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Or rather, they reverse their endorsement of Bush. The Economist endorsed Bush in 2000 and wholly supported the invasion of Iraq, but:

The Economist tends to be conservative, but thoughtful and non-partisan. They know an incompetent radical when they see one. Read the whole thing if you want the stinging indictment of Bush’s incompetence, or the less-than-enthused summation of Kerry.

The first was similar to the situation the other night, only tonight I was drinking more, and my judgement was clouded. I got trapped between two people who had trips and I had an open-ended straight draw (KT with a JJQ flop). Every time I called, I had odds. But finally one guy decided to push and it was $13 for me to call. There was $30.30 in the pot. Assuming that the guy to act after me was going to push, it would be $18 to call with $48 in the pot. Now with all that raising and re-raising going on, it didn’t seem like anyone actually had the boat. I figured trip Jacks, Queens and Jacks, another draw, or a flopped straight. I should have called. To punish me for my bad choice, the poker gods bestowed a 9 on the turn.

The second was pretty damn stupid. Someone raised to $4 before the flop from UTG. As soon as I raised to $14 with JJ from MP1, I knew I had done something stupid. The difference between $4 and $14 to someone with a competitive hand was not going to be great. This was not a tournament. The button pushed, making it $20 to call. Then I did another stupid thing and called. My jacks got assraped. Yep. UTG had pocket eights, so I was right to challenge him, but my raise just dug a big hole for me that I couldn’t resist going into head first. Blargh.

Eventually I had to rebuy and made my way back to even with a flopped boat (AK with AAK flop) against JJ and A2. Still sucks to lose my previous winnings and potential winnings with bonehead play, though.

You can bet your ass there will be legal challenges in several “swing states” this year. Oh God.

How can we stop this madness?

End the winner take all system: allow states to allocate electoral college votes based on the percentage vote each candidate gets within that state. One reason why Florida was worth disputing in 2000 was its 25 electoral votes. Under these proposed changes, Bush and Gore would have each taken 12 or 13 votes, which means that the payoff in mounting a legal challenge would have been much lower. Furthermore, it would be much harder to challenge every outcome in every state/county/precinct. Glasstrack has a good discussion of the Electoral College, fair representation, etc., but I think that this practical argument for changing our system–stopping the post-election legal battles–will probably resonate strongly with a majority of Americans, regardless of party or state.

This type of reform would also open the door to third parties becoming more viable. You need 270 to win, and third parties can promote their issues by exchanging electoral votes for planks in the platform.

The Bush campaign/administration (it’s hard to tell where one ends and the other begins, isn’t it?) has tried to spin the story of the missing explosives in lots of different ways, including the assertion that the explosives were missing before the war. Embedded reporters with 101st Airborne actually went to the site during the war and caught it on tape. Brilliant. Let me see now… that over there sure looks like explosives. It says “explosives.” Okay, let’s say they’re explosives. Where are the explosives? Oh, hey, that one down there says “Al Qaqaa.” I wonder how you pronounce that. I think I’ll be quasi-French and say “What What” instead of “Shit.” Oh, back to the point… yeah, that’s definitely the place.

Another story on this evidence, including images of IAEA seals on a door-locking cable can be found at KSTP. Check out both story links for more pics and confirming details.

Thanks to Daily Kos for this one, too. I’m just your filter that helps this stuff invade your poker-induced daze.

The Bush campaign put a doctored ad on their website entitled “Whatever it takes.” How ironic.

Their explanation was that a podium was in the way. I think what they meant was a lectern. I think what it was was a bunch of soldiers giving Bush the bird.

Credits and discussion can be found at Daily Kos.

The bloggers at Daily Kos posted this scan of a flyer being passed around in Milwaukee’s black neighborhoods:

Fucking bastards. They can’t win without suppressing the vote.

Daily Kos reports on Kevin Drum’s report on a Republican pollster’s latest battleground state polls (PDF):

Bush-Cheney: 47%
Kerry-Edwards: 47%
Nader-Camejo: 1.6%
Undecided: 4%

On the face of it, this is good news, especially coming from a Republican poll. Undecideds traditionally break more toward the challenger, so Kerry’s got the edge.

But even better news ahead: if the poll is weighted to use exit poll data from 2000 and changes in demographics in the past four years, the results are far more clear cut:

Bush-Cheney: 45%
Kerry-Edwards: 50%
Nader-Camejo: 1.6%
Undecided: 3.7%

These are the battleground states: CO, FL, IA, ME, MI, MN, NH, NM, NV, OH, PA, WI. These are the places where anti-minority, anti-voter dirty tricks will have the greatest effect. Be on your guard, and get out the vote!

CR and ER took last week off, and JB vetoed the idea of playing short-handed, so we skipped a week. This week the regular group was back:

    This week  Cumulative  AverageCR    +$6.05      +$6.05   +$0.47EM    -$1.40     -$11.85   -$0.79ER    -$2.95      +$6.35   +$0.49JB    -$5.00     -$11.15   -$0.80JC    -$1.55     +$15.55   +$1.11Me    +$4.85      +$5.80   +$0.39

My suggestion of doubling the buy-in this week was nixed; but as JB snidely pointed out, I had to do a double buy-in anyway less than two hours into the night. I was getting out-kicked, out-pocketed, and possibly out-played, especially by CR. It was brutal. My two best hands during this time were probably KK and AQs. I won with the first and chopped with the second, but that only prolonged my descent.

After the second buy-in, I started to do a little better. In the last 2-3 orbits, I hit a monster rush: 79s beat JJ with a runner-runner flush against a river straight, A8 beat 9T with a river boat against a turn straight, 89s won with a flopped straight against what I assume was a draw that never materialized. The 79s was a true suckout. I called a minimum raise in the BB pre-flop and flopped top pair. I called the bet and turned the straight and flush draws. I called the bet and riverred the flush. Felt bad about that one.

In those first two hours where I lost hand after hand to CR, other people were losing some decent pots to him as well. He took pot after pot and built up his stack to nearly 3 times his buy-in. Over the next hour and half he eventually lost a few bucks, but still made it out of here the big winner. He’s still third in cumulative winnings, but he’s definitely on a good trajectory.

EM put JC on the spot a couple times when a flush appeared on the board. It was clearly painful for him to fold, but fold he did. Overall, EM’s running bad. Her theory is that she needs to be pissed off to win. Possibly. Maybe if I had done that 79s runner-runner against her jacks early on it would have changed the game. Still, she’s not down to the depths that I hit after the first ten weeks of keeping records: -$13.

ER was pretty mad about my boat beating her straight. I don’t feel as bad about that one as I do the 79s. I had the best hand on the flop and when I raised her turn bet, she just called. A re-raise would have been grounds for thought. I may have called anyway, not believing that she’d made her straight. Another down week for ER, but her cumulative’s still good for second place.

Tonight was a lot like some of my NL forays. Down, down, down, then a rush to set things right, and I’m done. Which does wonders for my confidence in my abilities. That’s meant to be sarcastic. I’d rather be lucky than good, but I’d still like to be good.

The Iowa city Press-Citizen reports on Ashton Kutcher’s efforts to get out the vote in Iowa for Kerry:

A lot of people I know made the wrong vote in 2000. We’ve seen what that has cost us in the past four years. Let’s get it right this time.

Just who does that kid think she is? Good thing the President was there to put her in her place.