Monday, January 14, 2008

Eclectic Election 08 Links

The new links group – right – is part of my effort to identify either empirical data or well supported data and comment covering Election 08.

The casual observer will note the Democrat angle, and I make no apology for discounting the other side; they have little show of producing the next president of the USA.

However the focus will also broaden out from the presidential race, looking at the 35 Senate seats, 435 seats in the House and 11 State governors also being contested.

I am happy to take suggestions, specifically for the election links as well as normal links. Equally I will listen to criticism, but I do not respond to unsupported, emotional rants.

9 comments:

D.K. Raed said...

I greatly anticipate your view of our election! We are so myopic here. The best analyses are sometimes done from afar. You can see us as we really are. Should be VERY enlightening.

Perhaps you will find the flea in our bonnet, the crawling creepy thing that bites american arses every few years & foists our hubris on the world.

On that subject, you are probably familiar with Burns "To A Louse". Here's a link to that & much more Burns (sorry, you have to copy & paste, I cannot figure out how to link a comment):

http://www.burnspoetry.com/robert_burns_poetry/to_a_louse.html

Cartledge said...

LOL Oh, I do love Rabbie Burns, thanks for reminding me. Now Burns is sort of like my beat poets, straight to the point. Apart from the great stuff, or smutty stuff, he wrote to make a living :)

I'm also an election junkie. I don't know what wisdom i ever impart, or who might even care. I just hope there is some value in accumulated experience.
Also, it matters to me and should matter to others outside the US, simply because of the dramatic impact it has on us.

D.K. Raed said...

Knew you were an election junkie, but somehow had a feeling you were also a Burn's man!

Cartledge said...

I spent years trying to work out how i learned to read. It wasn't at school and there were few books at home.
Then recall slowly began pointing to poetry of various kinds, from old English encyclopedias. Old rhymes to full blown romantic verse.
Once liberated from the strictures of pre adolescence burns was one of the first really magic discoveries.
It still surprises me just how much poetry, rhyme, verse et al have influenced this poor unfortunate essayist :)

D.K. Raed said...

well, I know how I learned to read. My mom read to me a lot & having a good memory, I pretended to read word-for-word until one day I was actually reading. No one believed me until they handed me books I hadn't seen before. I'm a big advocate of reading to children, really, you can't read to them often enough.

Cartledge said...

My along with my ex I got in deep shit that my kids went to school able to read.
Unlike them I was never read to. In fact the brother i now share a space with ponders the same question. We could both read when we went to school, but we did not have any home help.
My poor mother would have suffered even more if she had spent any time advancing our interests.
Mind you, she did influence in other more subtle ways. She was quick to point out poor speaking habits :)
Them wuz the days...

enigma4ever said...

I hope that people that come and visit have been kind and reasonable- I was a little worried that you mention no emotional rants ( oh dear- I hope that does include the red head with the foul mouth and Scottish temper...)

I am so sorry that you mum did not read to you....that really tugs at my heart...my mom didn't either...( actually there is a list of things that she didn't feel like doing....books were just one of them...funny thing- because she did not want me around- Books became my very best freind...always...and yes, I taught myself...and I have dyslexia...so how the hell I did that is beyond me....anyways....I digressed...sorry, what I wanted to say....you certainly taught yourself well, you are a great thinker and writer...namaste)

enigma4ever said...

Oh dear....when I spoke of the foulmouthed Scottish gal...I meant ME...not DK...just want to make sure I did not offend anyone ( Dk;-)

Cartledge said...

d.k. hasn't yelled at me yet, I'm looking forward to that experience. It has also been a while since I had any nasty comments, but a while since I was really into US politics. It is just a warning for the winger anons.

As to mother, I expect she did encourage, as far as it was safe for her to do so. I can chart the people, some brothers among them, who helped developed the application. It is still the pre school reading that leaves us wondering how and when. Even the love of reading in a bookless household. My first library experience is still etched on my mind like a memory of entering Alladin's cave.
My old mum apologised before she died, but none of us ever blamed her, or believe she stood in the way of knowledge.