Replies

Great post, I heard Mr. Brinker and agree that someone with time and data should take him on. He did at the end of the show take a caller from Utah and he acknowledged that the low population states are not the ones calling for an end to the electoral process.

One thing about the election, when Al Gore was driving to give his concession speech, he was called in his cell phone and told to hold off, that more favorable votes were coming in.
These late votes, (about 6 am eastern time) gave Al Gore about 300,000 votes to make the election so close. (I believe I have the values right.) There are few reasons for taking so long to turn in ballots, and I suspect along with many that some skulldugery was taking place and the folks doing it thought they had enough votes to put Al over the top. (Could they have mis counted by 590 votes?) Have you any opinion on this event?

PS, Bob's advice on when to leave the market is the reason I am retired now, following a fixed income investment strategy.

Someone posted an article on FR last year that included a link to a great weblog article about the Florida election. The author of that article speculated that the "Pat Buchanan" votes in Palm Beach County were actually the result of fouled-up attempts at voter fraud.

Basically, his point was that Bush was originally in the #1 spot on that "butterfly ballot" and Gore was in the #2 spot, with Buchanan in the #3 spot. The way the butterfly ballot was laid out on either side of a center margin, the odd-numbered slots were on the left side and the even-numbered slots were on the right side -- so that #3 was directly below #1, #4 was directly below #2, etc. Bush was in the #1 position because the candidates were arranged in the order their party had finished in the last state-wide election (which I believe had been Jeb Bush's 1998 victory). Buchanan, then, was moved "up" from the #3 spot to the #2 position -- the top slot on the right side of the ballot.

After the original ballot was approved, the Democratic Party in Palm Beach County had Al Gore moved from the #2 spot to the #3 spot so his name would be directly below Bush's name instead of on the opposite side of the sheet parties did have the option of moving their candidate to a LOWER position, but not a higher one) -- they thought this would make Gore's name more visible to voters.

The author of that article postulated that most of those 3,000 Pat Buchanan votes in Palm Beach County were actually cast when a Democratic Party election official (or someone in the Gore campaign) was attempting to give additional votes to Gore but did so based on the original layout of the Palm Beach County ballot instead of the final one.

Pretty fascinating stuff, I thought.

Bob's advice on when to leave the market

Sounds like Brinker is as off-base with investing as he is with politics. It's so hard to find a decent investing discussion group because everyone seems to warp their economic views to fit their politics. You'd think it would be the other way around, but there are so many Democrat Party freaks (as well as a lot of 'tin-foil' freepers) who throw their savings in down one hole after another because their political views require a 'bad economy'.

Their agenda really shows up when they flip out on Bush-bashing.