Now that I think about it… I could sort of feel all those extra curled-up dimensions tickling my toes.

FOXBOROUGH, Mass. (AP) – Perfection comes down to one game now. Despite a shaky Tom Brady, the New England Patriots were still too much for the banged-up San Diego Chargers in the AFC championship game Sunday, pulling out a 21-12 victory that sent them back to the Super Bowl for the fourth time in seven seasons.

[full article]

HEADLINES FROM THE YEAR 2029

Ozone created by electric cars now killing millions in Mexifornia, the seventh largest country in the world.

White minorities still trying to have English recognized as Mexifornia’s third language.

Couple petitions court to reinstate heterosexual marriage.

Iran still closed off – physicists estimate it will take at least 58 more years before radioactivity decreases to safe levels.

France pleads for global help after being taken over by Jamaica.

Castro finally dies at age 112; Cuban cigars can now be imported legally, but President Chelsea Clinton has banned all smoking.

85-year $75.8 billion study concludes: Diet and Exercise is key to weight loss.

Average weight of Americans plunges to 217 lbs.

Japanese scientists have created a camera with such a fast shutter speed, they now can photograph a woman with her mouth shut.

Massachusetts executes last remaining Evangelical.

Supreme Court rules punishment of criminals, violates their civil rights.

New federal law requires that all nail clippers, screwdrivers, fly swatters and rolled-up newspapers must be registered by January 2036.

IRS sets lowest tax rate at 75 percent.

5 Myths About Turning Out The Vote

By Michael McDonald
Sunday, October 29, 2006

If you’re an upstanding U.S. citizen, you’ll stand up and be counted this Election Day, right? Well, maybe not. Just because Americans can vote doesn’t mean they do. But who shows up is what decides the tight races, which makes turnout one of the most closely watched aspects of every election — and one that has fostered a number of myths. Here are five, debunked:

1. Thanks to increasing voter apathy, turnout keeps dwindling.

This is the mother of all turnout myths. There may be plenty of apathetic voters out there, but the idea that ever fewer Americans are showing up at the polls should be put to rest. What’s really happening is that the number of people not eligible to vote is rising — making it seem as though turnout is dropping.

Those who bemoan a decline in American civic society point to the drop in turnout from 55.2 percent in 1972, when 18-year-olds were granted the right to vote, to the low point of 48.9 percent in 1996. But that’s looking at the total voting-age population, which includes lots of people who aren’t eligible to vote — namely, noncitizens and convicted felons. These ineligible populations have increased dramatically over the past three decades, from about 2 percent of the voting-age population in 1972 to 10 percent today.

When you take them out of the equation, the post-1972 “decline” vanishes. Turnout rates among those eligible to vote have averaged 55.3 percent in presidential elections and 39.4 percent in midterm elections for the past three decades. There has been variation, of course, with turnout as low as 51.7 percent in 1996 and rebounding to 60.3 percent by 2004. Turnout in the most recent election, in fact, is on a par with the low-60 percent turnout rates of the 1950s and ’60s.

I remember hearing back in 1996 and 2000, amidst the campus “Rock the Vote” slogans, all the rhetoric with regard to politicians “disenfranchising” the youth of America. The media were heartbroken that today’s youngsters were turned off by politics, and that somehow this meant that something was wrong with politics, and that politicians needed to start resonating with young skater punks and slutty beeper-chicks.

Frankly, modern culture has so cultivated a generation of fast-food entertainment addicts that the fact of the matter is young voter-eligibles don’t vote because it bores them. And of course, they believe they have the right to be entertained by all. Politicians in drag with little chirping LED buttons would “resonate” more, you see.

Personally, I’m glad when politics is wicked boring… because it keeps the easily distracted and the entertainment junkies away, and that produces a higher quality result (in general) in the election.

2 Other countries’ higher turnout indicates more vibrant democracies.

You can’t compare apples and oranges. Voting rules differ from nation to nation, producing different turnout rates. Some countries have mandatory voting. If Americans were fined $100 for playing voter hooky on Election Day, U.S. participation might increase dramatically. But in fact, many people with a ballot pointed at their head simply cast a blank one or a nonsense vote for Mickey Mouse.

Moreover, most countries have national elections maybe once every five years; the United States has presidential or congressional elections every two years. Frequent elections may lead to voter fatigue. New European Union elections, for instance, seem to be depressing turnout in member countries. After decades of trailing turnout in the United Kingdom, U.S. turnout in 2004 was on a par with recent British elections, in which turnout was 59.4 percent in 2001 and 61.4 percent in 2005.

Americans are asked to vote more often — in national, state, local and primary contests — than the citizens of any other country. They can be forgiven for missing one or two elections, can’t they? Even then, over the course of several elections, Americans have more chances to participate and their turnout may be higher than that in countries where people vote only once every five years.

This one really speaks for itself. However, I don’t think voting once every two years is even approaching the level of voter fatigue. For crying out loud, it’s only once every two years?!

3 Negative ads turn off voters and reduce turnout.

Don’t be so sure. The case on this one is still open. Negative TV advertising increased in the mid-1980s, but turnout hasn’t gone down correspondingly. The negative Swift boat campaign against Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) apparently did little to depress turnout in the 2004 presidential race.

Some academic studies have found that negative advertising increases turnout. And that’s not so surprising: A particularly nasty ad grabs people’s attention and gets them talking. People participate when they’re interested. A recent GOP attack ad on Rep. Harold E. Ford Jr. (D-Tenn.), a Senate candidate, has changed the dynamic of the race, probably not because it changed minds or dissuaded Democrats, but because it energized listless Republicans.

We’ll have to wait to see whether the attack on Ford backfires because voters perceive it as unfair. That’s the danger of going negative. So campaigns tend to stick to “contrast ads,” in which candidates contrast their records with those of their opponents. When people see stark differences between candidates, they’re more likely to vote.

I saw the Ford ad he speaks of and thought it was hilarious. I think the attack ads are effective. I think they mobilize the “base”, even though I only partly even agree with the concept of “mobilizing the base” in the first place.

Now some apathetic or undecided voters may be turned off by the negative ads, but not many… and when you hear people tout numbers claiming the voters want positive campaigns, don’t believe it. People, because we are a miserable lot of pulp-lovers, are drawn to salacious details of impropriety and corruption. It’s like a reality show or a soap opera. If the negative ads didn’t work they wouldn’t be used… it’s that simple.

4 The Republican “72-hour campaign” will win the election.

Not necessarily. You can lead citizens to the ballot, but you can’t make them vote.

Republicans supposedly have a super-sophisticated last-minute get-out-the-vote effort that identifies voters who’ll be pivotal in electing their candidates. Studies of a campaign’s personal contact with voters through phone calls, door-to-door solicitation and the like find that it does have some positive effect on turnout. But people vote for many reasons other than meeting a campaign worker, such as the issues, the closeness of the election and the candidates’ likeability. Further, these studies focus on get-out-the-vote drives in low-turnout elections, when contacts from other campaigns and outside groups are minimal. We don’t know what the effects of mobilization drives are in highly competitive races in which people are bombarded by media stories, television ads and direct mail.

Republican get-out-the-vote efforts could make a difference in close elections if Democrats simply sat on the sidelines. But this year Democrats have vowed to match the GOP mobilization voter for voter. So it’ll take more than just knowing whether a prospective voter owns a Volvo or a BMW for Republicans to eke out victory in a competitive race.

This election is the first I’ve ever heard about this super-whamo-dyne GOP 72-hour race for the cure. Sounds like more of a mystical Dem-demoralizer to me… make’em think you’ve got magic pixie-dust that’ll hack into voting machines untraceably.

5 Making voter registration easier would dramatically increase turnout.

Well, yes and no.

In 1993, the Democratic government in Washington enacted “Motor Voter,” a program that allowed people to register to vote when they received their driver’s license or visited a welfare office. Democrats thought that if everyone were registered, turnout rates would increase — by as much as 7 percentage points.

But while many people registered to vote, turnout didn’t go up much. Subsequent studies found only small increases in turnout attributable to Motor Voter, perhaps 2 percentage points.

Sizable increases in turnout can be seen in states with Election Day registration, which allows people to register when they vote. This may be related to the fact that lots of people don’t make up their minds to vote until Election Day, rather than months in advance when they get a license.

Personally, I hate anything that makes it easier for people to vote… including (and especially) lazy people. Or easier for people who don’t plan for the future (i.e. election day). Chances are, if registering ahead of time to vote – and looking up ahead of time where you need to go to do so – is too much work for you to be bothered with, then your vote most assuredly should NOT count.

The best election results are during periods of inclement weather and heavy reality show programming.

Now the Cape is a beautiful place that has a peaceful quiet that transcends its mere appearance of beaches and seagulls. And P-town is no exception. It was remarkable to me, however, that of all the places I’ve ever been to on the entire planet, P-town was the only one that had anything like “A Non-Hate Community” written on its welcome road sign.

So what was my impression of this “non-hate” community? I thought it was the most hateful place I had ever been… ever. Really. It wasn’t like I feared for my life or that everyone was running around with red glowing eyes and eating each other… but there was definitely something wrong with the place. I have never felt more disapproving glances. I have never seen bumper stickers and apparel with such hateful and intolerant content (usually about President Bush or Republicans). Really, this place – that touts tolerance – was the most intolerant I’d ever seen. A sick irony in an already sick country of political correctness and hypocrisy.

It was no surprise that this article just came out in the Boston Globe regarding the July 4 weekend just two weeks ago:

A new intolerance visits Provincetown

Police say gays accused of slurs

[...]

Police say they logged numerous complaints of straight people being called “breeders” by gays over the July Fourth holiday weekend. Jamaican workers reported being the target of racial slurs. And a woman was verbally accosted after signing a petition that opposed same-sex marriage, they said.

[...]

Winsome Karr, 45, originally from Jamaica, has worked in town since 2002. Lately, she said, the off-color comments stem from gay visitors who mistakenly believe that all Jamaicans share the views of an island religious sect that disagrees with homosexuality.

[...]

On same-sex marriage, the clashes have occurred as the state Legislature grapples with whether the electorate should vote on a measure to limit marriage to heterosexuals. A group that supports gay marriage, knowthyneighbor, has created a website displaying the names of more than 100,000 signers of a petition that calls for the state Constitution to be amended to prohibit same-sex marriage.

Knowthyneighbor’s tactics are controversial, with critics alleging that knowthyneighbor is making the names of same-sex marriage opponents public in an effort to expose or intimidate them. The group’s founders say they are simply promoting civic discourse.

The names of 43 Provincetown residents are listed on the website. Most of the petition signers attend St. Peter the Apostle Catholic Church, which serves the Portuguese community and others in town. The Catholic Church has helped lead the fight against same-sex marriage.

One St. Peter’s parishioner, Yvonne Cabral, was verbally accosted last Friday by Provincetown Magazine publisher Rick Hines after Hines learned that Cabral signed the petition, according to police.

Police Chief Ted Meyer plans to seek charges of disorderly conduct against Hines, who saw Cabral shopping and loudly called her a “bigot,” according to both Hines and Meyer. Other people who signed the petition — and subsequently had their names posted on the same website — said manure has been spread on their properties in recent months, Meyer added.

This is the kind of stuff that keeps Westboro Baptist Church in business.