I have only the vaguest idea what this means, but it sounds funny:

Have term limits actually been useful? I feel like that's a horse that left the barn in the mid-1990s, only to, like Wildfire, ride eternally into the winds of our mind.
--Matt Welch, 7/20/09.

Return from the Beltway, young Matt....

I probably mentioned at some point that my favorite book from the last ten years was Moneyball, Michael Lewis' examination of how the Oakland A's were able to compete at the highest level of baseball for awhile in spite of having the lowest payroll and one of the least favorable market situations of any team in professional sports. Evidently, someone in Hollywood has seen blockbuster potential in the philosophy of Billy Beane, according to the LA Times:

Aaron Sorkin is best known in Hollywood as a screenwriter and TV producer supreme, having put his high-style signature on everything from “The West Wing” and “Sports Night” to “Charlie Wilson’s War.” But now, as Variety first reported Thursday, Sorkin has a new role—he’s the closer on “Moneyball,” the much-ballyhooed baseball movie at Sony Pictures that the studio shut down just days before shooting was scheduled to begin late last month.

The movie, which had Brad Pitt slated to star as Billy Beane, the maverick general manager of the Oakland A’s who was the focus of Michael Lewis’ bestselling “Moneyball” book, had its plug pulled after director Steven Soderbergh turned in a last-minute script revision that the studio felt took the film in a radically different, not to mention wildly uncommercial, new direction. But the news that Sorkin has appeared in the bullpen—get used to it, we’re going to employ a lot of baseball lingo here—sends a clear message that Sony is determined to keep the movie alive.

(snip)

So why would Sony hire Sorkin when the studio already had a perfectly good shooting script, penned by the Oscar-winning writer Steve Zaillian? The most likely reason: The studio wanted to send a message to Brad Pitt that it was still absolutely, incontestably behind the picture. If Pitt were to walk away from the project, it could deal a fatal blow to the picture, which is already considered something of a commercial risk, since baseball movies have zero appeal outside of the U.S., meaning that the movie would have to make its investment back solely on the strength of its domestic box-office performance. Pitt is considered indispensable, since the studio has always known it had an extremely short list of A-list stars who could be both believable and bankable as the real-life Beane, a charismatic, fortysomething ballplayer turned crafty but cerebral baseball theoretician. When it comes to potential stars, the drop-off after Pitt is steep.

No offense meant towards Mr. Sorkin or Mr. Jolie, but has anyone at Sony actually read Moneyball? I thought the whole point of Moneyball was that "stars" like Brad Pitt are never indispensable, that there was a plenty of talent out there that hadn't been recognized, that was undervalued, and that a team like the A's could exploit that without spending themselves into the poorhouse. Why spend $10 million on Brad Pitt when you can get Jon Hamm for a lot less?

But, you say, having an "A-List" star on the marquee guarantees success at the box office. Having Brad Pitt involved in your project automatically means the film will be a hit (putting aside Burn After Reading, Troy, and Meet Joe Black, of course), since the film-going audience will necessarily want to see anything he's in, right?

Well, no, actually, it doesn't, particularly for a project like this. As the Times notes, baseball films have little audience outside the United States, so keeping costs down takes on paramount importance. Billy Beane's innovative approach to baseball is equally applicable to the entertainment industry: fans pay money to see winners, not pricey stars. In a world where The Hangover can earn over $200 million starring Ed Helms, Bradley Cooper and Mike Tyson, and where Slumdog Millionaire can make a fortune and win Oscars with a cast unknown outside of Mumbay, the business model Sony is using is as outdated as the "old-school" philosophy baseball GM's used when they picked talent based on batting average and base stealing.

PhoeNixWatch: Another year, another splendid performance...from the Grey Lady herself:

The Almeida Theatre in North London, meanwhile, is boasting the finest new play seen at that address since its artistic director, Michael Attenborough, took over the running of the Islington playhouse in 2003. Consumed with climate change, love and loss, and the ways in which coincidence can make over our lives, “When the Rain Stops Falling” also inadvertently acts as a structural primer for the return to the London stage this week of “Arcadia.”To a degree exceeding Mr. Stoppard’s 1993 masterwork, the Australian writer Andrew Bovell’s comparably mournful play shuttles swiftly between time periods and continents to offer up a wounding theatrical mosaic that tells of two families — one in England, the other in Australia — across four generations and 80 years, from 1959 to 2039. (The production runs through July 4.)

(snip)

Among a finely calibrated ensemble, acting honors surely go to Phoebe Nicholls as the older version of the solitary Elizabeth, who must bid farewell first to a husband, then a son. “If you touch me, I will break,” she remarks calmly to the Australia-bound Gabriel, nursing a glass of her preferred red wine. As Ms. Nicholls speaks the line, you fully believe in a fragility that is one step away from finally going snap.

Which reminds me of a point made this week by Matt Welch over at the Reason blog, concerning the passing this week of the King of Pop. Riffing off of an old Bill James piece on the age of Phil Niekro, Welch notes:

Even more so than his fellow '58ers Madonna and Prince, Michael Jackson had a long and bizarre relationship with age. He was old enough to be in the public eye for more than four decades, young enough to live in a children's zoo. He recorded his first number-one single just two months after man first walked on the moon, yet sang like a castrato and surrounded himself with tweens. Young enough to have never developed a beer gut, old enough to have a decline phase lasting a full quarter-century. So just how old was Michael Jackson?

Michael Jackson was older than Appalachian wanderluster Mark Sanford, older than beloved Slate columnist Eliot Spitzer, and older than the 44th president of the United States. He was older than silver-haired Congressman Mike Pence, silver-bearded Nespresso pitchman George Clooney, and silver-tongued trial lawyer Erin Brockovich. Remember John Kennedy, Jr., the George magazine publisher who died in a plane crash 10 years ago? He was younger than Michael Jackson. As are Magic Johnson, Tai Babilonia, and Stan Van Gundy.

Perhaps Welch's child-like obsession with whether state government spending is exceeding the inflation rate caused him to miss other examples (as well as falsely id'ing Ms. Brockovich as a "trial lawyer"). Did you know Michael Jackson was older than Nadia Comenici? Diego Maradona? John Elway? Isiah Thomas? Gary Lineker? Wayne Gretsky? Marcus Allen? And don't get me started on Dan Marino or John McEnroe....

Joan Jett and Shawn Cassidy are of more recent vintage than the Moonwalking One. So is Welch's favorite journalist, award-winning columnist Bill Plaschke of the Los Angeles Times. Had Kurt Cobain or Princess Diana lived to see the sunset last night, they still would have been younger than Jacko. Michael Jackson was older than Mr. Blonde, Michael Madsen, as well as Nuke LaLoosh himself, Tim Robbins.

David Remnick, the Editor in Chief of the New Yorker, is younger than Michael Jackson. So are Brian Williams, Anderson Cooper, and Shepherd Smith. Same with the hosts of Meet the Press and This Week. So is Sarah Palin, and likely next-PM David Cameron.

However, Phoebe Nicholls is, was, and forever shall be, older than Michael Jackson.

Arguably, the most poorly-time LA Times analytical piece this year. I guess a lot can change in three days....

Intellectual Bankruptcy: There's much to find disreputable about the analysis contained here and here (obviously, taking a "blame the bitch" attitude is almost always the wrong tactic when trying to understand why people have been unable to make sub-prime mortgage payments, much less claiming that a bankruptcy filed when the spouse was married to another is "material information" that needs to be disclosed when discussing one's personal debt situation), but the notion that filing bankruptcy twice in ten years is tantamount to "serial bankruptcy" is, safe to say, just a little bit nuts. The serial filing that was meant to be discouraged by the 2005 BARF act, as well as 11 U.S.C. Section 109(g), concerns multiple filings in the same year, not two filings nine years apart. In other words, restrictions on "serial filings" are meant to dissuade people from filing one case after another, thereby using the automatic stay even when there is no hope for discharge or reorganization, not to label people who hit bad streaks during different decades as sleazebags.

As I recall, Ms. McArdle was the same person who rejected the notion that a high number of bankruptcy filings are related to medical woes because actual medical debts (that is, invoices sent out by hospitals and doctors) constitute a relatively small percentage of scheduled claims in bankruptcy court, apparently unaware that most medical debts (at least among my clients) are actually paid for with credit cards or are sold to collection agencies. Since she also makes the claim that tax debts are not dischargeable in bankruptcy, a patently false notion, it would perhaps be best if she left future discussions of the topic to people who actually know what they're talking about, like, say, someone with an actual law degree (link via Matt Welch).

Did you know that we had an election in California yesterday? In an odd-numbered year, yet?

Well, I didn't vote, nor did anyone I know, but there was an election, of sorts, mostly concerning the matter of budgeting processes in Sacramento, which no one outside of the editorial pages, the septuagenarian listeners of talk-radio, and the odd Chamber of Commerce broadsheet cares about. It was mostly hyped as a way of giving the finger to the Governator, with Democrats particularly gleeful about avenging The Recall (which also occurred in an odd-numbered year, albeit one where a statistically significant number of people voted), while Republicans, comfortable in the stability they possess as a permanent non-governing minority, were happy to stick in their shivs at the one member of their party who actually has to play a role in the state's future.

Right now, the state legislature is talking about making deep, deeeeeeeep cuts, which is mainly designed to scare up support for either floating a series of bonds, in order to prevent school shutdowns and prison closures, or even better, to actually default on bond payments that are coming due, sort of a "bankruptcy" for sovereign entities. It's the sort of thing that would be a big deal if federalism itself wasn't so outdated. If politics is Hollywood for ugly people, than state governments are its Z-List.

Whatever Sacramento shall deny its citizens, Obama will provide. The few (the happy few) who voted yesterday know all too well that those services that state and local governments have traditionally provided are going to be provided by the federal government in the future, and they are not unhappy about that prospect. You don't see the voters trying to pass referenda abolishing schools or prisons; they just don't want the inefficiency of fifty state bureaucracies having to administer these functions any more. They may not die as quickly as the newspaper and the motion picture industries have, but the concept of "state governments" is every bit the dinosaur.

"It was the big cop, Calahan, that did this to me. I have rights !! I have rights !!"

I think that's how the line went in Dirty Harry. That scene, where the serial killer is being wheeled into a hospital after having just been beat up, comes to mind when I hear the whining coming from the dissenting creditors in the Chrysler bankruptcy. As it turns out, the speculators are going to make out like bandits anyway (come to think of it, the Scorpio Killer hired a third party to beat him up), and now that the judge has all but validated the sale, telling the dissenters to put up or shut up by matching or bettering the deal made by Fiat, it's impossible to say that they're "getting screwed."

Lastly, arguments that this is somehow contra to precedent or some sacred analysis of holy bankruptcy text are forgetting two essential points: first, minority interests in a class get the short end of the stick all the time; and second, even if the sale were to be defeated, and Chrysler was forced to propose a Chapter 11 plan rather than a quickie sale, the speculators would likely have their secured liens stripped (ie, treated as unsecured debt), since the corporate assets are almost certainly insufficient to repay all the secured claimants. For the speculators to get more than what they are being offered right now, the bankruptcy would have to be converted to Chapter 7, and the assets of Chrysler liquidated. Filing a bankruptcy, then selling the company to a third party right off the bat, happens all the time, and its up to the legal system to determine whether its in the best interest of the company and its shareholders.

Liquidation of the company may, in the long run, be the optimal result. But with the Chapter 11 process only now beginning, our legal system is going to allow Chrysler some time to see if it can reorganize. Contrary to what many on the right may have thought, bankruptcy is not automatically a system designed to screw uppity workers and their pensions; it is a set of rules and procedures geared to allow people and companies a fresh start. As libertarian editor Matt Welch puts it, better to give the "controlled force of bankruptcy" a chance, and let Fiat try to sell Jeeps for awhile.

UPDATE [5/7]: Mickey Kaus responds, asking why it was necessary for the government to allegedly "strongarm" the creditors into accepting the sale to Fiat without letting the bankruptcy run its course and simply let the judge do the strongarming. Perhaps the best answer to that is that there is well and truly a new sheriff in town, one who is not going to bend over for the interests of Wall Street. Indeed, Presidents make decisions to intervene (or not intervene, which would have the same effect on the parties) in corporate reorganizing all the time, but usually, its the union and its worker that feel the pressure to surrender their position. The law hasn't changed, it's the scales of justice that are tipped differently.

With this President, any resolution that keeps the company afloat is going to be less-disadvantageous to the workers, and the major creditors (as opposed to the small-time speculators who are challenging the sale) saw the writing on the wall: either give up some of their position, or prepare to see the company liquidated, and their position completely wiped out. Quickly resolving the Chrysler situation allows the company to get back to selling cars quickly, and allows the creditors of the company a chance to recoup some of their losses. And since the judge has (so far) approved of the procedure to quickly sell the company to Fiat, any allegations of "strongarming" by the President should be viewed skeptically, even if "strongarming" was in and of itself a bad thing.

American Royalty:

On Thursday, the Senate took up the issue of whether to eliminate the exception in the Bankruptcy Code which allows mortgage lenders to prevent the bifurcation of certain of their loans into secured and unsecured portions in bankruptcy, or in plainer language, the “cramdown” legislation. It was defeated, 51-45, with a dozen Democrats voting to preserve the Carter Era Valentine to the nation’s bankers. Ironically, it was the most liberal wing of the Democratic Party in the Senate who came out most passionately for the principles of Free Market capitalism, whilst their conservative counterparts on both sides of the aisle voted to maintain the subsidy.

Inevitably, the cramdown legislation voted down will pass, if not in this Congress, then at some future time, since the current law represents governmental protectionism at its most illogical and nonsensical, a business subsidy without rhyme or reason. To understand why, it is helpful to examine the absurdity through an example.

Let’s say an individual buys five identical properties. Each property is the same acreage, contains the same square footage, rooms, and looks exactly the same. Each property looks exactly the same, in fact, and is able to obtain identical mortgages for each property, a thirty-year adjustable-rate mortgage for $200,000.

However, the purchaser decides to use each of the properties differently. One property is going to be his home, where he and his newlywed bride will live out their days, surrounded by their 2.5 children and a lifetime of memories (they hope). As his family grows, he desires to build an extension to his home, so he takes out a second mortgage for $50,000. The second property will be rented out to tenants. His mother-in-law will live, rent-free, in the third home, while the fourth home, overlooking the Pacific Ocean, will be used as a vacation home for his family. Lastly, the fifth property will be used as his office.

Hard times ensue. His wife’s last pregnancy was a difficult one, and her hospitalization lasted longer than normal. Moreover, she had to take longer maternity leave than before, so the family income went down significantly. Not surprisingly, her HMO didn’t cover much of the costs, so he had to max out their credit cards to pay for her hospitalization. To make matters worse, his largest client went to a competitor, and now his business in drowning. He falls behind on each of the mortgages, and a foreclosure date is set. The value of each of his properties falls 40% in two years, leaving him unable to use his investments’ equity to cover his bills. Finally, after trying to scramble, scrimp, save and borrow for a year or so, he has to bite the bullet, and see a bankruptcy attorney.

After reviewing his assets and debts, his attorney sees a potential way out for his new client. In Chapter 13, a debtor may reorganize his position by repaying certain debts over a period of time. The procedure is relatively simple and quick, provided he is able to restructure his secured debts (ie., his mortgage) in such a way that he can repay the amount he has fallen behind. He is confident that his business will recover; he just needs a little breathing space. To make it work, however, he will have to seek a complete discharge of his unsecured debt, such as his credit card bills.

The reason why bankruptcy courts treat secured debt differently from unsecured debt is obvious. A secured creditor gets a lien on the property purchased by the consumer so as to make a loan in which only a small percentage of the overall principal is advanced by the borrower viable; if the borrower defaults, the lender gets the physical asset, which it can resell and thereby recoup its losses. In bankruptcy, the lender’s security interest in the physical property is protected, while anything above the value of the actual property (ie., the unsecured portion of the debt) is discharged, along with the other unsecured debts. In short, it is the free market’s way of ensuring that both the borrower and lender bear an equivalent risk. Bankruptcy lawyers call it a “cramdown.”

When the real estate market is stable, lenders rarely have anything to complain about. Since the value of property has historically gone up, the amount of the loan is usually at or below the appraised value of the property, so even if the borrower defaults, the lender doesn’t lose anything on his investment. Bankruptcy courts have traditionally honored the free market tradition of bifurcating claims from lenders into secured and unsecured portions, and explicitly give debtors the right to modify said claims in the context of reorganization of debts in Chapters 11 and 13, with one exception.

For our friend, his attorney proposes that he bifurcate the secured claims on his real properties. Concerning the property that he lets his mother-in-law live rent-free, the property his business operates out of, the property he rents out, and the property where his family summers every year, he can propose a plan in which he will repay the loans at the secured level, based upon an appraisal for each property. He keeps each of the properties he wants to keep, so long as he repays the secured portion over a five-year period. The one property he cannot do that for, and for which he will still owe the entire amount of the mortgage, secured and unsecured alike, is the property he lives at, his “principal residence.”

But even that’s not entirely true. Remember when he obtained a second mortgage on the property a few years before things went south for his family. He can get rid of that debt easily enough, simply by showing that the appraised value of the home is less than what he owes on the first mortgage, making the second completely unsecured. Many courts permit the vanquishing of such a debt to be accomplished with no more than a motion to the court, seeking declaratory relief that the value of the property makes the second lien totally unsecured. It’s only the first mortgage that receives privileged status in the bankruptcy court.

It is hard to justify giving certain loans special treatment in our courts. In the case of our friend, the lenders had no idea which property he was going to declare, on the eve of bankruptcy, was his “principal residence.” They simply loaned him the money, making what were presumably sound judgments based on his credit history, his ability to repay, the long-term predictability of the value of the properties, and other factors. In fact, had he and his family simply moved in with his mother-in-law’s estranged husband, they could cramdown all five properties under the existing Bankruptcy Code. Such are the advantages of property ownership and wealth in this society.

But of course, most people aren’t able to purchase five properties. For the ordinary Joe Schmoe, it’s hard enough to come up with one payment, much less five or six. Unless he is willing and able to move out of his home on the eve of bankruptcy, thereby allowing him to claim that his “principal residence” is somewhere other than the property he’s paying a mortgage on, he, and he alone out of all real estate purchasers, must repay the entire mortgage in bankruptcy, thereby defeating the purpose of “reorganization.”

Twenty-Five Days That Shook the World: While much of the Beltway focus was on trivia about his Cabinet nominees and "conventional wisdom" about government spending which was stale during the first Reagan term, our new President was busy remaking the country. Frank Rich observes:

For (David) Axelrod, the moral is “not just that Washington is too insular but that the American people are a lot smarter than people in Washington think.”

Here’s a third moral: Overdosing on this culture can be fatal. Because Republicans are isolated in that parallel universe and believe all the noise in its echo chamber, they are now as out of touch with reality as the “inevitable” Clinton campaign was before it got clobbered in Iowa. The G.O.P. doesn’t recognize that it emerged from the stimulus battle even worse off than when it started. That obliviousness gives the president the opening to win more ambitious policy victories than last week’s. Having checked the box on attempted bipartisanship, Obama can now move in for the kill.

(snip)

The stimulus opponents, egged on by all the media murmurings about Obama “losing control,” also thought they had a sure thing. Their TV advantage added to their complacency. As the liberal blog ThinkProgress reported, G.O.P. members of Congress wildly outnumbered Democrats as guests on all cable news networks, not just Fox News, in the three days of intense debate about the House stimulus bill. They started pounding in their slogans relentlessly. The bill was not a stimulus package but an orgy of pork spending. The ensuing deficit would amount to “generational theft.” F.D.R.’s New Deal had been an abject failure.

This barrage did shave a few points off the stimulus’s popularity in polls, but its approval rating still remained above 50 percent in all (Gallup, CNN, Pew, CBS) but one of them (Rasmussen, the sole poll the G.O.P. cites). Perhaps the stimulus held its own because the public, in defiance of Washington’s condescending assumption, was smart enough to figure out that the government can’t create jobs without spending and that Bush-era Republicans have no moral authority to lecture about deficits. Some Americans may even have ancestors saved from penury by the New Deal.

In any event, the final score was unambiguous. The stimulus package arrived with the price tag and on roughly the schedule Obama had set for it. The president’s job approval percentage now ranges from the mid 60s (Gallup, Pew) to mid 70s (CNN) — not bad for a guy who won the presidency with 52.9 percent of the vote. While 48 percent of Americans told CBS, Gallup and Pew that they approve of Congressional Democrats, only 31 (Gallup), 32 (CBS) and 34 (Pew) percent could say the same of their G.O.P. counterparts.

The Rasmussen poll, incidentally, samples what it determines are "likely voters," ephemera which could hardly be less relevant some twenty-one months until the next election. If the GOP continues to rely on a coalition of fanatical Christianists and New Deal Denialists, its journey into the political wilderness may well be a long one.

The Mortgage Industry Responds: Prof. Todd Zywicki, the legal craftsman behind the 2005 BARF Act, reviews the consequences resulting from his handiwork, and punts:

The nation faces a foreclosure crisis of historic proportions, and there is an understandable desire on the part of the federal government to "do something" to help. House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers's bill, which is moving swiftly through Congress (and companion legislation introduced by Sen. Richard Durbin) would allow bankruptcy judges to modify home mortgages by reducing both the interest rate and principal amount on the loan. This would be a profound mistake.

Since the other alternatives would be to do nothing, let the "Free Market" do its thing, and allow hundreds of thousands of people to lose their homes, or for Congress to intervene in some other way, like, say, a foreclosure freeze, thereby removing any incentive to repay a mortgage, I think the answer is simple. Give homeowners the same rights as owners of commercial property, apartments, and vacation homes, and pass the strip-down bill.

100-0: As expected, the a-hole coach who elected to have his players rainbow treys in the fourth quarter of a 100-nothing blowout over a school for handicapped girls was canned this week. Blow-outs and routs are a part of sports, and where there is often a large discrepancy in talent, such as youth and high school competition, they are inevitable. When I played AYSO back in the day, one of the teams I played for, "The Rookies," shook up Balboa Park in Encino by losing 0ne week, 12-1, only to come back the next week and win, 12-0. But when the entire strategy of the winning team is designed not to optimize victory, but to humiliate a helpless opponent, that's really an issue of character.

Miracle of the Loaves? A video to make even an unreconstructed Obama fan like myself cringe, featuring a "journalist" and a former Sport Illustrated swimsuit model. For crissakes, ladies, he's a pol who came along at the right time, not the freaking Messiah. After all is said and done, we're still going to be in a recession tomorrow night, no matter how spectacular Arianna's or Oprah's parties are.

Hathaway's Norbit: The critics rave:

"The most lamentable thing about the dismal Bride Wars is the total absence of fatalities."

Actually, I blame Kate Hudson for this debacle. No other actress this side of Zooey Deschanel has a worse track record in consistently appearing in turkeys than the former step-daughter of TV's Shirley.

Franken wins ?!? It would appear so, although the incumbent can probably keep him out of the Senate for awhile. Although Air America has had a reputation for being something of a dud, I think it's safe to say that there is no way Franken could have become a viable Senate candidate without the exposure his morning radio show gave him, and Rachel Maddow has been able to parley her exposure on AA to a rather successful prime time gig at MSNBC. I guess sometimes it's not the quantity of the audience that matters, but the quality.

The Marriage Counselor: As I read this, I thought it was a spoof of some sort, like Swift's "A Modest Proposal." But no, Dennis Prager is serious about this. Kinda reminds me of a story told about the late USC and Tampa Bay football coach John McKay, who once explained to reporters that he hadn't actually made a certain derogatory comment about his longtime coaching rival from Stanford (and the Denver Broncos), John Ralston, after he had run up the score against McKay's winless '76 Buccaneers: "I would have called him a prick, but a prick has a head." [link via Mark Kleiman]

A good primer on what motivates the New Deal Denialists, here. One nice thing to remember is that most of the stimulus package that will come out of Congress will not be subject to a filibuster in the Senate, since it's a budgetary matter. So by all means, GOP, oppose away....

Matthew Yglesias seems bemused that Amity Shlaes, the David Irving of New Deal Denialism, is a "senior fellow in economic history from the Council on Foreign Relations," even though she is as qualified to dish on economic history as Heidi Montag. Indeed, one of the great joys in the coming Liberal Age will be the growing marginalization for the recipients of what has come to be known as "wingnut welfare." A thinktank like the CFR is going to be less-inclined in the future to give out goodies to ideological hacks like Ms. Shlaes when all the action is likely going to be on the other side of the spectrum.

It had been my hope to go on vacation from the blog until our new President was sworn in, and start afresh in what I hope to be the beginning of a new liberal era in American politics. But I couldn't let the opportunity go without recommending one of the best political blogs out there, ArchPundit, which specializes in Illinois politics, and which has been the one go-to sight since the Blagojevich Follies started. He's been right on this subject from the start, as this post from the week before the scandal broke nationally shows.

O !!!!!!!!

Election Eve News: Besides the favorable polls, and the bellweather result of the final Redskin home game, there's Dixville Notch and Pete Carroll, both for Obama. Also, Luc Robataille....