Wednesday Caption Contest: Part 143.

This week's WILLisms.com Caption Contest photograph:

The actual caption:

Republican presidential candidate, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., center, shakes supporters hands next to his wife Cindy, right, after speaking at a town hall meeting at Oakland University on Wednesday, May 7, 2008 in Rochester, Mich. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)

Is that all? Surely there's more.

Entries will remain open until 11:59 PM, Central Standard Time, Tuesday, May 13. Submit your captions in the comments section, or email via WILLisms@gmail.com.

And... The Winners:

1. Dennis:

I wonder when I will get to meet Mr. Wonka...

2. sammy small:

Chelsea welcomes "Grandma Obama" to the Clinton camp.

3. Cowboy Blob:

Nun: My Father can beat up YOUR father....

Honorable Mention. Zsa Zsa:

Next stop Planned Parenthood!...

Zing!

Captioning: like sudoku, only not at all.

Posted by Will Franklin · 7 May 2008 11:31 AM · Comments (11) · TrackBack (6)

Trivia Tidbit Of The Day: Part 489 - Opportunity Cities.

What Recession?-

I am not the biggest fan of Houston, Texas. The air is not pleasant (although it's truly getting better)-- the humidity and soot and chemicals all conspire to give your lungs the equivalent of a sunburn.

It is terribly spread out-- people act like it's no big deal to make you drive an hour or more. Where I grew up, driving an hour means you are four towns away (or... almost to San Angelo, or... halfway to Oklahoma City).

Aesthetically, it's pretty ugly. The bayou that runs through town is muddy and swampy. There are no mountains. The beach is more than an hour from downtown-- and it's not exactly South Beach or Venice Beach we're talking about, here.

It's essentially Summer 10 months out of the year, with about 3 weeks of "transition" (which you might get away with calling "fall"), three weeks of Winter (which is actually usually very nice), and three more weeks of Spring-ish transition (which is where it spasms back and forth between 65 and 85 degree days, before settling on 90 until Halloween).

Houston also has a lot of baggage. Negative connotations. Etc. Many of them are completely bogus, like the perennial Men's Fitness "Fattest City" distinction (Houston's only #10 this year). Some of them, like when George Costanza went to Houston to meet with the Astros, are totally accurate.

That being said, I am a big fan of Houston. It has low taxes, cheap housing, few regulations, and it is far more healthy-- spiritually-speaking-- than any other city of its size. It's got a lot of random quirks and interesting mom-and-pop stores and restaurants, despite what you might think after driving through on the freeways.

While I generally prefer my town to be a little smaller, Houston is a fantastic place to be, for a lot of reasons.

Joel Kotkin elaborates:

In 1950, St. Louis, Cleveland, and Pittsburgh ranked among the nation’s ten largest metropolitan areas; today they have been replaced by Houston, Dallas, and Miami. Equally significant has been the shift in the location of the nation’s largest companies away from the traditional centers of commerce.

....

Over the past decade, Houston, Phoenix, and Dallas each have matched the employment growth of New York, Boston, San Francisco, and the Silicon Valley area combined.

Houston itself does not have a lot of natural resources (the oil is an hour or two away, the coast is more than an hour away, the landscape is drab), other than its people, who have been generally unencumbered by the stifling hand of government.

Houston is an amazing success story, given what it has to overcome. Rarely a day goes by during the brutal Houston summers that I do not think to myself, "what kind of lunatic would put a city here?"

The only thing Houston really has going for it, from an "organic resources" standpoint, is that is still has a lot of space to grow. This is fortuitous, because Houston is a pro-growth city in a pro-growth state in what remains a mostly pro-growth nation.

Houston, while far from some perfect mecca of free market principles over its history, is one of the greatest examples of how policies matter. It's one of the rare big cities in America that is growing not just with foreign immigrants but with domestic migration as well:

Think of Houston as a microcosm of America. It's diverse. It's thriving, due to low taxes, relatively few regulations, and a reasonable cost of living. It's fairly small-l libertarian yet simultaneously a city of faith. Most of all, there's a healthy spirit of "live and let live" in Houston. Mind your own business, and let everyone else mind theirs. That permeates every facet of life, including government.

This "leave us alone" spirit is why some of us view the modern left as such a sinister force today. While some on the right would certainly like to play bedroom police and dabble in regulating morality, it is the left that truly wishes to penetrate every aspect of life with its collectivist, nanny-state takings coalition run from Washington, D.C.

If Houston is a microcosm of the Republican America, Detroit is the Democratic America.

The way I see it, there are a few options, here:

1. Impose Republican America on the entire country.
2. Let Republican America do its thing and Democratic America do its thing. Eventually, there'll be a winner.
3. Impose Democratic America on the entire country.

I tend to believe that FDR threw us into number 3. Eisenhower moved us back to 2. LBJ moved us back to 3, and we're only sort of back to 2 thanks to Reagan and George W. Bush.

Believe it or not, I am not for number 1. I believe there is a place in America for San Francisco and Aspen and Vermont. I just believe they all should be responsible for their own long-term problems. And that they'll eventually choose option 1 when they lose all of their productive people.

Unfortunately, today's Democratic Party is firmly encamped in choice number 3 (option 2 is antithetical to an ideology that advocates centralization and equality above liberty), and today's Republican Party is mostly within the second option (if only because it is hard to impose things like "small government" on others). That means the center of gravity is actually somewhere between numbers 2 and 3. That's a problem.

Let's hope the continued growth of places like Houston is the solution.

Previous Trivia Tidbit: Barack Obama's Questionable Electability.

Posted by Will Franklin · 1 May 2008 09:10 PM · Comments (1)

Trivia Tidbit Of The Day: Part 488 - Electability.

Small Towns & Suburbs Still The Key-

It's not the greatest time to be a Republican running for office. While the economy is not actually in a recession, most Americans-- and the establishment media-- believe it is. While the situation in Iraq is nothing remotely like Vietnam, many Americans believe it is. Although gas prices have gone up by about a dollar and thirty cents since the Democrats took control of Congress in 2006, many people seem to be eager to blame Republicans. The same could be said about the unemployment rate, which is up half a percentage point since Democrats took over Congress. While Democrats are the ones killing free trade deals and raising taxes and torpedoing entitlement reform, the public still seems to associate the incumbent party with the Republican Party.

It's not a particularly fruitful time to be a Republican running for office in the United States of America.

And yet.

And yet, Democrats are poised to nominate one of two entirely unelectable candidates in a year when even Dennis Kucinich should have been electable. We know all about Hillary Clinton's problems. She is about as unelectable as they come. She would also harm down-ballot Democrats, the conventional wisdom goes.

But what about Obama? Could it be that Senator Barack Hussein Obama is actually less electable than Hillary Rodham Clinton? And that he might harm down-ballot Democrats even more?

Well, we're all familiar with the 2004 county-by-county map, with the red and blue counties:

Democrats-- the party of Jefferson and Jackson-- simply don't do all that well anymore with "real folks." Neither Hillary Clinton nor Barack Obama will reverse that tide. Either might do very well in inner-cities and on college campuses, but Obama in particular seems vulnerable with regard to small towns and rural America:

In Missouri, his votes were very well placed, enabling him to win the Democratic primary by a margin of barely 10,000 votes. He won the state's two major cities (St. Louis and KC), populous suburban St. Louis County, two counties in the center of the state that include the state capital of Jefferson City and the large academic community in Columbia (home of the University of Missouri), and one rural county in the northwest corner of the state. That was it. Hillary Clinton swept the rest of Missouri.

In Ohio, Obama's vote was even more contained. He carried only the urban counties that include Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati and Dayton, plus one county on the outskirts of Columbus. Not a single county in the broad swath of rural Ohio went his way, as he lost the primary to Clinton by 10 percentage points.

In Pennsylvania, the Clinton margin was similar and so was the political geography. Obama won big in Philadelphia, with its large African-American population, carried two of its four suburban counties, and took a pair of counties on the outer orbit of greater Philadelphia. The two other counties that he carried were in the center of the state, and each contained a major academic institution. As for the rest of Pennsylvania, it was essentially a vast wasteland for Obama.

Missouri:

Ohio:

Pennsylvania:

While it's difficult to extrapolate meaningful information about the general election from these results, we can make some assumptions based on history. Barack Obama is no Bill Clinton. He's also no Jimmy Carter. He was born in Hawaii, lived in Indonesia for a time as a kid, went to Harvard Law, and organized on behalf of left-wing causes in urban Chicago-- this is not the kind of life narrative that Bill Clinton or Jimmy Carter had. Obama's life story, taken together with his arrogant demeanor and his wonky policy prescriptions, all put him far more in line with Dukakis or Mondale or McGovern:

\

Barack Obama's electoral coalition is not broad-based. It is not particularly inclusive. If he can't win over small-town Democrats, how does he expect to bring small-town independents and Republicans into the fold?

And how does a candidate like Barack Obama at the top of the ticket impact Congressional races down the ballot?

In 2006, Democrats took Congress by storm from two flanks. First, they consolidated liberal districts in the Northeast that Republicans had very little business representing. Second, and more importantly, they aggressively recruited non-threatening down-home candidates in places like Ohio and Indiana. Contextually, in 2006, there was no John Kerry albatross around the necks of Democrats running in relatively conservative districts.

Democrats made a good chunk of their 2006 gains in districts that Bush won easily in 2004. Indeed, just eight Republicans won in districts carried by John Kerry in '04, while 60 Democrats won in districts carried by George W. Bush in '04.

Some interesting facts to ponder:

If in 2008 the Republicans only won those districts that performed 58% or more for Bush in 2004, they would pick up 20 seats.

If in 2008, the Republicans only win those districts that performed 55% or more for Bush in 2004, they would pick up 33 seats.

Now, neither of those things is going to happen, but compare those facts to these facts:

If in 2008, the Democrats win all of the districts that performed 58% or better for Kerry in 2004, they would pick up zero seats. They already control those seats.

If in 2008, the Democrats win all of the districts that performed 55% or better for Kerry in 2004, they would pick up zero seats. They already control those seats.

Sure, far more Republicans than Democrats are retiring this year. Sure, people are unhappy about the direction of the country. Ultimately, though, Democrats don't have a whole lot of easy seats to target in the House of Representatives. And if otherwise strong Democrats in small towns and rural America have the albatross that is Barack Obama around their necks, they better be hoping for some serious split-ticket voting.

Previous Trivia Tidbit: Greenhouse Gases.

Posted by Will Franklin · 30 April 2008 04:59 PM · Comments (0)

Wednesday Caption Contest: Part 142.

This week's WILLisms.com Caption Contest photograph:

The actual caption:

Chelsea Clinton looks on prior to delivering a speech at the Our Lady of Providence elderly home, in San Juan, Puerto Rico, Tuesday, April 29, 2008. Clinton is spending two days here campaigning for her mother, Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., ahead of the June 1 primary. (AP Photo/Brennan Linsley)

Yeah, hmm. Not sure that that caption captures what is really happening.

Entries will remain open until 11:59 PM, Central Standard Time, Tuesday, May 6. Submit your captions in the comments section, or email via WILLisms@gmail.com.

And... The Winners:

1. Spartacus:

Awesome, the time here is the same as back in Plains, Georgia.

2. Maggie Mama:

Carter checks his legacy .. it's about thirty seconds from total oblivion.

3. rodney dill:

"Ten minutes to Wapner... definitely..."

Honorable Mention. JohnW:

"This new Mecca-standard-time watch is terrific."

Captioning: proof that America is still the greatest country on the planet.

Posted by Will Franklin · 30 April 2008 02:33 PM · Comments (21)

Wednesday Caption Contest: Part 141.

This week's WILLisms.com Caption Contest photograph:

The actual caption:

Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter looks at his watch upon his arrival at Queen Alia airport in Amman April 20,2008. REUTERS'Jamal Nasrallah POOL (Reuters)

Yeah, there's more going on here.

Entries will remain open until 11:59 PM, Central Standard Time, Tuesday, April 29. Submit your captions in the comments section, or email via WILLisms@gmail.com.

And... The Winners:

[It was particularly difficult to judge this week, with so many great entries.]

1. Bigfoot:

While sailing through the Sea Of Time aboard the yellow submarine, John McCain has a disturbing encounter with his younger self.

2. elliot:

"Excuse me, do you have any Grey Poupons?"

3. Maggie Mama:

Fear not, I've checked our flight plan. Even if the plane goes down, I know the location of every Hilton Hotel.

Honorable Mention (for the W.C. Fields reference). Cowboy Blob:

"On the whole, I'd rather be in Philadelphia"

Captioning: unleash the bratty 14-year-old within.

Posted by Will Franklin · 23 April 2008 01:16 PM · Comments (26)

Trivia Tidbit Of The Day: Part 487 - Greenhouse Gases.

America Doing Better Than Kyoto-

From the latest Index of Leading Environmental Indicators, some data about greenhouse gas emissions (.pdf):

...during the last decade the United States has had the best record among industrialized nations in restraining GHG emissions. Between 1997 and 2004, the last year for which comparative data are available: —global GHG emissions increased 18 percent; —emissions from Kyoto Protocol participants increased 21.1 percent; —emissions from non-Kyoto nations increased 10 percent; —emissions from the United States increased 6.6 percent.

Maybe Kyoto is ineffective? Maybe the countries that are pledged to it are not particularly sincere? Maybe the United States deserves a little credit every now and again?

Previous Trivia Tidbit: Obama & Capital Gains Taxes.

Posted by Will Franklin · 22 April 2008 09:02 AM · Comments (4)

Trivia Tidbit Of The Day: Part 486 - Capital Gains Taxes

Obama Pledges To Raise Them-

When it comes to capital gains tax rates in the United States, there are some startlingly clear patterns. Rates go up, collections go down. Rates go down, collections go up. That's good news, really. It means there's never any justification for raising capital gains tax rates, other than a discredited ideology that seemed to symbolically fall to earth sometime around 1989.

...when the tax rate has risen over the past half century, capital gains realizations have fallen and along with them tax revenue. The most recent such episode was in the early 1990s, when Mr. Obama was old enough to be paying attention. That's one reason Jack Kennedy proposed cutting the capital gains rate. And it's one reason Bill Clinton went along with a rate cut to 20% from 28% in 1997.

Either the young Illinois Senator is ignorant of this revenue data, or he doesn't really care because he's a true income redistributionist who prefers high tax rates as a matter of ideological dogma regardless of the revenue consequences. Neither one is a recommendation for President.

....

Both candidates would have voters believe that taxes on investment income only affect the rich. But that's not what Internal Revenue Service returns show. The reality is that the Clinton and Obama rate increases would hit millions of Americans who make well under $200,000. In 2005, 47% of all tax returns reporting capital gains were from households with incomes below $50,000, and 79% came from households with incomes below $100,000.

I heard an Obama surrogate on the radio saying that if John McCain wants to talk about capital gains taxes, then bring it on. The arrogance in the Obama camp is staggering. Capital gains taxes matter, just like all of Barack Obama's other tax hike proposals matter. They all add up to your typical unelectable tax-loving liberal candidacy.

Previous Trivia Tidbit: Democrats Are Unilateralists.

Posted by Will Franklin · 21 April 2008 12:58 PM · Comments (2)

Wednesday Caption Contest: Part 140.

This week's WILLisms.com Caption Contest photograph:

The actual caption:

Republican Presidential candidate Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., right, talks to adviser Steve Schmidt aboard the campaign charter airplane prior to taking off from Pittsburgh, en route to Philadelphia, Tuesday, April 15, 2008. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer)

This caption clearly doesn't capture what was actually going on when this shot was snapped.

Entries will remain open until 11:59 PM, Central Standard Time, Tuesday, April 22. Submit your captions in the comments section, or email via WILLisms@gmail.com.

And... The Winners:

1. Bigfoot:

Senator Hillary Clinton tries to demonstrate the sound of one hand clapping, but is frustrated by her failed attempts.

2. Cowboy Blob:

You wanna piece o' this, Petreus?

3. Dennis:

I swear...It is this big

Captioning: enabling succinctly-written obscurities since Johannes Gutenberg.

Posted by Will Franklin · 16 April 2008 11:44 AM · Comments (20)