Isn't it fun to watch politicians twist and turn in the wind?

For weeks now all we have heard from Al Gore and his legion of attorneys is how "every vote must be counted."

Now, given the opportunity to trash thousands and thousands of absentee ballots on a technicality, does Gore step up and urge the plaintiffs to drop their suit? No way.

'I don't know what will happen there,' the vice president told reporters of the absentee ballot lawsuits. 'I think that those two cases are likely to travel the same route as the case that went into Judge Sauls' court and will end up in the Florida Supreme Court.'

I have said all along that Gore isn't interested in "making sure every vote is counted." He's only interested in counting votes that will help him win.

In the absentee ballot case, there was absolutely nothing wrong with the ballots, the votes or how they were tallied.

The problem was with the process used in dealing with requests for absentee ballots.

Now, let's flip the coin for a minute.

All along the Republicans have been saying that we must follow the rule of law. We must follow the rules and regulations.

The Florida legislature set out the process for carrying out an election and it must be followed.

The Florida Supreme Court was wrong to extend the deadline for certifying the election.

They changed the law. They changed the rule in the middle of the game.

Comes now the rules governing requests for absentee ballots and suddenly we have these "hypertechnicalities" that we can probably ignore.

Apparently there were absentee ballot request forms that had been rejected for a lack of voter registration numbers.

Somebody from the Republican party came along and asked the election officials if they could fill in the blanks.

The Republican was filling in the blanks for a few days when a Democrat called and asked what was going on.

The Democrat was upset. He told the election official he didn't think the Republicans should be allowed to do that.

The election official continued to allow the Republicans to fill in the blanks anyway.

It seems pretty obvious there were problems with that process. There might have been laws broken.

But we have the Republicans brushing this behavior aside as a "hypertechnicality."

I suppose it is a bit of a technicality. After all, the voter requested an absentee ballot. We're deciding whether the voter requested it properly. Of course, the request forms were deficient before the Republican added the information and resubmitted them.

The plaintiff argues that if it weren't for that Republican operative, those ballots never would have been mailed out and those votes never would have been cast.

I don't think there's any question that this sounds shady.

The question, though, is the remedy. If somebody broke the law, they should be punished.

But should we punish the voters? They didn't do anything wrong. They just voted. If somebody messed with their absentee ballot applications, is that their fault?

I guess I'm wondering why the Democrats didn't send in somebody to do the same thing for Democrat absentee ballot registration forms? I'm wondering why they didn't seek some kind of injunction against what was going on? I'm wondering why they didn't do anything until after the election?

But that's really beside the point, I guess.

What strikes me is the irony in all this.

On the one hand you have the "count every vote" Gore types seeking to have thousands of votes tossed out.

On the other hand we have the "we have to follow the law" Republicans ready to defend the shenanigans of the fill-in-the-blanks absentee ballot operatives.

Fascinating, isn't it?

Greenspan Speaks

What is up with Alan Greenspan?

Sometimes the guy bugs me.

Don't get me wrong. I think he's a veritable genius when it comes to the economy.

But really. Why is it that every time he opens his mouth, Wall Street goes crazy?

Nobody should have that much clout.

For about a year and a half now, Greenspan has been warning us about inflation. The economy is steamrolling, everybody's making and spending money, but Greenspan is worried about inflation.

So he raises interest rates - six times since June 1999 - in an effort to slow down the economy.

And guess what?

Ding! Ding! Ding! Ding!

It worked! The economy is slowing down!

Enter Greenspan earlier this week.

He warns us - warns us, mind you - that "in periods of transition from unsustainable to more modest rates of growth, an economy is obviously at increased risk of untoward events that would readily be absorbed in a period of boom."

He warned about sharp drops in the stock market. He warned about rising tension in the Middle East that could cause oil prices to rise amid already inflated fuel prices in this country.

But what he's really warning us about is that he and his buddies at the central bank may have gone a bit too far in raising interest rates and tightening credit. What he's really saying is that conditions are ripe for a recession, and oops, my buddies and I may have caused it.

I am not an economist but it seems pretty obvious to me that when you raise interest rates, economic growth slows. When economic growth slows, corporations don't make as much money. When corporations don't make as much money, Wall Street types start selling stock.

Higher interest rates also tend to slow consumer spending, thus lowering demand for consumer goods and big ticket items like homes and cars.

But Greenspan knows all that.

Seems to me raising interest rates and warning of recession is akin to tossing a match on a haystack and warning of fire.

Anyway, it looks like the Fed won't be raising interest rates anytime soon, so a day after Greenspan's speech the Nasdaq had its biggest one-day surge in history and the Dow shot up 338 points.

One thing is for sure.

When Greenspan speaks, the economy listens.

Of course this begs the question: Should we be placing the fate of our nation's economy in the hands of one man? [[In-content Ad]]