WhackyNation

Courage is not a human quality found very often in political personalities. But Senator Joe Lieberman, the Independent senator from Connecticut, who bolted the Democratic Party in disgust a few years ago, displayed a huge example of courage in appearing at the Republican Convention and drawing ovation after ovation from the crowd.

His ringing support for the Republican presidential nominee, John McCain, and his vice-presidential nominee, Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska, should have brought regrets from many Democrats that they didn’t listen to Lieberman when he was pleading for support of President Bush and the war to bring freedom and democracy to Iraq.

Lieberman’s courageous backing for McCain will undoubtedly help the Republican ticket in November and maybe even provide the margin of victory for the G.O.P. But to me there was far more significance in his bold move in accepting the chore of speaking on behalf of McCain at the Republican convention.

For that significance, I go back many months to commentaries I wrote suggesting that the Democrats had a great opportunity to mend their Socialist ways and to listen to the appeals of Senator Lieberman to start curbing the appetite of Big Government for more and more power.

I tried to urge Democrats to reorganize their party, select Lieberman as their logical new leader, and begin divesting the federal government of its growing power over the private business and industry sector and the property and personal rights of citizens — all of which are pushing us steadily into socialism and a welfare state.

That reorganization could have happened if the leaders of the Democratic Party had listened to Lieberman and done their best to save the historic two-party system that has been the cornerstone of America’s liberty for more than two centuries.

Lieberman tried to awaken his Democratic friends to the fact that the liberalism that had once been the basis for the party’s platforms and philosophy was no longer the liberalism so many of us knew many years ago. Thanks to the policies of FDR and LBJ, liberalism was fractured and discarded in favor of Big Government and actual Socialism.

Little wonder that Lieberman gave up his fight to save the old Democratic Party and became an Independent. If his old Senate friend, John McCain, wins the election in November, perhaps Lieberman will accept a new proposal I have to offer — and perhaps many others will, as well.

I think it’s possible for McCain to start a new Independent Party, welcome all Democrats who agree with his philosophy to join him, and utilize the new party to reconstruct it into the new Democratic Party of the 21^st Century. In the process, the new party could tell the old Socialist Democrats to get lost and junk their outmoded political apparatus.

It could happen. And, if it did, we can once more go back to the healthy two-party system that served America so well. At the same time, we could say goodbye to Socialism and send it flying back to its standard bearers in Europe. Good riddance!

It didn’t get much play yesterday because of the Sarah Palin headlines, but Senator Joe Biden said something yesterday that takes presidential politics to the gutter and threatens democracy itself.

Anybody with a classical education will tell you that using the courts to destroy your political opponents was the singlemost destructive development in the last generation of the Roman Republic and led to its downfall.

That’s what the Democrat Veep nominee threatened yesterday when he said:

he and running mate Barack Obama could pursue criminal charges against the Bush administration if they are elected in November.

When is enough enough, Senator?

It’s this exact tactic which gave us the great orations of the “Greatest Republican of them all” Marcus Cicero, but unfortunately led to the civil conflicts which tore apart the Roman Republic and established the emperors.

This may seem like hyperbole, but Biden’s threat should be exposed for what it is: a populist tactic that places personal victory over the good of the country.  Both parties should resist using the courts for the politics of destruction.  Take a shower, Joe.

That’s the bottom line, because it has been clear for months that that is where the battlegrounds lie to win the necessary electoral college votes for the presidency.

And, I don’t know enough at this moment to answer the question.  But I think it is important to remind those of us who follow politics closely, that her nomination as the Republican Vice-Presidential candidate was hopefully calculated by the McCain camp to do just that.

When I can stomach to watch the network coverage (I spend most of my time watching the C-SPAN channel) I am most fascinated by the county-by-county computer analysis of voters.  I know how important this is from my experience in the 70’s and 80’s when I produced television election coverage both in Portland and Seattle.  And I know how important it is since I have been involved in politics since.

This presidential election just may be won not at the county level, but maybe the precinct level in Ohio, Pennyslvania and Virginia.   What I’ve gleaned from the network analysis is that the wildcard areas in Eastern Ohio, Western Pennsylvania, and Northwestern Virginia are mostly rural, small towns.  That’s the fit I see for the Palin choice.  And it’s the bait which the Democrats unwisely snapped at in the hours after her selection. 

I have to admit my first reaction to the Palin pick was similar to Peggy Noonan’s whose off-microphone comments made for embarassing blog meat yesterday.  I wondered too why more experienced and more well-known choices had been passed over.  But I also knew that at this level of the game — the show — decisions like this are very calculated.  I just didn’t understand the equation.

The equation is not whether she has coalesced the right-wing.  She has.  And the equation has nothing to do about how she’ll play on the Left Coast or in the cities.  No, I think the equation has a lot to do in how Governor Palin will play in the precincts which are up for grabs in the battleground states.  Again, with the exception of Florida, mostly rural and small towns.

On the broader front the McCain campaign has to get nasty with Senator Barack Obama to expose the latter’s sleazy Chicago backside.  That is not easy to do when the Republican candidate is an elder white man and the Democrat candidate is a much younger black man.  Obama could — and already has– use the race card to respond to attacks even though the attacks have nothing to do with race.

Since the drive-by media has refused to expose Obama’s radicalism, his ties with influence peddlars, racketeers and with unrepentent terrorists, and his and his wife’s deep-rooted anger with the American culture, the McCain campaign needed to find a way to deliver the message without risking a trump by Obama’s race card.

Governor Palin, with her eloquence, poise and soft beauty was a highly creative trick to win that hand.  Her speech last night was just a warm up.  And it was successful.  Her message broke through the heavy left-wing filter of America’s media.  It has the nut-roots going crazy today.

In the coming weeks Palin can deliver that truth and rip Obama to shreds and America will hear the message.

On the flip side, how will Senators Obama and Biden respond to Palin?  Will they personally attack her?

What’s to lose?  If 90% of blacks say they’re voting for Obama (who says race has nothing to do with this election?) while roughly only half of women, then who has more to lose at angering a demographic?  The Republicans by angering more blacks or Democrats by angering more women?

This is going to be fun to watch.

When she issued her remarkable energy plan back in the 1970s, my old and much lamented friend, Dr. Dixy Lee Ray, included a hopeful segment in which she and her scientific cohorts listed the great future potential of shale rock as a source of natural gas — the shale being found virtually throughout the United States.

Dr. Ray and her cohorts cautioned that extracting the gas from shale was still a very expensive process and that large-scale production would have to wait until cheaper and more efficient methods were found to tap the huge supply of shale. Well, it appears that that method has been found and that the shale mining has already begun in Texas.

What a godsend it will be if the new forecasts for gas from shale prove valid — as many mining companies now believe will be the case. Just a week ago, the New York Times reported from the Texas mining operation that “many people in the natural-gas industry believe a new era is at hand, and a rising chorus of Wall Street analysts and congressional lawmakers supports that notion.”

Already many companies in the gas-supply field have begun a competition for rights to the new gas, and they have touched off a “frenzy of leasing and drilling.” Domestic gas production has increased 8.8 percent in the first five months of this year, thanks to the findings in the shale fields.

As an indication of what the new shale excavations will mean, the Navigant Consulting firm has declared that “there could be as much as 842 trillion cubic feet of retrievable gas in shales around the country, enough to supply about 40 years’ worth of natural gas at today’s consumption rate.”

However, the company also cautioned that thousands of new wells will have to be drilled and processed before it will be possible to get an accurate estimate of the future supply of gas from shale deposits. I don’t think that will be a problem. Once the value of shale diggings is recognized, the industry will be anxious to dig wells.

At the same time, the new findings will do wonders for the nation’s supply of energy. I would hope that the lawmakers who are impressed by the new shale news will also realize they should start beating the drums for removal of the 40-year ban on construction of new oil refineries.

Perhaps the time is coming soon for the U.S. to say farewell to the oil-rich nations that have held us “captive” for so many years. That farewell should also include our involvement in the internal affairs of those oil-rich countries — among them all the nations in the Middle East, South America, and Indonesia.

I would hasten to add one more item to all this “good news” — also referring to what Dixy proposed in her exceptional energy plan. That is a congressional decision to end the ban it imposed on new nuclear-energy plants four decades ago. At the same time, Congress should quit paying attention to the environmental extremists, whose political outcry many years ago persuaded the lawmakers to impose the ban.

Is there life after professional football? Lord, I hope so — especially after I watched the Seattle Union Busters cavort at the Kingdome with the Miami Strike Breakers a few years ago. How could I forget such an encounter?

Now, I love football. Always have. Used to play tackle football in the Junior Division of the sandlots back in Cleveland as a young, impressionable kid. That is, I played sandlot football as a dumb kid — until a broken nose and shattered kneecap canceled me out. Fact is, I am still bothered by those miserable injuries at this late date in my life. Must be repentance for earlier athletic sins.

Oh, yes, I forgot to mention that I started playing the violin at a very early age — about 7 — and played it for many years thereafter. At any rate, when I returned home with bandages on my nose and my knee, my fuming father grabbed the violin and shoved it under my chin, saying: “Here, play this! That’s how you’ve gotta make a living!” Of course, he said it in Italian, which is far more dramatic and impressive than English.

No matter. I always obeyed my Pop, because I loved him so. He was and always will be the greatest, kindest, and most caring man I have ever known in my life. So, you see, I did continue to study and play the violin, because he was a very convincing Dad. At any rate, I fiddled constantly until somebody gave me a typewriter. That may have been Mistake No. 2.

If I had stuck with the fiddle, I’d probably be making a mint today, playing “Turkey in the Straw” with Minnie Pearl or even Dolly Parton. Or maybe, because I loved playing a jazz fiddle, I might have been the second Joe Venuti, the greatest jazz fiddler of them all — until Stephan Grappelli came along.

Of course, if I’d stuck with football, there’s no telling what riches would have come my way. I’ve always had a Vince Lombardi nose, Joe Namath’s fallen arches, and Merlin Olsen’s potbelly. It doesn’t matter that I ran like a three-legged dog, passed like a stadium peanut vendor, and tackled like a drunken sailor.

All I had to do if I stuck it out with football was wait it out — until the good players got so rich and famous that they would refuse to go to work for a paltry half-million bucks a year, as was the case in the “good old days.”

Who knows? I might even have become an owner of a football team. Then I could have cried in public over those ungrateful, striking players — and ducked back into my office to gloat over all the tax write-offs and concessions contracts.

Instead, I’m a lonely blog commentator, who has to say things like this for a buck. You were right, Pop. I shoulda kept playin’ the fiddle.

More than 35 years after the momentous court decision legalizing abortion, we are much farther away from a national solution to that volatile issue than ever before. And with the two sides glowering at each other and even threatening more violence and murders, a solution seems impossible.

But we must solve it. And solve it in a sensible, democratic way with both sides giving a little. Although I oppose abortions, except for reasons of incest, danger to the mother’s health, and rape, I know I have no right to impose my moral and religious views on others who disagree with me.

Nor — on the other hand — do they have a right to require me to pay for the abortions, treatment, and care of others. But since it has become impossible to reach a solution by calm negotiation, the only sensible way left is to submit the issue to a national referendum, the result of which would become federal law and policy.

Nobody would be completely satisfied, of course, but at least the civil conflict that now seems certain to split the nation would be averted.

Would the various pro-abortion groups ever agree with the pro-life groups on a national referendum? I doubt it. That’s why I believe that the rest of us, who are in the middle of this never-ending debate, should put our foot down and demand that something like the national referendum I’ve suggested be allowed to happen.

How should the referendum be worded to assure a cessation of hostilities between the pro-abortion and pro-life factions? Very carefully, a comedian might say. But I think there is a plausible and sensible way to construct such a referendum.

Accepting the premise that there should be at least three choices in the referendum, try this on for size:

Which would you approve:

• a. A total ban on all abortions and severe punishment for those who do not obey the law;
• b. A law permitting any abortion, provided an accredited physician performed it, or
• c. A law permitting only those abortions in cases of rape, incest, or clear danger to the pregnant mother?

If one or two more choices should be needed, they could be added. The choice selected by the largest vote probably would leave many disappointed, but at least the nation would finally have a mandate that would end the hostilities.

Does anybody have a better solution? I doubt it.

Is there a strange hex that pervades the musical environment in every American city — a hex that visits every symphony conductor, no matter how talented he may be and what brilliant improvements he has engineered in the life of the community? I have come to believe there is, although I don’t believe in ghosts nor hexes, for that matter.

It happened to the great Arturo Toscanini in New York — and to the famous Serge Koussevitzky in Boston, the equally noted Eugene Ormandy in Philadelphia, the talented George Szell in my native city of Cleveland, and, similarly, to fine conductors in several other cities — not to mention those deposed in European cities over the years.

Seattle, my longtime home city, has certainly not been an exception. In fact, it may have been visited more often by the hex than most other cities. As this is written, there seems to be a new revolt in the ranks of the Seattle Symphony’s musicians — a clash of personalities in which some members of the orchestra are demanding the ouster of Gerard Schwarz after more than 20 years of superior music-making.

Nobody seems to know exactly why the musicians are rebelling — most of all Schwarz himself, which seems to be an earmark of the hex. Since no one seems inclined to level with Schwarz and tell him what happens to conductors who stick around too long, whether it’s Seattle or Oshkosh, I guess I will have to do it.

Seattle is one of the most fertile and innovative arts regions in America. But, for some reason, symphony and opera maestros who serve Seattle brilliantly eventually get the short end of the stick, if you’ll pardon the expression, and, in time, they are “invited” to pack up and leave.

Gustave Stern, a dynamic, German-born opera conductor, brought Seattle superb musical productions at the old Aqua Theater and elsewhere, as well as summer music in the parks — but he was eventually abandoned by an ungrateful city long before his time to retire.

The late Dr. Stanley Chapple, conductor and musicologist supreme, gave the University of Washington and the Seattle region one of the best college opera companies in the nation and also one of the most productive music departments at the U.W. — and he was discarded and humiliated in his late years.

Milton Katims, a protégé of Maestro Toscanini and an internationally acclaimed violist and conductor, was dumped unceremoniously after 22 years of remarkable service, despite the fact that he converted the Seattle Symphony from a rag-tag ensemble into a first-rate orchestra.

So was the incomparable Professor Vilem Sokol, another superb violist and conductor, who turned a ragged, not well organized and promoted Seattle Youth Symphony into one of the nation’s best — if not the finest youth orchestra America has known.

And, finally, Maestro Glynn Ross, who won worldwide stature for the fledgling Seattle Opera, was given his walking papers at the height of his career, despite the fact that he gave the nation its first, best annual presentation of Richard Wagner’s monumental “Ring” opera cycle. In all these cases, backroom politics crushed genuine musical talent. Still want to stay in Seattle, Maestro Schwarz?

No one could question the statement that a college education is certainly worth the time and the money that goes into it. No argument there. But the fact that those who graduate from college are almost guaranteed more income — about a thousand bucks more a month, according to estimates — bothers me, even though I’m a college graduate, as is everyone in my family.

This is what disturbs me most. Only one in four Americans has a college degree, and the percentage is quite a bit lower for minorities. The fact that at least three out of four young people may not be receiving advanced training in special skills or vocations probably underlies the fact that the nation has slipped badly in productivity.

We need urgently to put vocational training, for example, on a level that is at least equal to liberal-arts colleges. The same should apply to young people who don’t want to or can’t afford to go to existing colleges — but who want to pursue careers in, say, business, industry, the arts, and even the professions — as, for example, paralegals or paramedics. These young people deserve an equal chance at that extra thousand bucks a month.

One of the most important decisions I made in my early years was to attend a very special high school when I graduated from the 8^th Grade at a Cleveland junior-high school. My choice was East Technical High School, a school devoted primarily to training youngsters for Cleveland’s thriving industrial complex.

Although I majored in the college-preparatory division of the school, I was privileged to learn something about various phases of industrial skills — cabinet making, sheet-metal construction, engineering, chemistry, architecture, mechanical drawing, blueprint reading, foundry work, and many more. That training has helped me immensely throughout my career in the news media.

The program there was a five-year course for all students under a measure approved by Congress called the Smith-Hughes Act. It was designed to provide adequate training for students who sought to go directly into industrial work. In other words, it was and still is a virtual apprenticeship program I believe should be copied by every city in America.

Some of us decided to go to college after graduation, but the great majority of students were hired by industrial firms immediately after graduation — and most of them advanced to important, lucrative positions in such firms as Warner Swasey, Thompson Products, and others.

Now, those successful students and industrial workers were certainly the equal of college graduates in take-home pay and, in some cases, more successful in terms of income. But despite the success of these technical schools, as well as many commercial schools, the college graduate outranks them in public esteem.

I earnestly believe that special degrees, equivalent to those granted by colleges and universities, should be bestowed on those who enter industry and the professions directly from high school and who distinguish themselves in their jobs.

And those who don’t achieve “distinction” should have an equal chance at that extra thousand bucks a month.

Rudyard Kipling had it all wrong. In his “Ballad of the East and West,” he told us that “East is East and West is West and never the twain shall meet.”

On the contrary, East and West seem to get along rather well. Even West Germany and East Germany are back in each other’s arms — if not on each other’s nerves — after a Communist-induced separation of less than five decades.

No. The longitudinal differences are not the culprit that ignites civil wars and bloodshed in many parts of the world. It’s the latitude that changes the attitude. Especially among people speaking the same language in the same geographical setting.

Take Vietnam for starters. It wasn’t East Vietnam versus West Vietnam that nearly touched off World War III in mid-century. It was the North versus the South, and the stalemate that has resulted from all that bloodshed seems to be permanent. As I said, the latitude seems to dictate the attitude.

On the same continent, the Koreans staged their own version of the Cohens and the Kellys. And once again it appears the rupture is permanent. Had it been West Korea versus East Korea, the odds are they’d have copied the Germans and be making Seoul music together by this time. Pun intended.

The Asians are not alone in these latitudinal shenanigans. Even the Irish seem to be suffering from the North-South jitters. Notice, begorra, that it surely isn’t the Western Irish throwing grenades at the Eastern Irish and vice versa. You’d think they’d have taken their cue to commit mayhem along the most famous longitudinal time line of all a few miles to their East, the Greenwich time line. But no, North and South it is, and may the divil take the hindmost.

Before brash Americans shrug it all off as a silly notion without historical basis, they might jog their memories a bit. Back about 140 years ago, the War Between the States was not a bloody battle between the East and the West. Does that change your attitude, you-all?

Oh, and before I sign off on this geographical note, I must bring it all up to date with an example that has been in the headlines for some time. The north and the south in deeply troubled Iraq have been at each others’ throats for years. There the Kurds of the north have long been at odds with the Sunnis and Shiites of the south. Well, make that the central area, to be exact. But the north-south jinx remains.

As I said, it’s the latitude, not the attitude. Say, that would be a great song title. But the lyrics might leave something to desired. Sorry, Rudyard.

Didn’t Senator Barack Obama’s spin doctor check his acceptance speech for gaffes?

Here’s the biggest one:

That’s the promise of America — the idea that we are responsible for ourselves, but that we also rise or fall as one nation; the fundamental belief that I am my brother’s keeper …

Excuse me, Barack, but you have a half-brother living in a slum in Nairobi on 3 cents a day that you have never helped.

Meanwhile, you live in a million dollar mansion that was bought simultaneously with questionable real estate transactions involving your financial campaign supporter Chicago slum lord and convicted influence peddler Tony Rezko.

The Democratic Party’s convention is over, at last, and I am weary of listening to so much political blarney, organized cheering, and the incessant waving of signs, flags, and banners. Sadly, the main impression to report is that the greatest loss of all in the week-long parade of Demo leaders was THE TRUTH!

That loss was evident in every speaker that mounted the central platform to rouse the crowds — from Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, to the newly anointed Vice Presidential nominee, Senator Joe Biden, and finally to the convention’s choice of a presidential nominee, Senator Barack Hussein Obama.

And what was the nature of that loss of truth from beginning to end in all the speakers? Simply this: It was the Democratically controlled Congress in the past eight years that was responsible for all the problems the nation is now facing, not President Bush and the Republican Party.

Senators Clinton, Biden, and Obama, all of them Demo leaders, should know firsthand that it has been their party that has been directly responsible for the nation’s economic crisis, soaring fuel and food prices, failure to achieve energy independence, and relief from higher taxes and inflation.

Instead of continuing their assault on President Bush and characterizing him as the villain regarding the nation’s problems, they should look in a mirror to see the real villainous creature in all the crises they are primarily responsible for creating. All of them made sure to link Senator John McCain, the G.O.P. presidential candidate, to Bush and each of the nation’s economic ailments.

I hope the voters will realize it was the Democratic Congress, not Bush, that heeded the taunts of the environmental extremists and shut down any attempt in the past 35 to 40 years of critically needed oil refineries in the U.S. It was that shutdown that virtually halted the increase in oil production that forced us into a major increase in importing oil from the Middle East and other regions.

Similarly, it was the Democratic Congress that has been responsible for the 40-year ban on new and crucially needed nuclear-energy plants, again at the behest of the deeply misguided environmental extremists.

The U.S., where the Nuclear Era was born, has watched European and other nations go on building nuclear-energy plants while we have been stymied at a total of 110.

The center piece of Obama’s shrill campaign has been the word “change.” But, in fact, his rhetoric in all his speeches seems to indicate that his programs would be a throwback to the failed socialist-inspired themes of FDR’s New Deal and LBJ’s Great Society. If he wants real change, he should be chastising his own party in Congress for shutting down the nation’s oil-refinery industry and its much needed nuclear-power plants.

I wonder if the Republicans, who will be conducting their convention next week, will make the most of the untruths voiced at the past week’s Democratic convention. If they don’t and McCain fails to counter Obama’s phony change rhetoric, the Demos could be the big winners in November.

And if Obama and the Democrats win the White House and Congress in November, I fear we may be saying “Goodbye, America.”

The recent catastrophic wildfires that left thousands homeless and took the lives of so many in Southern California left at least two clear messages.

The first was that, despite tons of official disaster plans, we never seem to be ready to cope with natural disasters and resultant emergencies, like the massive power outages created by burning trees falling on power lines. If we undergrounded all our power lines, as I have been advocating for many years, at least that problem could have been averted.

The second message comes from a lot of reading I’ve been doing lately. It seems that particularly in the West, we have a bevy of “Back to Nature” addicts — read that “extreme environmentalists” — who have been saying and writing that we must restore the earth to its original pristine character, as if anyone knows what that original character was.

Get rid of the power dams, they say. Get rid of the farms carved out of the wilderness, regardless of the fact that they are crucial to feed the populace. Return all the roads, lands, and highways to what they were before humans were invented. A pox on modern living, they say, and they don’t hide the fact that they and their anti-population cohorts really want to get rid of people!

Why don’t we call a spade a spade and describe these Back to Nature addicts as the murderers they are? The deaths in the California blazes are only one example to prove that they are, in effect, murderers, because they stood in the way of the foresters who wanted to clear the debris that provided the kindling for the devastating fires.

Anyone asking for additional proof need only examine the horrifying story of DDT, the most effective insecticide science every developed, and what happened when the extremists forced the U.S. to abandon the insecticide. DDT had reduced the number of deaths worldwide from malaria from the 3-million mark to a few dozen — but after the ban by the U.S. and other nations, the death rate from malaria has once again climbed to the 3-million figure each year! If that doesn’t amount to murder, what can it be called? Genocide might be an even better term.

At this writing, the final figures on the loss of life and homes and livable land are still not known. They may never be. How does one put a dollar figure on each death and on the personal and utilitarian elements in the thousands of homes that have burned to the ground?

In the face of the California disaster, can the Back to Nature advocates say with a straight face that they are still determined to return the earth to its pristine existence? For a moment there I was thinking, “Over my dead body,” but I’m afraid they might construe that as an “invitation.”

Random House, acknowledged to be the world’s largest book publisher, has committed what I believe is a cardinal sin for publishers by forcing the withdrawal of a book by Sherry Jones because it was deemed to be “dangerous” and certain to cause great anger and a possible uprising by the Muslim population in the U.S. and elsewhere.

Poppycock! Must we spoonfeed and continually pacify Muslims because they may be offended by a book that tells the true story of Aisha, who was the child bride of Muhammad in 7^th Century Arabia? Since when is the truth grounds for censure by a publisher like Random House — or any publisher?

It’s about time America and every other nation on earth banish their fear of offending Islam or any religion or nation. I thought we had learned that lesson some time ago when Salman Rushdie was banished from Islam and condemned to be murdered by Iran’s Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

We cannot go on living in constant fear because individuals or governments in Islam or anywhere else are offended because an author has dared tell the truth about an incident or character the Muslims revere. Lord knows that officials, individuals, or even authors of Islamic nations have blasphemed against Westerners — without danger of being assassinated.

Jones received quick approval and a $100,000 contract from Random House earlier this year to publish The Jewel of Medina, which was also due to be a Book of the Month choice, as well as a selection by the Quality Paperback Book Club. Foreign rights to the book were also recorded by several nations, many of them with Muslim populations.

To Random House’s discredit, it accepted the word of a professor of history and Middle Eastern studies at the University of Texas to cancel Jones’ book because “it was a declaration of war, a national security issue, and a very real possibility of major danger for the buildings and staff of Random House and widespread violence.”

Is America, the world’s most powerful nation, to begin living in fear because some unthinking Muslims in the U.S. or elsewhere resolve to wreak havoc on our people over a book that tells the truth about Muhammad? Should the publisher of a truthful book kill an important book because it might offend a few people?

It is important to note that Rushdie, who needed protection for several years against a possible assassination resulting from the Ayatollah’s death decree back in 1989, immediately went to Jones’ defense. In an e-mail he sent to the Associated Press, Rushdie said:

“I am very disappointed to hear that my publishers, Random House, have canceled another author’s novel, apparently because of their concerns about possible Islamic reprisals. This is censorship by fear, and it sets a very bad precedent indeed.”

Come on, Random House! Stiffen your backbone and publish Jones’ book. The entire American nation, with its long tradition of courage and freedom from censorship, will be behind you!

As we enter the last 70 day sprint to November 4th, there is a new poll out every day. Earlier this week, most of them showed Senator Obama with a slight lead over Senator McCain. After having picked his running mate and had two days of convention material, Obama’s lead has actully turned into a deficit. In all my years as a political scientist, I have never seen that happen. Regardless, it is a close race. At this point, anything can happen. And by anything, I mean anything—even a tie.

We don’t elect presidents by popular vote in the United States. We elect them with our Electoral College. In all, there are 538 “electors” that will pick our next president. [In the interests of full disclosure, yours truly is one of 22 people that may be an elector for the state of Washington.]  Because there are 538 electors, it is possible to have a 269 to 269 tie in the Electoral College. This has never happened before. It might this year.

According to the Realclearpolitics compilation of state polls, Obama clearly leads in states totaling 238 electoral votes. McCain clearly leads in states totally 163 electoral votes. But, most of the remaining “toss up states” are traditionally Republican states (Florida, North Carolina, Virginia, Missouri, Indiana, Nevada). If McCain wins his 163 votes plus the states just mentioned, he will have 245 electoral votes—a seven vote difference.

Now lets give Obama the traditionally Democratic state of Michigan (17 votes), and the two trending Democratic states of Colorado (9 votes) and New Mexico (5 votes). That gives Obama the magic 269 votes. McCain would then have to win Ohio (20 votes) and New Hampshire (4 votes) to give himself 269. This is not unrealistic given that Ohio went for Bush in 2000 and 2004 and New Hampshire could easily go back to its traditional Republican column after a brief spat of insanity in 2004.

What happens then? Having given us a system that could result in a tie, our Framers also set up a tie breaking system. According to the Constitution, the House of Representatives gets to pick the next president. The catch however is that each state gets one vote. The Idaho delegation gets one vote and the New York delegation gets one vote. As a past referee, I am troubled by the obvious unfairness of this system. As a past resident of Idaho, I can live with it. Of course, given there are 50 states (D.C. gets 3 electoral votes but does not get to play in the tie breaker because they are not a “state’), we could have a tie there as well. In that case, they would keep voting until a president is selected.

So, who would win if the race got tossed to the House? We can’t know for sure because the current House does not get to pick. The new House elected Nov 4th, 2008 gets to pick. However, we could follow the statistics that 99% of all House members are reelected and use the current breakdowns to guess. In that case there are currently 28 states that have a majority of Democrats holding House seats, 20 states with a majority of Republicans and two states with an even delegation. So, assuming a party line vote for president and even if McCain picks up the two tied states, Obama becomes the next president if the Electoral College ends in a tie.

If you’re McCain, that means you have to find one more state to slide into your column. The most likely candidates are New Mexico and Colorado, both of which are within the margin of error.

As a citizen,