More Debate Notes

Mr. Romney did have one gaffe:

During the debate tonight, Mitt Romney mentioned that Syria is important because it’s Iran’s “route to the sea.” The thing is, Iran doesn’t even border Syria, as you can see on our childishly annotated map above. And Iran already has access to the sea on its southern border.

As confusing as the remark was, though, the Washington Post notes that tonight was hardly the first time Romney has made it, and the Romney campaign explains, “It’s generally recognized that Syria offers Iran strategic basing/staging access to the Mediterranean as well as to terrorist proxies in the Levant. This is a large reason why Iran invests so much in Syria.” This doesn’t change the fact, however, that Iran has a “route to the sea” regardless of Syria. Americans are bad enough at geography already; they don’t need a presidential candidate confusing them even more.

Hmmm…I wonder if my Republican friends will tease me about some Obama supporters wearing misspelled t-shirts. 🙂

Though President Obama won this debate as decisively as he lost the first one, the debate is unlikely to give him a large bounce, though a small one might be important (as Nate Silver points out).

The odds of Obama winning the electoral college range from the low 60’s (Iowa Electronic, Intrade), mid 60’s (the bookies) to about 70 (Nate Silver). But Iowa Electronic has an interesting call: this morning (right now), they are predicting an Obama win in the electoral college but a loss in the popular vote:

This, of course, might change quickly; Nate Silver’s simulations shows that there is about a 6 percent chance of this happening.

But if it does happen, it might be because of something like this:

That is: Obama wins the swing states by narrow margins but gets absolutely creamed in the deep southern states, in addition to states such as Kentucky, West Virginia, etc. So it could happen, though Nate Silver says that he doesn’t see much evidence of that about to happen.

Locally IL-17: Cheri Bustos has taken a 49-45 lead in her race to unseat Bobby Schilling. Note that President Obama leads in this district by 15 points, so Obama’s coattails might help here.

Off to run…as in…run. 🙂

Genteel Bigotry is Still Bigotry

I am still facebook friends with a few of my Naval Academy classmates (class of 1981). Most are very conservative.

The conversation started when I posted this:

Background
My point on this whole matter: I acknowledged that I thought that Chick-Fil-A restaurants ought to be treated in the same way as other businesses when it comes to licenses, permits and the like.

The CEO of Chick-Fil-A has free speech rights and the GOVERNMENT shouldn’t sanction him on his views.

Now when it comes to customers patronizing his business: customers have free speech rights too. And yes, this CEO went beyond merely saying “I think that gay marriage is immoral”; he actively worked against gay rights by funding groups trying to prevent gay rights legislation from passing and trying to overturn newly won rights.

Two of the groups (at least) are listed as “hate groups” by the Southern Poverty Law Center (here and here)

The point of this post
During the discussion, I had posted a photo of Chic-Fil-A patrons and called them “dummies”. I also called the Chick-Fil-A CEO a “slime-bag”.

Then one of my Naval Academy classmates (a smart guy who built a successful business) accused ME of “hate”.

I couldn’t quite tease out what his problem with me was, but evidently he saw the Chick-Fil-A CEO as merely “expressing an opinion”..”practicing his religion”…and evidently…..a “reasonable opinion” with his actions.

On the other hand, I “called people names”: in his mind, my name calling was hateful but the ACTIONS by the CEO weren’t.

I have to admit that I’ve seen this from other conservatives (example: my wife’s Rotary Club). People are considered “nice” if they dress well and behave with manners. WHAT causes they work for simply isn’t a criterion for “niceness”.

Sorry: bigotry, even when approved of by religion and expressed by monetary means and spoken in proper diction via hotel ballrooms remains bigotry.

Star of India Restaurant, St. Cloud MN

I was famished after the marathon, so I drove to St. Cloud (about 10-15 minutes on Highway 75) and ate at the Star of India restaurant.

The bad: kind of hard to spot from the road; it is in a strip mall (contains Godfather’s Pizza and TJ Max); the mall is on the south side of Division Ave. between 27’th and 29’th streets.

I had Paneer Naan, malai kofta (cheese balls in a spicy orange sauce with nuts and other goodies) and orange juice.

Delicious! The malai kofta was 11 dollars and the naan was 2.99.

The have a buffet from 11 to 2:30 but I’ll be on the road prior to checking that out.