the crap I learned in grade school

Gallup is also a town in New Mexico.  It was running through my brain that it had something to do with early tv, but the google machine tells me that what I was thinking of was Truth Or Consequences.  What was I thinking?

I don't know where Beagles got that idealistic idea about elections.  Possibly in Sawyer School.  One of my favorite lines is from Paul Simon, When I think back to all the crap I learned in high school.  Although in this case it would be grade school. Still I would think that the Blue Jeans Incident would have propelled him down a proper road of cynicism.  Myself, whenever they trotted out the guys with wigs who wrote with feathers, my eyeballs ran like the balls in roulette wheels.

There is talk about people jumping on the bandwagon of a guy whose polls are high, but I don't think that happens much, and guys with high polls, especially around election day, will downplay them because they don't want their voters to be complacent and stay home;

I guess they are run for people like me, who want to know how it is going.  Who doesn't want to know what is going on?  A lot of us do so the media serves them up to us.  We know they are indicators and not hard facts and that's fine.  If I went by people I know I would be surprised if Dumbo got a single vote.

I don't think it is a good thing that people vote for who they think will serve them the biggest slice of the pie (something for nothing), and that they are easily misled by slicksters who are competing with other slicksters.  I suppose it's a bad thing, but we are flawed little carbon units so what do you expect of us?  Why cling to an abstract model that has little to do with what is really going on when what is really going on is right there before you?

But maybe three weeks ago Old Dog alluded to an article in The Atlantic that I didn't get around to reading until last week,the import of which was, that all this common knowledge of  how to win elections may be full of shit, and the evidence for that is Dumbo's campaign, which has gone against most rules and still was tied with the big girl up to last week.  Incidentally though she appears to be getting a bump from the debate.  If you believe the polls that is.


What did the polls get wrong about Ford and Carter and Romney and Obama?  I don't remember the former, but I remember the polls being very accurate about Romney and Obama.

What did the polls have to do with forcing us smokers out of the bars for our cigs?  But I do agree that what had at first seemed an imposition is now a refreshing little break in the hard work of sitting on a stool and drinking beer.  Even on those science fiction wind chill days, when you come back in with apple cheeks and frost clinging to your beard, don't all the heads of the hot babes turn towards the ruggedly handsome he-man from the blizzard?  Probably but I can't tell because my glasses ae all frosted over.