One Thing Left To Do... Win. We won by a landslide. We got 54 percent of the vote with all the voting machines on line at the time the polls closed and well over 60 percent of the machines were in. The last precinct to report their vote count had gone for us by a margin of over 3000. And all we need to do is sit back and wait. The rest of the state is done. Except for the counting. So What's Next? All the votes will eventually be recounted by hand. And it can take days to do that. But it'll be done. What's important now is that the election be certified so we can start on everything else we have to do. We've got a lot of new delegates elected and they need to be named. We have to confirm that some of the delegate candidates who ran in 2008 are eligible now and name them as Delegate, Alternate, or Credentials Committee members. And we need to get a slate of Delegates and Alternates chosen to carry on the party in the Legislature and in the next cycle. Then we have to start deciding on a slate of candidates for the future. Then we need to get our party platform on the ballot. And we need to make some progress on the ballot initiative. And the Democrats should still be investigated for election fraud as we have the proof to hand to show that their people didn't leave a single vote on any voting machine that was on line when the polls closed. And we need to start figuring out how to take advantage of the millions of dollars that the Republicans have thrown away on those TV ads that were blatantly false and the other millions in TV and radio advertising that have been spent by the other side. And then we can just kick back and celebrate another victory. (But we'll still be working on figuring out how to spend that $100,000 for each of the last 200-some of our candidates before the first paycheck comes from this job. But we're going to need it. Especially now that the rest of the state is voting on that same issue. But we'll deal with that another day. We've got a lot of work to do...) And once the Democrats get over being mad that our numbers are so much higher than theirs and they'll start looking at their numbers and figure out what they did wrong. They won't be very happy when they see who lost the election for them and who won. Tuesday, November 01, 2005 Huckabee Picks Off Ron Paul. Now it's Hillary! and I am sure she'll be there for the debates and stuff. Y'all remember what it was like on the Democratic side when they had the primaries with no real favorite going into it so all the candidates stayed to the end. Let's hope that we have a good winner next time out. Though I have to admit that the GOP debates have been fun. Even the ones on different channels, I just like watching people talk. One of the best was with Cheney and Bush and there was one with McCain and Giuliani. And the other night there was the one that started with the usual GOP questions and ended up with all the Democrats sitting there with Cheney and Bush sitting there. What fun that was. Okay, I guess that means it's time for the Democrats to start planning for the debates on CNN. They'll want to have their own debates and stuff. They can't have another candidate of their own running out the clock on the GOP when the whole point is to get Hillary elected President. So there will be all kinds of pressure for her to concede before all the real Democrats are allowed to vote and all the voters are allowed to vote. There won't be any votes for candidates in Texas. But I still think that the Democrats are worried about how many votes will come in when people vote for Hillary and see how the whole game is played. There will be other candidates on the ballot for sure but I don't see too many in the race. Hillary is the star and everyone wants to be as close to her as they can. I am sure they will think about getting another candidate on the ballot somehow but I don't think they can quite figure it all out yet. And I think they will still be talking about Huckabee today at least. I am sorry to say that but they can't just get rid of him now or have him leave in silence. I hope they will at least be able to work out a deal so he can get a new plane or something so he can continue to be a player. But we'll see. They've got a lot of work to do. I just can't get over that. I am always shocked when people make the worst hiring decisions, which are sometimes for jobs in which I know I can do better than them. I know I am overconfident and often make the same mistakes over and over. But I cannot understand how people who are competent in many ways can make the same mistakes over and over. And to keep doing it even after they know better. Anyway, just some observations. I don't get paid for this, I just blog for myself, although I expect it may get me some links at some point. Or it may not. I went to visit my mother in a local hospital last week and in my time I got to observe how bad the nursing staff was at a certain hospital. My mother was in the hospital for five days and had been put on antibiotics for an infection that the antibiotic was supposed to cure after five days. Well, I got to know the nurses fairly well at a different hospital and in a different wing. They were all nice people and tried to help my mom and they cared about her. They were kind and cheerful and helpful and we thought they were okay. It was a different story when we went to visit her on our way home. I had noticed that there were only two nurses on duty, one just came and one went after three hours. After a couple more hours, one nurse came in to take out the garbage and take care of some other little tasks like giving her meds. And so I asked what was going on since the third hour was passing and I figured the new nurse was just there for the night. The other nurse didn't even respond to my question and just kept on doing what she was doing. So the new nurse was still there more than eight hours and that nurse just wasn't doing anything. She had apparently dozed off more than once. When we tried to get her to wake up or even give us an excuse she just brushed us off. So I got up and grabbed a chair and just sat down at my mother's bedside to stay there and wait. I figured I would be there for at least eight hours and I was. The next day we were at another hospital and we left my mother with a few people who know how to take care of her who really took care of her. So it's bad, really bad, that this is the best care that a hospital can give to someone who needs around the clock care. I really hate to blame the nurse's in this case since they were the people who were supposed to know what to do. I thought the administrators and the doctors had a responsibility to the people on the ground and they didn't do their job. But maybe the nurses knew their job was to get in that corner and take out the garbage. This is a system that has to be reformed and it's too late now to change it. Because if we had someone around who was able to do the jobs well that needed to be done, there would have been much less of a problem. One of the first things I realized when we moved into our new house is that my parents had given up on getting rid of the clutter. But they didn't have many belongings so we didn't have too much to get rid of. I can remember my father and grandmother trying to get things unloaded from the moving truck. They didn't have enough time and they didn't want it there when the movers came to pick it up. They hadn't unpacked very much but my mom always had a lot of pictures and my dad had an enormous amount of books, probably the entire contents of his library at the time. I was always in the process of taking books out and deciding which to keep. So I have an unusually large number of books with more books than I could possibly read in the stacks in the living room of my