Author: ssw15

Watched Saturday Night Live’s Presidential special last night. Pretty funny – and showed how stuff hasn’t changed in 30 years of SNL and American politics:

– Chevy Chase as Gerald Ford vs. Dan Ackroyd’s Jimmy Carter; Carter’s accused of being… a flip-flopper (sound familiar?) and Ford’s accused of being… not very bright (a sentiment that never changes, I guess – do we always tend to think of that with our presidents?). Well, at least two guys (the real Ford and Carter) are now seen warmly and are honored in their old age and are applauded in hindsight (Ford for preserving dignity in the presidency and Carter for trying to make the world better for peace).

– Oh, and there was a previous guy named Bush, too. That Dana Carvey has the George H.W. Bush thing down cold. And, Kevin Nealon as Sam Donaldson – he, in imitation of the real Donaldson, looked like a waxed Vulcan (i.e., the Star Trek aliens who aim to logical but often get real perturbed).

Plenty of laughs, but quibble – SNL edited the clips too much, missing out some priceless stuff (like the skit where Dana Carvey’s Ross Perot left Phil Hartman’s Admiral Stockdale on the side of a road in a forest after the vice presidential debates of 1992, and SNL cut the scene where Stockdale, an honored Vietnam veteran – even if a little addled-brain in his old age, vigorously ran alongside Perot’s car… – such a great scene – why cut it out? Well, if you’re all that concerned about time constraints – SNL only had a one hour time slot).

Anyway, it’s my day off (local holiday, to get us civil service folks to vote and lobby others to vote; civil service has it’s benefits). I’ll vote before lunch, to see if I can avoid the lines of senior citizens. (no, the lines are probably there, so maybe it’ll be heartening to see, as opposed to how it was when I voted on primary day back in the spring, when no one was literally there).

I may blog later, if my nerves aren’t so shot by watching/listening to loads of news (which is why I’m listening to pop music right now – 1010 WINS news radio was just driving me nuts with replaying the words of this nut mom-and-son pair in NJ whose big concern is terrorism (re: Bush) vs. the dad-and-son pair in NJ who voted because of economy concerns (re: Kerry) – thus their votes canceled each other out (no, I don’t think they were in the same family – I just thought it was weird that the reporter somehow found these people to demonstrate contrast – as if Kerry wasn’t as worried about terrorism and Bush wasn’t as worried about the economy. Whatever – the media is what it is).

Hmm. Is there tension in the air, or is it just me?

Relating to the profession that some of us bloggers/blog readers are in, let’s just recognize that this election is important for being yet another reason why people hate the legal profession so darn much. Terry Carter of the ABA Journal (or its electronic version, the E-Journal) notes that lawyers are in the crossfire with the campaign season’s rather sickening (in my opinion anyway) lawyer bashing. I have thought that all this lawyer-bashing is really pathetic – I mean, last I checked, being a lawyer wasn’t against the law. But, the question is:

But [the anti-lawyer bashing has] an impact on what? The jury will be out on that one for a while. But some say the prominence of anti-lawyer ads in the presidential campaign is having an amplifying or synergistic effect on the ever-increasing lawyer-bashing in election races for other offices at the federal, state and even local levels.

“The pervasiveness of attacks on lawyers for political advantage has an inevitable effect on the image of the bar,” says Stephen Gillers, who teaches ethics at the New York Univeristy School of Law. “Trial lawyers, and therefore all lawyers, have been portrayed as the devils in the machine. That’s unfortunate, but it’s politically useful.”

[….]

And while it is debatable that ads with a focus on lawyers will swing the election either way, there is some concern that the messages critical of lawyers might leave a lasting gut feeling in a lot of people.

That might be because the anti-lawyer messages in the various election campaigns are kept very simple and repeated often. And they build on more than 20 years of the same.

[….]

Many remain unswayed by the ads. A recent CNN/USA Today/Gallup Poll found that 69 percent of voters say the fact that Edwards is a lawyer will not affect their vote. But that hasn’t stopped Bush and Vice President Cheney from hammering the point. And while it may or may not have much influence on the election, many say it will have one on the legal profession—especially in swing states that are being inundated with political ads.

And, furthermore, the e-Journal includes a humorous yet poignant article: Legal humorist Sean Carter is so concerned about the impact the campaign has on lawyers, he suggests that to spare lawyers from more harm, let’s have the candidates fight it out by the tried and true method of… rock, scissors, paper; not only do we save ourselves from frightening rounds of litigation,

Even more importantly, lawyers won’t take the blame for subverting the democratic process. Some of us may even be able to come ‘out of the closet’ to our friends and family members about what we do for a living, provided we’re not personal injury lawyers.

I look forward to the day when I can stand up in a crowded room and say, “My name is Sean Carter and I’m a … a … used car salesman. Anyone need a ’67 Pontiac?”

Yes, let me stand up and say, I’m SSW and I’m a lawyer. Gasp.

No, I will not be making any prediction. Election Day ain’t like figuring out who’s going to be Time magazine’s Person of the Year.

Anyway, go vote tomorrow. You’ll be glad that you did.

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…