Newly minted junky

I've been laid up with a throat infection all week. That's what I get for hanging out in that cesspool of disease, Chuck E. Cheese. For you overseas readers, imagine an American pizza place crossed with a windowless casino. It's the Las Vegas model applied to kids' food. No natural light, chips/tokens instead of cash, flashing lights, sugar water, and a weird credit system for winning cheap crap. Allow in a ravening horde of tots leaking infected mucous and stir. That said, Lisa and I both had fun.

Has anyone else noticed that Cheese is really a rat, not a mouse?

Despite the headaches and runny nose I've been able to work this week, but not as hard or as long as I normally do. But for the first time in my life I've tried Sudafed. Not the wimpy Sudafed PE (as my friend Andy says, Placebo Edition), but the hardcore stuff they make methamphetamine from.

I went from being too tired and sore to brush my teeth and turned into a crazy working machine. I'm afraid I'll get addicted to this crap.

I definitely don't want to be snot nosed and tired when I get to Columbus for the Mid Ohio Con. Of course, I don't want to be high on pre-crystal meth either. And then there's Thanksgiving the day before.

This'll be my first post since the election, so just some quick political observations.

The GOP specialized in legislation that attracted political donations and divided Democrat from Republican. So passing budgets was hard for them, but giving tax cuts to oil companies or declarations of support for Bush's policies were easy. Ideally they wanted 100% of Republicans to vote for a bill and almost all Democrats to vote against it.

This means that lots of easy low hanging fruit will be enacted by the Democrats. All the stuff that isn't divisive. Taking away tax cuts from oil companies. Implementing the 9/11 Report recommendations. And actually passing a budget.

Don't expect them to push bills on controversial subjects. There will be no laws for or against gay marriage.

This is a politically perilous time for the GOP. Support for Democratic House candidates increased in almost every demographic group by +2 to +7 points. That includes voters in the South and white evangelicals. Everyone is sick of the GOP. Of course, the Republicans made special efforts to alienate Latinos.

Voters in 2008 might vote for Republicans if they see signs of change. But that isn't going to happen. They're keeping the old blood (welcome back, Trent Lott!) and swerving hard right.

Republican moderates got savaged this election. Without moderates nothing will restrain the extremists. This was underway for years all ready, and it will get more extreme now. You can see it in how folks like McCain and Giuliani try to make nice to the religious right. Read the article, but keep this in mind. Giuliani has described himself by saying “I’m pro-choice. I’m pro-gay rights.” And McCain once said, "Neither party should be defined by pandering to the outer reaches of American politics and the agents of intolerance, whether they be Louis Farrakhan or Al Sharpton on the left, or Pat Robertson or Jerry Falwell on the right." Neither one of them sees a future in the GOP without pretending to be a social conservative.

If the GOP can't pull off a turnaround by 2008 they'll be in no shape to fight larger demographic shifts. Despite naming Mel Martinez as RNC chair, they've lost the Latino vote for a generation. You can't threaten to deport someone's (illegal immigrant) grandmother and not expect them to take it personally. But worse for the GOP than that, they've lost 20-30 year old voters, who will continue to vote Democrat:

The theory behind it, I guess, is that the political climate when you're age 20 affects your party preference for your entire life. The hypothesis would go something like this: popular presidents produce a swing among 20-year-olds to their own party, and unpopular ones produce a swing in the other direction.

....Of course, what's really most remarkable about the chart is the fantastic shift toward the Democrats in the 20-30 age group. The delta among this cohort between Democrats and Republicans is about +15 in the Democrats' favor, a bigger number than even the Vietnam/Watergate generation. It looks to me like the Christian right's social neanderthalism is causing the Republican Party to lose a generation forever.