Friday Flotsam (Late Edition)

Cleaning up some of the flotsam that washed ashore on the small beach serving as a metaphor for our little island of rationality in the great blogospheric ocean.

ITEM - More Microsoft Windows Productivity
I have posted nothing new in a week. It has, unfortunately, been yet another week of technology trouble. My Dell laptop will not boot, it just displays the wallpaper and freezes. Yes, I can get it to boot in safe mode, and Yes, I've tried restoring from previous set-points, and Yes, I've tried booting the "last good boot" and it still behaves the same. So I am punishing the Dell by ignoring it and working on a turn of the millennium vintage Pentium III Sony Vaio Desktop. I'll try to get a couple of posts out this weekend, and will not touch the Dell again until I get over this impulse to see how closely it will mimic the aerodynamic properties of a Frisbee thrown off our 15th floor balcony.

ITEM - Presidential Candidate Stack Ranking version 3.1
As promised, the DWSUWF Presidential Candidate Stack Ranking has been trimmed to six entries in the sidebar, and probably should be taken down to four. It does not matter whether it's Romney or McCain, Clinton or Obama winning in South Carolina and Nevada. This Stack Rank will remain intact until at least the Florida primary. It has been upgraded to version 3.1 since Richardson has dropped out and Gore moved up since the last ranking. The reality is that spots 5 and 6 are placeholders, as I struggle with including any of the remaining candidates from either party on the list after level 4. I've also dropped the Unity08 designation to the potential Bloomberg run since they went belly up, and have been subsumed by Bloomberg's ambition.

1) Ron Paul (R)
2) Barack Obama (D)
3) Chuck Hagel (R)/Mike Bloomberg (I)
4) Hillary Clinton (D)
5) Fred Thompson (R)
6) Al Gore (D)

A reminder - the DWSUWF stack ranking is a preference not a prediction. This list represents the top ten six candidates DWSUWF would like to see as President, stack ranked in order of preference. Imposed on this list are two constraints: alternating political party affiliation, and a divided government outcome in 2008.

ITEM - Just WTF are we anyway?
DWSUWF notes that some political bloggers have segregated their blogrolls into categories, and said bloggers do not seem to agree in which category DWSUWF belongs. Some think we lean left, some think we lean right. Libertarian blogs tolerate us. Centrist blogs like Donklephant, The Moderate Voice, and PoliGazette generally think DWSUWF is one of them. But Blanca Debree cannot decide whether DWSUWF is in her EVIL-DOER or GOOD-DOER category so she puts us in the Maybe Evil Doer /Maybe Good Doer category. DWSUWF approves.

UPDATED - 20-January-2008 - Updated Links

ITEM - Carnivalingus
Some recent fine collections of high quality blogging punditry:

• Mark Rayner presents The Carnival of Satire hosted at The Skwib.
  
• Charity presents The Carnival of Principled Government at She's Right.
  
• Pat Santy presents the Carnival of the Insanities-January 13 and January 20 Edition hosted at Dr. Sanity.
• Admin (Ok, you tell me what his name is....) presents Missed it by That Much hosted at Bizospere - home of Carnival of the Capitalists.
• Boring presents Economics and Social Policy XLII hosted at The Boring Made Dull.
• Andrew Ian Dodge presents Carnival of the Vanities Mid January hosted at Dodgeblogium.
• I Don't Know presents the Festival of Stocks at Investment Quest
• Serena presents the Carnival of Cities at Mexican Pop Spot.
• TWS presents Carnival of the Libertarians at The Whited Sepulchre
  

ITEM - Carnival Reminder
The next CODGOV edition will be the Carnival of Divided Government Vîcênsimus - Special California Primary Post-Mortem Edition, which we have elected to post on or about Wednesday, Feburary 6. Submit your blog article at carnival of divided government using our carnival submission form. If the words "divided government" or "gridlock" are not in your post, you should probably not submit to this carnival.

Divided and Balanced.™ Now that is fair.

Technorati tags: divided government, blog carnival, divided government, Chuck Hagel,2008 election , John McCain, Ron Paul, Mike Bloomberg, Hillary Clinton, Fred Thompson, Barack Obama.