We get one extra hour of sleep for one day. Lose more daylight though. Oh well.
Goodbye to October; hello to November. Less than two days to Election Day. Ah, the true day of horror.
In light of Election Day, consider these two articles:
Stephen J. Marmon’s op-ed piece of October 29, 2004, in the NY Times explains how it’s possible that there could be an Acting President John Edwards – a nightmare scenario:
a tie: “Electoral College 269-269 deadlock, and send the tied contests to Congress; the House would choose the president and the Senate the vice president.
“In the Senate, at least 51 votes would be required to elect a vice president. Given current polls, the Democrats can gain control of the Senate by picking up seats in Alaska, Colorado, Illinois, Kentucky and Oklahoma, while losing seats in Florida, Georgia and South Carolina. Senator Edwards would be elected as vice president.
“The House, however, votes for president by state, with 26 delegations required for election. If members of the House then voted as their states did, President Bush, in this scenario, would carry 28 states, thus leading to a Bush-Edwards administration.”
But – a Congressional deadlock may mean no president in a timely manner –
“The Constitution provides that the vice president becomes president if the president dies, resigns or is removed from office. But the 20th Amendment states that: ‘If a president shall not have been chosen before the time fixed for the beginning of his term, or if the president-elect shall have failed to qualify, then the vice president-elect shall act as president until a president shall have qualified.’
“The House could remain deadlocked for two years, and perhaps even four, depending on the results of the 2006 Congressional elections. And until the House reaches a decision, Acting President John Edwards would occupy the Oval Office.”
Uh… yeah… Hopefully unlikely, but it can happen. I guess.
Plus, today’s column in the NY Times – Thomas Friedman endorses… George (H.W.) Bush, due to his courage in domestic and foreign politics (even if Bush the Elder didn’t have total finesse, he had sense and sensibility). Interesting. First Senator Lincoln Chafee, now Friedman – going for Bush the Elder…
October reading: The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini – a lovely first time novel by an Afghan-American physician, who writes of the coming of age of two Afghan boys; the time of war-torn Afghanistan of the early 1980’s and the Taliban of the 1990’s. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by J.K. Rowling – I liked the movie; the book filled in lots of stuff – better than the other two books, I daresay; now I’m heading into book 4 of the series – let’s see if I really can finish the series by the end of the year… Plus, one romance novel – Dearest Love by Betty Neels (I couldn’t help it; I needed some kind of transition before plunging into Harry Potter Book 4 – the size of the thing is intimidating…)
Have a good week…
