mushin no shin

I’m really hoping Al Franken pulls this one out. Because he’s good enough, and smart enough, and gosh darn it, people like him. OK OK I know I already made that joke. Shut up.
Awesome major victories in the War on the War on Drugs with Massachusetts essentially decriminalizing small possession (ehh… still a $100 fine… [...]

Rex led us to this xkcd comic:

Yep, that’s about right.
Actually 2012 doesn’t seem like much of a mystery to me. Barring some unforseen tragedy — which could include anything from the unthinkable, to Obama just really fucking things up — I think we’ll see an incumbent Obama handily defeating either Huckabee or Romney. The Republicans [...]

OK, so I’m one of probably a few million posters to use that title today. Fuck off.
Anyway just brief props to http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/. We all saw the landslide numbers they crunched out and thought, no way, has to be liberal pipedreaming or something.
Their final electoral college prediction? 348.6 to 189.4
Where are we at right now? [...]

This is brilliant:

A common idea among the less educated people who call themselves “conservative” seems to be that they should oppose tax cuts for themselves and support tax cuts for the rich because they might become rich and they want to prepare for that possibility.
The US census data [1] shows that less than 1% of [...]

Sean Braisted pointed us to this casual election survey by Domino’s Pizza. Of course it’s fun that Obama won, but here’s what I found interesting:

In general, Republicans:
# Spend more per order than other customers
# Rely on credit cards more than other customers
While Democrats:
# Pay cash for their food

This being the first time I’ve been able to vote since gettin’ my franchise back (thank you ACLU!), I skipped the early voting because I wanted to feel more directly connected to today. I looked forward to standing in a long line and being able to puff my chest about how awesome and patriotic I [...]

A commenter on 3 AM Polls: McCain Running Out of Time, Undecideds writes:

it doesn’t look like McCain will have enough time to convince the American people that Obama is the atheistic, bastard lovechild of Eugene Debs and Emma Goldman.

Which I just had to post on because that would SO be my candidate :)

Not quite sure what to make of McCain’s appearance on SNL:

It was funny, certainly, and McCain definitely brings back his likable side. But what strikes me — by appearing with Tina Fey, and allowing her to do the whole “going rogue” bit and all — he seems to be basically admitting what has so far [...]

John Stewart last night made a great joke in reference to the shots of the amber waves of grain in the Obama infomercial, to paraphrase — “Finally, a candidate you want to make a beer with!”
And now the Beer Activist tells us about … wait for it… The Audacity of Hops –

‘08% ABV and full [...]

I lack the discipline to get into weekly theme posts like the “feel good Friday” thing, but Halloween on a Friday calls for some celebrating. Perhaps a double shot, even.
It’s just not Halloween without Danny Elfman:

Or that master songsmith of gothic macabre, Weird Al:

(Sorry I couldn’t find a version where the video didn’t sort of [...]