Voting Update from MSNBC

A good opening sentence should grab the your interest and make you want to read more. What do you think of this one? "No Presidential candidate’s concession speech is legally binding."

Interested? Read the rest of Keith Olbermann's column here.

Voting Update from Slashdot.org

Origintally posted on slashdot.org by CmdrTaco on Monday November 08, @02:59PM


I've read dozens of submissions about election anomolies in the last week and they show no sign of slowing so I've decided to post a few of the main ones here to let you all discuss them. The first is the Common Dreams report that shows that optically scanned votes have a strange anomoly in florida: the Touchscreen counties roughly matched up to party registration numbers, but optically scanned paper ballot counties showed strangeness like one county where 69.3% registered democrat, but only 28% of them voted for Kerry.

Palm Beach County, Florida logged 88,000 more votes than there were voters; that machines in LaPorte, Michigan discounted 50,000 voters; in Columbus, Ohio voting machines gave Bush an extra 4,000 votes; in Broward County, Florida voting machines were counting backwards; Lastly, precincts in New Mexico gave provisional ballots that will never be counted to as many as 10% of all their voters.

10 x 10

A fascinating way to look at the world... a 10x10 grid of photos and words drawn hourly by an automated system that scans international news source RSS feeds. An incredible snapshot of the zeitgeist, with links back to the original articles. Go there.

Julia

The last thing that I did in Pennsylvania on election night, volunteering for the Kerry campaign, was to respond to a “visibility” emergency- a report of voter intimidation at a polling station in a suburb of Allentown. This turned out to be a wild goose chase (the disturbance was long over by the time we arrived), but it gave me the opportunity to drive there with an earnest man in his early forties named Mike. On the way, he asked me which issue had motivated me to work for Kerry. I laughed and said “all of them”, starting into my litany of the sins of the administration. He stopped me and said “Oh. For me, it was stem cell research”.

This seemed strangely “single-issue” to me so I asked him why. He told me that his 12 year old daughter, Julia, had almost completely lost her vision to retinitis pigmentosa, a progressive form of blindness. One of the promising treatments for this had apparently been based on embryonic stem cells, but recently this line of investigation has been severely limited by White House policy. His eyes started to tear up when he spoke about the last four years, about lost opportunities which might never be regained.

I was in a great mood. On the ground, it looked like Pennsylvania was going to swing into Kerry’s camp. I had a good feeling about the election. I told Mike that when I was celebrating the next day, I was going to remember him and I was going to think about Julia, and think about the day that she gets her vision back.

Funny, but even though the stakes this year were immeasurably higher and the loss so much more significant than in 2000, I don’t feel as robbed today as I did then. Our country knew very well what Bush had to offer, what he stood for. Enough of the country wanted that, and gave him a second term. I don’t want to go over the arguments again. The pundits have beaten them to death- online, offline, endlessly, eloquently and futilely.

To win in any competition, you have to know your opponent. When we oversimplify terrorism, when we say that they attack us because “they hate our freedom”, we hurt our own cause. A deep understanding of the other side is crucial to gaining any advantage. In the same way, the left tends to dismiss Bush supporters as monolithic, hateful, know-nothing bigots. While this may scratch some emotional itch for a frustrated opposition party, it is not true and will not help us to move forward. These are our fellow countrymen, our neighbors and our relatives. And I’ll bet that even the most progressive liberal out there has at least one friend who voted for the president. To understand what motivated a majority of American voters to choose Bush is vital. The Kerry campaign spent big money and time trying to figure this out, and missed the mark- that cost us dearly.

Bush won for two reasons. He won because he struck a chord in a large chunk of America. He inspired a passion in his supporters that was never matched by the admiration Kerry earned from his side, even though it was true and heartfelt. For the “culture war” Republicans, he was a life raft. He drew lines that they longed for in public policy- faith, abortion, gay marriage and so on. He drew new lines which solidified his base, like the line between Julia and her stem cell research. An ideologue will always beat a sober, competent steward when it comes to the loyalty of the faithful. A little bit of ideology isn’t always a bad thing, but it needs to be tempered with judgment and flexibility.

Bush also won because he gave people something that they desperately wanted, feeding a deep, visceral hunger. He lashed out with unrestrained anger and lethal force when we were feeling vulnerable and violated. Right or wrong, few presidents would have had the nerve to do what he did, and many in this country will love him forever for that. Second guessing his motives is a favorite pastime on the left, but it just didn’t matter in terms of the election. Each Bush supporter had his or her own personal justification for war- the inner spark that keeps the faith, no matter what happens in the outside world.

Fearmongering is bad on both sides; each of us needs to look at the other camp and try to understand that. I love our country and I want to see us do well- all of us. I know that you want the same thing, no matter how you voted. I want to keep alive the passions of the last four years, and win the next round. The eternal struggle for justice and progress doesn’t end with the election of 2004, and we are derelict of duty as citizens if we fall back into apathy.

And finally, I want to keep my promise to Mike and remember Julia today. I’m sorry, Julia. I did my best.



Michael Rothschild
November 3, 2004

Mandate

The Bush administration certainly lost no time in claiming a mandate after the election of 2004. While there is no clear definition of what a mandate is, the assumption is that the electorate has spoken so clearly that the minority opposition party can essentially be dismissed.

According to America, The Book, a great take on American History by the writers of the Daily Show, "...if a president receives more than 55% of the vote, he is said to have a mandate. If he receives less than 55% of the vote, he is said to 'not care about having a mandate'. "

While this point may be dismissed as liberal sour grapes, I am sure that if 70,000 votes had gone the other way in Ohio (one twentieth of one percent of the total votes cast in the country), no one would be talking about the death of the conservative movement in America...!

In any case, keep this graphic in mind:

Voting Irregularities

Hmmmm... there seems to be some interest in this. Might be just conspiracy theory stuff, and I'm not sure what would happen if something like this were proven at this point- Kerry has already conceded, and Bush is the legal president-elect. On the other hand, if it were provable that the margin in Ohio was fraudulent (as the exit polls suggested), there would likely be something close to civil war...

I can't imagine finding out the truth about this even if it were for real- anyone with the cojones to hack into electronic voting machines and fix an election in 2004 would probably be able to cover their tracks either by clever computer skills or covert lethal force. However, it's hard to read the article and not be concerned that there might be something there! Read it and draw your own conclusions.

Another organization looking into this is Black Box Voting, which is attempting to investigate electronic voting machine fraud in the 2004 election. Here is another take on this from common dreams.

Thinking of Moving North?

Here is a site that matches up singles in the United States with eligible Canadians, to save us from ourselves....!

Now THAT'S a global test...!

Got this in email, not sure where it comes from...

A Modest Proposal

MY MODEST PROPOSAL: THE U.S.A.R. 
By C. B. Shapiro
Graphic by Dave Ruderman



I feel bad for the Red States. 

Yes, they won the White House, Congress, the Supreme Court and most of the state houses.  But they still can't have the country they really want because the last few Blue States won't roll over.  So I am making a simple proposal:

Secession.  Divorce.  Splitsville.

Personally, I think we made a huge mistake not letting them go when we had the chance back in 1862.  Well, no time like the present to correct an old mistake.

Then, they would finally be free to have the kind of society they've always wanted; church and state can be fused so they build the kind of theocracy they've dreamt of, with Jesus at the helm.  Then the new USAR (United States of America Red) can ban books, repeal civil rights, persecute gays and have all the wars they like. They want prayer in schools?   More power to them.  They can ban abortion and post the Ten Commandments in every federal building in their country.  Bring back slavery, if they want.  We'll be free to live with our like-minded countrymen who believe in science, modernism, tolerance, religion as a personal choice, and truly want limited government intrusion in our personal lives.  Why should each side be driven mad by the other any more, decade after decade?

Call the Culture War a tie and everyone go home.

Of course, we in the U.S.A.B. get the Gross Domestic Product, businesses and universities of California, New York, Massachussetts -- basically the whole Northeast and Northwest (plus Illinois and Michigan if they want to come along).  They get Wal-Mart and Duke and most of the Nascar tracks.  But they can feel free to import movies, TV shows, financial services, and defense technology.  We'll import country music, bibles and Confederate flags.

The two countries will by necessity have open immigration policy: anyone who feels they are living in the wrong country can just move across the border, no questions asked.

Ultimately, why should I have to convince my fellow countrymen that Darwin may have had a point and that the word “liberal” is not equivalent to “godless communist?”  And why should they be forced to live in a country with morally corrupt non-believers?  I'll stay in the messy, free-thinking U.S.A.B.  And to the U.S.A.R. I say…

God bless you all, and see you at the U.N

For Your International Friends

Click here for messages from 48% of America...

Purple Haze

Jeff Culver from Seattle posted this on boingboing.net. This gives a much more realistic impression of the actual voter split accross the country, using shades of purple instead of the "winner take all" concept of red states and blue states.

Important Internet Legal Issue

Here is an article about a very important Internet topic- the use of notice-and-takedown laws to censor the Internet using the legal system. This piece was prompted by some pending Canadian legislation, but the implications are worldwide.

The Importance of Frames

Here is a good article (pre-election, but still valid) about the importance of framing one's position in political debate. As author Michael Erard points out:

"In this struggle to control political reality through language, you don’t dispute specific words or rebut the facts; you don’t even attack your opponents’ frames. What you do is assert your side’s frame, making it so big, so omnipresent, so unavoidable that it’s as natural as talking about the roundness of the Earth. Disputing such a fact seems counterintuitive. Even heretical."

Read the whole article here.

End-Time

Here is an interesting article about how "end-time" beliefs in radical Christianity can be at odds with environmentalism... if you feel that the end of days is near, why make any plans for the long term stewardship of the planet:
http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?ItemID=18008