hey, President Bush, way to interrupt Family Guy.

ARRGH

At least MSNBC will have Olbermann on to complain about it.

ok leeeeeeee otm, but still

"My fellow Americans, I come here to bring you the jaw-dropping news that your Iraqi wards have risked evisceration and immediate eternal damnation in hell for being Musselmen, in order to swarm to the polls in numbers even greater than those of you who voted to re-elect me. This is fucking fantastic. It proves I am right, Dicky -Boy is right and Connie and Brainiac and all the White House Gang who owe me their jobs. I've always been right about this from the start, which is why you must follow me in never taking the coward's way out and abandoning our little brown brothers and sisters in Iraq.

"You may have heard that I secretly signed an order for my spies to spy on you and other US citizens. You shouldn't believe a word of this nonsense. I only authorized my spies to spy on terrorists, Quakers and cowards who would have us cut-and-run from Iraq."

"P.S. We do not 'torture' our detainees. We have allies for that. Thank you and mat God Bless America."

Was I close?

Because that's what goes for comedy on "family guy".

it's the only way.

only the ruling party can bring about articles of impeachment, etc. I do wish those who blow lots of energy on this particular crusade would realize that their efforts would be better focused on getting certain folks voted the fuck out of office in 11 months.

Don't Vote
It makes more sense to play the lottery.
By Steven E. Landsburg
Posted Wednesday, Sept. 29, 2004, at 11:58 AM ET

Illustration by Robert Neubecker
We might be headed for another close election, which means your vote could really matter this time, right? Wrong. Your vote didn't matter in 2000, it never mattered before 2000, and it's very unlikely to start mattering now.

Last time around, everything came down to Florida, where Bush's official margin was 537 votes. (Yes, yes, I know, if they'd been counted differently there'd have been a different margin and perhaps a different outcome. But that's not what this column is about.) If any one of Florida's 6 million voters had stayed home, Bush's margin would have been 536 or 538 votes, and he'd still have won. Even if you voted in the most hotly disputed state in the mostly hotly disputed election in American history, your vote did not change the outcome.

Your individual vote will never matter unless the election in your state is within one vote of a dead-even tie. (And even then, it will matter only if your state tips the balance in the electoral college.) What are the odds of that? Well, let's suppose you live in Florida and that Florida's 6 million voters are statistically evenly divided—meaning that each of them has (as far as you know) exactly a 50/50 chance of voting for either Bush or Kerry—the statistical equivalent of a coin toss. Then the probability you'll break a tie is equal to the probability that exactly 3 million out of 6 million tosses will turn up heads. That's about 1 in 3,100—roughly the same as the probability you'll be murdered by your mother.

Continue Article

And that's surely a gross overestimate of your influence, because it assumes there's no bias at all in your neighbors' preferences. Even a slight change in that assumption leads to a dramatic change in the conclusion. If Kerry (or Bush) has just a slight edge, so that each of your fellow voters has a 51 percent likelihood of voting for him, then your chance of casting the tiebreaker is about one in 10 to the 1,046th power—approximately the same chance you have of winning the Powerball jackpot 128 times in a row.

For those of us who live in New York State, the situation is far worse. Last time around, about 6.5 million votes were cast for major party candidates in New York state and 63 percent of them went to Al Gore. Assuming an electorate of similar size with a similar bias, my chance of casting the deciding vote in New York is about one in 10 to the 200,708th power. I have a better chance of winning the Powerball jackpot 7,400 times in a row than of affecting the election's outcome. Which makes it pretty hard to see why I should vote.

The traditional reply begins with the phrase "But if everyone thought like that ... ." To which the correct rejoinder is: So what? Everyone doesn't think like that. They continue to vote by the millions and tens of millions.

Even for the most passionate partisan, it's hard to argue that voting is a good use of your time. Instead of waiting in line to vote, you could wait in line to buy a lottery ticket, hoping to win $100 million and use it to advance your causes—and all with an almost indescribably greater chance of success than you'd have in the voting booth.

this is the first time i've mentioned my love affair with fox sunday. don't hate me.

It is true enough that in a nationwide election for president of the USA that any particular vote is without decisive influence. But there is a lot wrong with his analysis. For one thing, presidential elections are highly anomalous.

First, it is the only nationwide elective office (unless you count vice-president). All other elections are in much smaller jurisdictions. Next, the presidential election is mediated by the electoral college, making it by design the most insulated office from democratic influences. So, Landsberg chose the least representative election to base his argument on.

Also, in a democracy single votes should not be decisive. Allowing one person's judgement to decide is anti-democratic. Voting is designed not as a determinative exercise by any one individual, but as a mechanism in the aggregate. But it is also an indispensible feedback mechanism and it performs a function of prior restraint on politicians, who know they must attract enough votes to be re-elected.

Finally, elections are not about so many free-floating particles who do nothing but vote and go home. The individual voters, as Landsberg has sussed, are the least important actors in an election. Elections are about forming coalitions that can add up to aggregate majorities. If you want to influence elections, you have to do a lot more than vote; you have to volunteer time and money to aid in creating and growing those coalitions. Votes are the smallest particle of that equation, but absolutely indispensible to it.

I absolutely used to feel this way and then I don't what happened but I just started getting it. Now I love it. And American Dad's pretty good.

I also love Fox Sundays but that's life when you don't have cable.

Hi Who do uou think should be president?

great revive

CREAMES IS BACK?