I added a button for this organization's web site to the blog. I like the idea. Not so much thinking that it will effect campaign contributions or anything like that, but...
I just don't like the Republicans getting my cash.
That is enough for me.
Tomorrow I plan on posting something about how the liberals are trying to take the Christ out of the Mas and destroy the beloved holiday. A part of this plan, it seems, is that the homosexuals are behind Target banning the Salvation Army...
All bunk, I am sure, but I wanted to toss out a statistic from the buyblue.org site.
Target: $298,000 - 72% to Republicans
www.buyblue.org
www.choosetheblue.com
Friday, December 17, 2004
Secession Wear... Moving the debate in the wrong direction?
While researching (Heh, I called it researching!) one of my posts for the evening, I saw an ad for Secession T-Shirts, Sweatshirts, etc.
It's funny and I would like one of the T-Shirts for my birthday, but I hope that this is not a mounting movement.
We do need to unify this country. Most of the values of Red America are shared by Blue America. I believe that it is the parties, both parties, harping on a few key issues that has created the feeling that there are irreconcilable differences between Iowa and California... Okay, maybe there are between those two states, but living my whole life in Washington and Oregon I feel there are irreconcilable differences between my states and California, but we both manage to come up Blue.
And that is my point, I suppose.
Unfortunately, we got Skippy the Wonder President saying his obligatory few words about reconciliation and unity after the election, so the Administration's efforts at building bipartisanship in America is complete for the next four years.
It is probably going to be up to the Democrats, to the lefties within the party, to reach out to Red America. We need to explore the issues important in rural America, we need to field candidates that are electable in rural America, we need to redefine the issues and control the message so our beliefs are not corrupted and labeled antagonistic to rural America, and we need to do all of this without sacrificing our principals and morals.
I believe it is possible.
This is one of the main themes that I mean to pursue with Democracy in Distress. At this point, most of my posting has been commenting on news items, but we do need to start organizing. We need to take control of the party, control of the issues, control of the message and we need to learn how to heal this nation.
On a side note, in my evening's running commentary on Comedy Central programming, The Daily Show just ran their Great Moments in Punditry segment where they had children reading transcripts from Scarborough Country on MSNBC. That is about the clearest illustration I have seen recently of the current state of political debate in this country.
Scary stuff. We must demand better from both the media and from our politicians. And from ourselves… Poopy heads.
And yet another final note on a rapidly growing post… Clicking over to the Scarborough Country for the web link, I noticed a clip of Al Franken and Ann Coulter debating whether The Passion of the Christ would be nominated for an Oscar. It turned into a “debate” on if either Mel Gibson’s controversial film or Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 would be nominated.
In the end, there wasn’t much debate. Neither of the talking heads had seen the other camp’s movie.
Could this be a part of the problem? It does illustrate part of the media’s problem, more and more the debate over controversy is being analyzed with out enough attention being paid to the root issues behind the debate. In this case, two movies. In the election, the media ignored the candidates' actual platforms and instead focused on the horse race of the campaigns themselves.
http://www.electionblues.us/
It's funny and I would like one of the T-Shirts for my birthday, but I hope that this is not a mounting movement.
We do need to unify this country. Most of the values of Red America are shared by Blue America. I believe that it is the parties, both parties, harping on a few key issues that has created the feeling that there are irreconcilable differences between Iowa and California... Okay, maybe there are between those two states, but living my whole life in Washington and Oregon I feel there are irreconcilable differences between my states and California, but we both manage to come up Blue.
And that is my point, I suppose.
Unfortunately, we got Skippy the Wonder President saying his obligatory few words about reconciliation and unity after the election, so the Administration's efforts at building bipartisanship in America is complete for the next four years.
It is probably going to be up to the Democrats, to the lefties within the party, to reach out to Red America. We need to explore the issues important in rural America, we need to field candidates that are electable in rural America, we need to redefine the issues and control the message so our beliefs are not corrupted and labeled antagonistic to rural America, and we need to do all of this without sacrificing our principals and morals.
I believe it is possible.
This is one of the main themes that I mean to pursue with Democracy in Distress. At this point, most of my posting has been commenting on news items, but we do need to start organizing. We need to take control of the party, control of the issues, control of the message and we need to learn how to heal this nation.
On a side note, in my evening's running commentary on Comedy Central programming, The Daily Show just ran their Great Moments in Punditry segment where they had children reading transcripts from Scarborough Country on MSNBC. That is about the clearest illustration I have seen recently of the current state of political debate in this country.
Scary stuff. We must demand better from both the media and from our politicians. And from ourselves… Poopy heads.
And yet another final note on a rapidly growing post… Clicking over to the Scarborough Country for the web link, I noticed a clip of Al Franken and Ann Coulter debating whether The Passion of the Christ would be nominated for an Oscar. It turned into a “debate” on if either Mel Gibson’s controversial film or Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 would be nominated.
In the end, there wasn’t much debate. Neither of the talking heads had seen the other camp’s movie.
Could this be a part of the problem? It does illustrate part of the media’s problem, more and more the debate over controversy is being analyzed with out enough attention being paid to the root issues behind the debate. In this case, two movies. In the election, the media ignored the candidates' actual platforms and instead focused on the horse race of the campaigns themselves.
http://www.electionblues.us/
Jesus on Comedy Central
This summer get ready for Passion II: Judgment Day... Not the movie.
Immediately followed by Snoop Dogg. Their producers have a sense of humor. I approve.
Immediately followed by Snoop Dogg. Their producers have a sense of humor. I approve.
Starting Over in Ohio…
In Ohio, the original Supreme Court case filed on Monday challenging the election was thrown out on a technical issue, but it was refiled today.
The group filed the request Monday, the day the Electoral College cast votes for Bush. Chief Justice Thomas Moyer of the state Supreme Court threw out the complaint Thursday, saying the voters improperly included a second election challenge in the complaint.
Anyway, the lead on the AP story regarding the Ohio recount recalls images from Florida in 2000, with “two teams of Republican and Democratic election workers held punch-card ballots up to the light Wednesday and whispered back and forth as they tried to divine the voters' intent from a few hanging chads.”
According to Ohio Law:
Workers must hand-count 3 percent of ballots. If the results match the certified results exactly, all other ballots can be recounted by machine. If the totals are off, all ballots must be counted by hand, adding days or weeks to the process.
What I am unclear on is how the paper-less voting machines effect this process. Still, I suspect that we’ll be waiting for those “days or weeks” to find out the new Ohio totals.
Another interesting tidbit, not a new one, but always a bit disturbing. “Statewide, about 92,000 ballots cast in last month's presidential election failed to record a vote for president, most of them on punch-card systems.” Dosen’t this just automatically raise eyebrows? You cannot tell me that people show up at the polls and say to themselves, “Well, I was going to vote on the Presidency, but since I get to vote with punch cards, I’ll skip that section of the ballot.”
Now, there could be something to this. What are the demographics of these precincts? I have a feeling that there could have been a higher percentage of abstentions in blue collar neighborhoods, where people are too disgusted with the process to vote for either of the candidates. Unfortunately, I fear the flaw with this theory is that disenfranchised blue collar people tend to abstain by not voting at all.
And finally…
It seems that workers for Triad, the vendor for some of the vote counting software used in Ohio, showed up at precincts and tinkered with the voting machines before the recount. The company says that this is just the standard procedure…
Brett Rapp, president of Xenia, Ohio-based TRIAD, said it's standard procedure to prepare the machines for a recount so they only tally the presidential race. He said company representatives have worked on computers in every county that uses TRIAD software.
However, “a sworn statement from Sherole Eaton, [Hocking] county's deputy director of elections,” makes these visits sound a little more concerning. In this AP article, the parts of the statement reported sound fairly ambiguous, but I have heard more extensive reports on this statement, and the incident she reports definitely sounds a bit more sinister.
Something is being done about this…
Rep. John Conyers D-Mich., a senior Democrat on the House Judiciary, urged the FBI to investigate possible election tampering in Hocking County involving an employee of TRIAD Governmental Systems Inc., the company that wrote the voting software used in 41 of Ohio's 88 counties.
I suppose we’ll have to wait and see if anything comes of this. It cannot be allowed to stop with just one Representitive urging an investigation.
Not this year, not any year.
Investigate the Vote
Ohio Voters Refile Election Challenge
Hanging Chads Make Reappearance in Ohio
The group filed the request Monday, the day the Electoral College cast votes for Bush. Chief Justice Thomas Moyer of the state Supreme Court threw out the complaint Thursday, saying the voters improperly included a second election challenge in the complaint.
Anyway, the lead on the AP story regarding the Ohio recount recalls images from Florida in 2000, with “two teams of Republican and Democratic election workers held punch-card ballots up to the light Wednesday and whispered back and forth as they tried to divine the voters' intent from a few hanging chads.”
According to Ohio Law:
Workers must hand-count 3 percent of ballots. If the results match the certified results exactly, all other ballots can be recounted by machine. If the totals are off, all ballots must be counted by hand, adding days or weeks to the process.
What I am unclear on is how the paper-less voting machines effect this process. Still, I suspect that we’ll be waiting for those “days or weeks” to find out the new Ohio totals.
Another interesting tidbit, not a new one, but always a bit disturbing. “Statewide, about 92,000 ballots cast in last month's presidential election failed to record a vote for president, most of them on punch-card systems.” Dosen’t this just automatically raise eyebrows? You cannot tell me that people show up at the polls and say to themselves, “Well, I was going to vote on the Presidency, but since I get to vote with punch cards, I’ll skip that section of the ballot.”
Now, there could be something to this. What are the demographics of these precincts? I have a feeling that there could have been a higher percentage of abstentions in blue collar neighborhoods, where people are too disgusted with the process to vote for either of the candidates. Unfortunately, I fear the flaw with this theory is that disenfranchised blue collar people tend to abstain by not voting at all.
And finally…
It seems that workers for Triad, the vendor for some of the vote counting software used in Ohio, showed up at precincts and tinkered with the voting machines before the recount. The company says that this is just the standard procedure…
Brett Rapp, president of Xenia, Ohio-based TRIAD, said it's standard procedure to prepare the machines for a recount so they only tally the presidential race. He said company representatives have worked on computers in every county that uses TRIAD software.
However, “a sworn statement from Sherole Eaton, [Hocking] county's deputy director of elections,” makes these visits sound a little more concerning. In this AP article, the parts of the statement reported sound fairly ambiguous, but I have heard more extensive reports on this statement, and the incident she reports definitely sounds a bit more sinister.
Something is being done about this…
Rep. John Conyers D-Mich., a senior Democrat on the House Judiciary, urged the FBI to investigate possible election tampering in Hocking County involving an employee of TRIAD Governmental Systems Inc., the company that wrote the voting software used in 41 of Ohio's 88 counties.
I suppose we’ll have to wait and see if anything comes of this. It cannot be allowed to stop with just one Representitive urging an investigation.
Not this year, not any year.
Investigate the Vote
Ohio Voters Refile Election Challenge
Hanging Chads Make Reappearance in Ohio
Is the Fork Stuck In Christine Gregoire Yet?
The elusive couple dozen votes seem to be beyond reach for the Washington Democrat in that state’s newest sport, the eternal recount. Today, a judge sided with the Republicans, saying that several hundred ballots from the Seattle area that were mistakenly not counted in the first two counts could not be included in the new count. There is a very possible chance that this will toss the keys for the Olympia Goveneror’s Mansion over to Republican Dino Rossi.
[Pierce County Superior Court Judge Stephanie ]Arend granted the GOP a temporary restraining order to stop elections workers from taking the newly discovered ballots out of their outer envelopes, which bear the voter's signature. County elections officials had said ballots would not be separated from their security envelopes until the lawsuit was decided.
Jack Oxford is one of the voters whose ballots Arend said should not be counted.
"She said, 'Jack, your vote doesn't count,'" said Oxford, 50, an electrical field supervisor from Enumclaw. "I'm very upset, very distressed."
Still, King County (the state’s most liberal) and Spokane County have not finished their counts yet, and the Democrats do plan on appealing the decision to the State Supreme court.
Time will tell…
Isn’t the foundation of our democracy the principal that every vote counts? Oh, how quaint of me.
Judge blocks count of newly discovered ballots in governor's race
Judge Blocks Count of New Wash. Ballots
[Pierce County Superior Court Judge Stephanie ]Arend granted the GOP a temporary restraining order to stop elections workers from taking the newly discovered ballots out of their outer envelopes, which bear the voter's signature. County elections officials had said ballots would not be separated from their security envelopes until the lawsuit was decided.
Jack Oxford is one of the voters whose ballots Arend said should not be counted.
"She said, 'Jack, your vote doesn't count,'" said Oxford, 50, an electrical field supervisor from Enumclaw. "I'm very upset, very distressed."
Still, King County (the state’s most liberal) and Spokane County have not finished their counts yet, and the Democrats do plan on appealing the decision to the State Supreme court.
Time will tell…
Isn’t the foundation of our democracy the principal that every vote counts? Oh, how quaint of me.
Judge blocks count of newly discovered ballots in governor's race
Judge Blocks Count of New Wash. Ballots
In the completely unrelated to anything on this site category…
While I was writing tonight’s entries, I just saw an old acquaintance from high school performing on Comedy Central. He was sporting a nasty looking shiner too.
He’s huge now. I used to drive him around and hang out with his foster sister. I think I might accidentally have broken her heart. High school crushes are nasty like that.
I used to play some music, too. Now I am just an unemployed Dad who kills time by recycling politics on the Internet.
Life is funny.
He’s huge now. I used to drive him around and hang out with his foster sister. I think I might accidentally have broken her heart. High school crushes are nasty like that.
I used to play some music, too. Now I am just an unemployed Dad who kills time by recycling politics on the Internet.
Life is funny.
Wednesday, December 15, 2004
Happy Birthday, Bill of Rights
On Dec 15, 1791 the Bill of Rights was ratified and became a part of the US Constitution.
A specific shout out to the first one of these...
Amendment I - Freedom of Religion, Press, Expression. Ratified 12/15/1791. Note
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Thank you to Virginia and a big ol' screw you to Massachusetts (March 2, 1939), Georgia (March 18, 1939), and Connecticut (April 19, 1939).
Okay, I seem to remember an interesting story behind those late dates for the last three there but it is late, it is past my bedtime, and I am going to bed.
USConstitution.net
A specific shout out to the first one of these...
Amendment I - Freedom of Religion, Press, Expression. Ratified 12/15/1791. Note
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Thank you to Virginia and a big ol' screw you to Massachusetts (March 2, 1939), Georgia (March 18, 1939), and Connecticut (April 19, 1939).
Okay, I seem to remember an interesting story behind those late dates for the last three there but it is late, it is past my bedtime, and I am going to bed.
USConstitution.net
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