Human boonie dogs peeing on the polls

There’s that old joke about Poles changing light bulbs…but what I want to know is how many polls it will take to show us the light?

What with the U.S. presidential election being such a close call, it’s a real nail biter here in the Commonwealth. Consider this weirdness: The CNMI might stand to win or lose more from this election than any place in the mainland. Labor, immigration, and related concerns are going to be all tangled up in the next administration’s policies. Al Gore would change the face of the CNMI more than he’d change the face of Peoria.

And those of us who hail from the mainland have a double whammy of concern, given that we’ll eventually buy homes back out there and the context there, too, of course, will be affected by the next administration.

You can’t help but try to figure out who is going to win this race, and it’s a confusing gig indeed. The polls don’t seem to agree with each other. Some put Gore ahead. Others, Bush.

Which means that polling must be a science unto itself, given that the major pollsters are presumably competent, their methods sounds, yet their results disparate.

Rasmussen Research gives Bush a 47 percent to 41 percent lead over the Ozone Man. In terms of electoral votes, of which 270 are needed to qualify for the intern dress staining league, Bush is favored for 231, Gore clocks in at 168. That leaves 139 up for grabs.

So, Bush is ahead.

Zogby, another well regarded polling firm, puts Gore ahead by a 45 percent to 43 percent margin.

So, Gore is ahead.

Gee, this all makes sense now, doesn’t it. If Gore invented the Internet, as he’s claimed, maybe he’d be willing to lend a hand and invent a more reliable polling method.

Then there’s CNN/USA Today/Gallup–which gives Dubya 48 percent, Ozone Man, 43 percent. This same poll, however, gave Gore the edge just a few days ago.

What the pundits are saying–and it seems logical enough–is that the 6 percent (or so, depending, on, what else, which poll you’re looking at) of undecided voters will “swing” this election. In other words, there are Americans out there who are so clueless, so slow minded, so utterly witless and devoid of principle that they haven’t yet decided on whether or not Gore’s brand of socialism is preferable to those dusty ideas promulgated in something called the U.S. Constitution.

Sorry, but anyone dumb enough to be undecided at this point is far too dumb to be entrusted with a ballot. Or a sharp pencil. Or even a Q-tip…but, what the heck, the dumber they are the more they breed like boonie dogs, and their witless offspring will become economic wards of the state who will be yet more useful idiots for the Democrat’s socialist agenda.

Which elegantly introduces a bigger point here: the GOP in the United States is doomed–it is swimming upstream against a demographic tide that is unstoppable. The only question that remains is whether the GOP can have one last day in the sun, one last stretch of political prominence. Bush, if he makes it, may well be the last of the breed…and we don’t know that he will make it. Perhaps the day of the human boonie dog is finally here…and not even a hundred of these losers could change a light bulb; they’d need the government to do that for them.

Stephens is an economist with Stephens Corporation, a professional organization in the NMI. His column appears three times a week: Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. Mr. Stephens can be contacted via the following e-mail address: ed4Saipan@yahoo.com.