In the two weeks I’ve worked on the Obama data team here in Indiana, I’ve been impressed. I have seen some obvious inefficiencies, but when I take into consideration that these systems are all relatively new, I find them forgivable. If things aren’t always tight, at least nothing is backward. There’s a respectable amount of earnest thought applied to everything they do, and it’s yielded a decent harvest of likely voters so far. Having an in-house data team instead of paying expensive political consulting firms in DC seems to be working quite well.

Given the public face of the McCain campaign lately, I was wondering how their data game looked. Without really applying a respectable amount of earnest thought, I assumed it was crappy. I was just talking to the voter file manager here, and he was saying that they have a better voter file than we do.

They’ve been maintaining it seriously for longer than we have, and even if we’re currently analyzing and feeding our voter file better than they are, they still have better data in their file, which they’ve been building since the seventies. There’s a lot of reasons that they won in 2004, but a big part of it was that they got out their base. When I think about them getting out their base, I usually just picture them pulling buses up to churches, which is naive of me. The voter file tells you where the voters are and lets you figure out who your best targets for canvassing, early voting, and GOTV are, and they had a good one.

I know that when I think about Republicans, I tend to think of illogical, evolution-denying luddites. While these are the people we’re working to stop, they’re not the people we’re competing against. I’ve been assured that there’s some very smart people behind the scenes over there. McCain and Palin’s definition of “real Americans” seems to exclude the educated, but unfortunately, the talent pool that their campaign draws from doesn’t stop there. Likely Republicans also include those in the defense industry, and there’s some better minds than Joe the Plumber in the military-industrial complex.

We might be seeing some disarray among their public figures, but I wouldn’t assume that that’s what’s going on behind the scenes, at least at the vote-delivering level, just yet.

There’s been a lot of talk about the 2008 heavyweight gold medalist in judo Satoshi Ishii getting involved in mixed martial arts. Among those talking is the Emperor of Japan:

Kinjo(present)TENNO HEIKA(majesty) asked ISHII

“Do you try next olmpic gold medal”

ISHII ANSWER “NO SIR!!”

TENNO HEIKA said

“I hope you succeed in next road”

TENNO order ISHII to defeat E.Feodr!!

Fuck, that rules! When’s the last time you heard an emperor ordering an individual to defeat an invincible Russian fighting machine? I guess it’d be almost as cool if Barack Obama ordered someone to defeat Fedor. Yet another reason to get out the vote!

Right?

How many people out there do you think have accepted this Republican talking point without thinking any further about it? I have to admit, I thought, “Maybe they’ve been involved in something shady at some point, but they’re probably not bad as the Republicans say,” and then figured I’d do some research about it later. The Republican allegation was that ACORN’s temp workers turned in registrations with fraudulent information in order to fix elections. So, I guess the idea is that to go along with these fake registrations, they’d create fake driver’s licenses to use these extra registrations at the polls? That is pretty fucking over the top. Stuffing the ballot box seems a lot easier.

Regardless, the Republicans got this out there with pretty much no scrutiny applied to their charge. Impressive, in a way.

• Special thanks tonight go out to: OS X’s arbitrary rectangle screen capturing, Perl, tabs.
• So, I went from a fairly interesting and thought-intensive task the last couple of days to something fairly robotic. I find it relaxing now.
• Also, a little bit of automation can make something a lot less grating than no automation at all.

Oh, and also Greasemonkey and Perl.

Inspired by the New Yorker-XKCD Cartoon-Off, Katt and I are going to have a cartoon-off! We’re either going to do it when I get home in a few weeks or maybe I’ll try to sneak it in late, late at night here. Regardless, we need topics! So, Notes of Chaos readers, drop some cartoon topics here, and we’ll go to town on it!

I was in one of those busy parallel parking situations today.

There were two cars pulling away from the curb, one in front of the other. A guy was waiting in front of them. I was waiting behind them.

He pulls forward into the spot, then backs way up again, leaving a space in front of him. After that, he pulls up to the center of the two spots and parks, thereby making two parking spots into one. Ooh! Take that, me!

OK, enough with the onerous description. Basically, this guy was a jackass that did all this parking fiddle faddling and ended up eating up two parking spots, one of which should have been mine.

After he did that, I saw the signs on his car:

This sounds like it could have come from some teenage-written Obama fan fiction. But it really happpened.

Inspired by John McCain’s talk of expensive overhead projectors, Katt and I went to see a laser light show at a planetarium.

Despite hearing a lot of references to laser light shows, we’ve never actually seen one, so we didn’t know what to expect. I guess I was thinking there’d be some complex mathematically-derived patterns of colored lights that would morph into one another in an awe-inspiring, or at least stoner-inspiring, fashion, all set to a whole lot of Led Zeppelin and Rush.

There was a little of that, but it wasn’t very awe-inspiring. That stuff looked like Windows 3.1 screen savers. Most of it was animated doodles. And not very good doodles, either. Here’s a picture Katt took before a more serious laser light show aficionado asked her to put away her phone:

He did the mash.
 

But you know, it was awesome.

They were running the Halloween show, so there were a whole lot of crude drawings of monsters dancing in two-frame animations. We couldn’t stop laughing during the first ten minutes of the show. On the other side of the planetarium, there were some kids (I think) that were shouting “Whoa!” every few minutes. About every ten minutes, some people would walk out of the show. All of that added to the experience.

The set list included the Ghostbusters theme (going “Ghost! Busters!” during that was solidly entertaining), the Monster Mash (from which the above picture was taken), and according to Katt, half of a They Might Be Giants album.

The best part, next to the animation, was the planetarium viewing experience itself. Watching anything in those recumbent seats with the image projected on a huge surrounding dome rules. If I’m ever ridiculously rich, I am going to have a planetarium, in which I will recline and watch Space Ghost DVDs.

I want to see Barack Obama elected to the office of President of the Unites States of America.

I know that much needs to be done to make this happen. Obama has a lead in the polls right now, but back in July, it was conventional wisdom that McCain had no chance, and we were all shocked when he got so close in the polls. Then, we were upset when he took the lead a few weeks ago. In 2004, we thought Kerry was ahead in the days leading up to the election. We found out after the election that he had lost. Although we have more sophisticated prediction methods now, they are still largely based on polls. We know McCain is fond of stunts, and the October surprise has yet to hit. We know that the Republican party is fond of voter suppression and of using the courts to win elections. This election needs to be won convincingly, or else we are at the mercy of those tricks.
 

I know some of you want Barack Obama to win this upcoming election, too, and don’t want John McCain to win. It’s important to ask yourself, though: How much do you want that outcome?
 

If I had to answer yes or no to the question “Would you like to be an excellent Thai boxer?” I’d answer yes. However, if you asked if I was willing to endure years of grueling training, suffer multiple concussions, and kill all of the nerves in my shins to do so, I’d answer no. Yes, I’d like to be a Thai boxer, but not all that much.

If I had to answer yes or no to the question “Would you like a Chipotle burrito?” I’d also answer yes right now. However, at the moment, I wouldn’t say yes, I want it enough to drive out to a Chipotle and pay $6 for one. I would take it if you just handed it to me, though.

To the question “Do you want a glass of water?” The answer is yes, and I am willing to get up, grab a cup, and fill it with water.

You’re smart people. You probably know where this is going.
 

How much do you want to see Barack Obama elected?

Are you willing to spend 30 minutes to vote for him? Are you willing to spend an hour convincing some people you know that might vote for him to do so? Are you willing to spend two hours calling strangers to get them information on Obama? Are you willing to spend four hours walking and two hours driving to inform people door-to-door about Obama?

Or are you only willing to discuss the latest campaign news with friends that already share your disgust about McCain and admiration of Obama, via face-to-face conversation, email, IM, and weblog comments and posts? Are you only willing to do things that reward you with some commiserative fun, the way that following baseball or a band does?

Whatever your level of commitment is, it’s fine with me, even if you don’t want too see Obama elected that much or don’t want that at all. But I ask that you remember how much you want it and that you be honest about it. Don’t be a hypocrite. Keep your rhetoric proportional to your level of actual concern about the election.

Do not make grand pronouncements that we’re going to be plunged further into a dark age if McCain is elected if you are only willing to spend thirty minutes to prevent that from happening. I really doubt that you believe that the fate of the nation rests on the election if you’re not even willing to sit at the polls for a day or to walk around for a few hours to stop it.

Similarly, if Obama loses, don’t waste your breath writing screeds about how terrible the McCain administration is and how terrible this country is for electing him if you weren’t willing to lift a finger to stop it. Or if you do, at least admit that it’s just a game for you and that you simply enjoy looking like you’re fired up about something.

I don’t want to alienate anyone, and I don’t want to imply that you have to go canvassing every weekend if you’re the least bit pro-Obama. Just reconcile your rhetoric with your actions. If you care more about football or indie rock than you do about how the government is run, that’s fine and even understandable. Just admit it.

OK, I’ve said my piece, and I’m going back to bed.

Click on the picture for the larger version.

 
Fight for everlasting peace, Mega Man!