Once upon a time there were plenty of Baby Dumbasses

Rain drops fell on the village and while everyone else went indoors, Baby Dumbasses stayed outside.

"Where are you going?" they asked. "Don't you know this is liquid sunshine."

Then a mighty wind came through. Baby Dumbasses jumped up and down with joy.

"Feel this?" they asked. "It is the dreams you dream trying to find you."

Then lightning struck a Baby Dumbass on the head.

As he burned to a crisp, the other Baby Dumbasses giggled and laughed.

"Oh, he is taking a nap!" they insisted.

The next day the dead Baby Dumbass was carried to a grave and buried.

"Why are you burying him!" hollered Baby Dumbasses. "He is not dead!"

"He is dead," they were told.

"No, he is not!" they insisted.

The doctor who pronounced him dead stepped over and she explained slowly and carefully that Baby Dumbass was dead and how he died.

"You are wrong!" they insisted. "We know more than you! We know more than everybody!"

So Baby Dumbasses waited for the dead Dumb Ass to dig himself out.

They waited for days. They waited for nights.

They would not budge.

Finally (and thankfully because Dumb Ass is not a pretty sight), they died.

The end?

We wish it were so.

Thursday, Rolling Stone published Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s " Was the 2004 Election Stolen?Republicans prevented more than 350,000 voters in Ohio from casting ballots or having their votes counted -- enough to have put John Kerry in the White House" online.

You might think this would be a time where those who had sought 'respectability' from the mainstream to re-evaluate. You would be wrong.

A cry from some of the so-called left is "Exit polling can't be trusted!"

As though the whole point of the article is the exit polling.

But can exit polling be trusted?

It's one basis for the science in poli sci. Up until 2000, it wasn't considered 'iffy' and had done quite well in the post-WWII era. The press pooled together on the issue because they believed in it. It only came into question with the emergence of the Bully Boy.

So we're a little puzzled that some want to say "Pooh on exit polling!" We're wondering what their experience with it is. (For the record, one person working on this feature has crunched exit polls for poli sci graduate courses as well as helped with it for the press, one of the top papers.) We note that the poohers don't have much to say other than that it's unreliable.

We'll assume there was a handout with the talking point EXIT POLLING IS UNRELIABLE at the top since it seems to be the starting and ending point.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has stepped into this conversation and did so knowing that there would be attacks. We wonder if he knew that some of the attacking would come from presumed "friends"?

Baby Dumbasses die and fade away in the tale above. An alternative ending, a happily ever after, would be they wise up. Sadly, we don't see either ending becoming reality anytime soon.