And it's not as if we have any kind of excuse, either... there have been repeated sightings of just about all of the presidential candidates within 3 miles or so of home, and we couldn't be arsed to drag ourselves out to see any of them. And the fabled Caucuses... yeah, right. Like we're really going to drag ourselves out in the freezing cold – no, make that sub-zero cold – to hang out with a bunch of politics junkies and pretend we actually are enthused about any of the candidates – not bloody likely, bucko*. The fact that we're both registered as independents probably doesn't help either. (The more I think about it, the more the attention given to the Iowa caucuses seems absurdly disproportionate; the state is small, the electorate atypical, and the actual caucus-goers a tiny and highly-skewed fraction of this small, unrepresentative state. But I'm sure that's been commented on elsewhere.)
So, just because I don't want this "political" blog to be nothing but a collection of my inane ramblings and Moira's Kennewickiana, here is an actual exclusive Alien Corn Iowa political insight:
While loitering in the local Radio Shack today, I overheard the sales clerks talk about Mitt Romney. Mostly it was along the lines of, "Didn't he do something weird with his dog?", followed by talking about his being Mormon, followed by a comparative theological discussion of who was weirder, Mormons or Seventh-Day Adventists.
Uhh, that's it, that's all I've got. Oh, and a guy two doors down the street has a Romney sign in his front yard. (Not many people in this neighborhood do political signs.) My conscience feels much better. Thank you.
*Four years ago, I thought about going to the Demo. caucus and being for Lieberman, but the neurons that formed that thought were never able to recruit any motor neurons to follow up on the idea. But hey, I almost briefly thought about getting involved.
Nothing for it but to throw some more blog entries on the fire.
Ummm......
Well, here's something for the "horrific insect-related story" files, via the k00L k!dz at Slashdot: Zombie cockroaches!
But unlike many venomous predators, which paralyse their victims before eating them or dragging them back to their lair, the wasp's sting leaves the cockroach able to walk, but unable to initiate its own movement.
The wasp then grabs the cockroach's antenna and leads it back to the nest. The cockroach walks "like a dog on a leash"... Once home, the merciless wasp lays an egg on the docile cockroach's belly, and the larva, once hatched, devours the hapless insect...
Complete with spine-tingling, edge-of-your-seat video.
Enjoy! (That is an order from your insect overlords!)
