Betty Bower's
Blue States vs. Red States checklist
Blue States: Home of good schools
Red States: Homeskooled good
Blue States: Want a big tent for their Party.
Red States: Wears a big tent to her party.
Blue States: Favor electric cars
Red States: Favor electric chairs
Blue States: Concerned about ballooning deficits' effect on capital markets turning gains into thin air
Red States: Concerned about whether it's demons that make balloons float in thin air
Blue States: Dream of making enough money to kite and swim with Czechs in Biarritz
Red States: Dream of kiting enough checks to swim in Schlitz
Blue States: Favor institutionalized health care for the poor
Red States: Favor institutionalizing the poor
Blue States: After the 9/11 attacks, put coffins in the ground
Red States: After the 9/11 attacks, put magnetic flags on the car
Blue States: Forget that God did not give Adam a Steve
Red States: Forget that not only did God give Abraham three wives, He gave Solomon 300 concubines
Blue States: Enormous cities that serve as the engines of human progress
Red States: Enormous Hummers that serve as the engines for Arab oil
Blue States: Provide the "tax" part of "tax and spend"
Red States: Provide the "spend on a new 8-lane highway to link a Wal-Mart to the Olive Garden"
part of "tax and spend"
Blue States: Believe we're all brothers and sisters under the skin.
Red States: Don't mind if we're brothers and sisters under the sheets.
Blue States: Fighting to clean up skid row
Red States: Fighting to clean up skid marks
Blue States: Concerned about global warming
Red States: Don't like to travel and are too fat to fit in an airline seat anyway, so glad to hear that the tropics are coming to Texas. Yee-haw!
Blue States: Follow Jesus, but doesn't believe in Him
Red States: Believe in Jesus, but doesn't follow Him
Blue States: Want to repeal the Patriot Act
Red States: Want to repeal the Emancipation Proclamation
Blue States: Looking for a method to weaken China every day
Red States: Sold everyday china for a weekend of meth
Blue States: Favor drafting annoying laws on assault rifles
Red States: Assault annoying in-laws with rifles after being drafted
Blue States: Want the right for everyone to worship as they choose
Red States: Want the right to choose everyone's worship
Blue States: Women wrestling with the right to choose
Red States: Choose women's wrestling
Blue States: Want a rational energy policy
Red States: Want policy of energetic irrationalism
Blue States: Used benefits to assist victims on account of attacks
Red States: Used attacks to benefit Toby Keith's bank account
Blue States: Watched friends in New York die in foxy attacks on America
Red States: Attack New York on Fox for not being friends of America
Blue States: Believe God loves us and gave everyone free will to be different
Red States: Believe God willed us to freely hate everyone different
Blue States: Believe absence makes the heart grow fonder
Red States: Believe abstinence saves the tart from plunder
Blue States: Believe in Mr. Darwin's theory of "Evolution"
Red States: Believe in Mr. Jesus' "Talking Snake" theory
Blue States: Slave to pay inheritance taxes
Red States: Inherited slaves
Blue States: Buy art
Red States: Collect Beanie Babies
Tuesday, November 09, 2004
The One Nice Thing to Consider
I've been thinking of reasons not to lose all hope with Bush rigging another victory, and I have finally come up with an idea that splits my woes in half.
Bush was "elected" for four more years, but crooks in office like Nixon had two years of his second term before he was busted and made to leave in disgrace.
Watergate was minor compared to ballot tampering and so many other capers Bush has pulled off.
But even without crimes sticking to Bush, he'll still be a lame duck without the clout to force the Republicans to continue to do his bidding.
Within two years, the other GOP scalawags will be jockeying for power, and Bush will be politely ignored.
Even in today's news, a federal judge ruled that Bush had both overstepped his constitutional bounds and improperly brushed aside the Geneva Conventions in establishing military commissions to try detainees as war criminals.
And with Bush's military killing off record numbers of Iraqi civilians in Bush's victory celebration attack on Fallujah, I suspect Iraqi support for U.S. occupation might still have some ample dwindle room.
I'll bet even as we speak, Karl Rove is busily thinking up more palatable phrases than, "instituting a draft" or "selective service."
I think all Bush ever really wanted to do was show his daddy he could grab two terms, and now that he has, he's likely to lose interest in the hard, hard work it takes to be Reign Man.
It's a pity we had to take part in Bush's unresolved Oedipal issues, but it might be fun to watch him crumble, still trying unsuccessfully to win the love and respect of his big dyke mommy.
I've been thinking of reasons not to lose all hope with Bush rigging another victory, and I have finally come up with an idea that splits my woes in half.
Bush was "elected" for four more years, but crooks in office like Nixon had two years of his second term before he was busted and made to leave in disgrace.
Watergate was minor compared to ballot tampering and so many other capers Bush has pulled off.
But even without crimes sticking to Bush, he'll still be a lame duck without the clout to force the Republicans to continue to do his bidding.
Within two years, the other GOP scalawags will be jockeying for power, and Bush will be politely ignored.
Even in today's news, a federal judge ruled that Bush had both overstepped his constitutional bounds and improperly brushed aside the Geneva Conventions in establishing military commissions to try detainees as war criminals.
And with Bush's military killing off record numbers of Iraqi civilians in Bush's victory celebration attack on Fallujah, I suspect Iraqi support for U.S. occupation might still have some ample dwindle room.
I'll bet even as we speak, Karl Rove is busily thinking up more palatable phrases than, "instituting a draft" or "selective service."
I think all Bush ever really wanted to do was show his daddy he could grab two terms, and now that he has, he's likely to lose interest in the hard, hard work it takes to be Reign Man.
It's a pity we had to take part in Bush's unresolved Oedipal issues, but it might be fun to watch him crumble, still trying unsuccessfully to win the love and respect of his big dyke mommy.
Monday, November 08, 2004
Another Stolen Bush Election?
Evidence Mounts That The Vote May Have Been Hacked
by Thom Hartmann / Common Dreams Nov. 6, 2004
When I spoke with Jeff Fisher this morning (Saturday,
November 06, 2004), the Democratic candidate for the
U.S. House of Representatives from Florida's 16th
District said he was waiting for the FBI to show up.
Fisher has evidence, he says, not only that the
Florida election was hacked, but of who hacked it and
how. And not just this year, he said, but that these
same people had previously hacked the Democratic
primary race in 2002 so that Jeb Bush would not have
to run against Janet Reno, who presented a real threat
to Jeb, but instead against Bill McBride, who Jeb
beat.
"It was practice for a national effort," Fisher told me.
And evidence is accumulating that the national effort
happened on November 2, 2004.
The State of Florida, for example, publishes a
county-by-county record of votes cast and people
registered to vote by party affiliation. Net denizen
Kathy Dopp compiled the official state information
into a table, available at
http://ustogether.org/Florida_Election.htm, and
noticed something startling.
While the heavily scrutinized touch-screen voting
machines seemed to produce results in which the
registered Democrat/Republican ratios matched the
Kerry/Bush vote, and so did the optically scanned
paper ballots in the larger counties, in Florida's
smaller counties the results from the optically
scanned paper ballots - fed into a central tabulator
PC and thus vulnerable to hacking - seem to have been
reversed.
In Baker County, for example, with 12,887 registered
voters, 69.3% of them Democrats and 24.3% of them
Republicans, the vote was only 2,180 for Kerry and
7,738 for Bush, the opposite of what is seen
everywhere else in the country where registered
Democrats largely voted for Kerry.
In Dixie County, with 4,988 registered voters, 77.5%
of them Democrats and a mere 15% registered as
Republicans, only 1,959 people voted for Kerry, but
4,433 voted for Bush.
The pattern repeats over and over again - but only in
the smaller counties where, it was probably assumed,
the small voter numbers wouldn't be much noticed.
Franklin County, 77.3% registered Democrats, went
58.5% for Bush. Holmes County, 72.7% registered
Democrats, went 77.25% for Bush.
Yet in the larger counties, where such anomalies would
be more obvious to the news media, high percentages of
registered Democrats equaled high percentages of votes
for Kerry.
More visual analysis of the results can be seen at
http://ustogether.org/election04/FloridaDataStats.htm,
and www.rubberbug.com/temp/Florida2004chart.htm.
And, although elections officials didn't notice these
anomalies, in aggregate they were enough to swing
Florida from Kerry to Bush. If you simply go through
the analysis of these counties and reverse the
"anomalous" numbers in those counties that appear to
have been hacked, suddenly the Florida election
results resemble the Florida exit poll results: Kerry
won, and won big.
Those exit poll results have been a problem for
reporters ever since Election Day.
Election night, I'd been doing live election coverage
for WDEV, one of the radio stations that carries my
syndicated show, and, just after midnight, during the
12:20 a.m. Associated Press Radio News feed, I was
startled to hear the reporter detail how Karen Hughes
had earlier sat George W. Bush down to inform him that
he'd lost the election. The exit polls were clear:
Kerry was winning in a landslide. "Bush took the news
stoically," noted the AP report.
But then the computers reported something different.
In several pivotal states.
Conservatives see a conspiracy here: They think the
exit polls were rigged.
Dick Morris, the infamous political consultant to the
first Clinton campaign who became a Republican
consultant and Fox News regular, wrote an article for
The Hill, the publication read by every political
junkie in Washington, DC, in which he made a couple of
brilliant points.
"Exit Polls are almost never wrong," Morris wrote.
"They eliminate the two major potential fallacies in
survey research by correctly separating actual voters
from those who pretend they will cast ballots but
never do and by substituting actual observation for
guesswork in judging the relative turnout of different
parts of the state."
He added: "So, according to ABC-TVs exit polls, for
example, Kerry was slated to carry Florida, Ohio, New
Mexico, Colorado, Nevada, and Iowa, all of which Bush
carried. The only swing state the network had going to
Bush was West Virginia, which the president won by 10
points."
Yet a few hours after the exit polls were showing a
clear Kerry sweep, as the computerized vote numbers
began to come in from the various states the election
was called for Bush.
How could this happen?
On the CNBC TV show "Topic A With Tina Brown," several
months ago, Howard Dean had filled in for Tina Brown
as guest host. His guest was Bev Harris, the Seattle
grandmother who started www.blackboxvoting.org from
her living room. Bev pointed out that regardless of
how votes were tabulated (other than hand counts, only
done in odd places like small towns in Vermont), the
real "counting" is done by computers. Be they Diebold
Opti-Scan machines, which read paper ballots filled in
by pencil or ink in the voter's hand, or the scanners
that read punch cards, or the machines that simply
record a touch of the screen, in all cases the final
tally is sent to a "central tabulator" machine.
That central tabulator computer is a Windows-based PC.
"In a voting system," Harris explained to Dean on
national television, "you have all the different
voting machines at all the different polling places,
sometimes, as in a county like mine, there's a
thousand polling places in a single county. All those
machines feed into the one machine so it can add up
all the votes. So, of course, if you were going to do
something you shouldn't to a voting machine, would it
be more convenient to do it to each of the 4000
machines, or just come in here and deal with all of
them at once?"
Dean nodded in rhetorical agreement, and Harris
continued. "What surprises people is that the central
tabulator is just a PC, like what you and I use. It's
just a regular computer."
"So," Dean said, "anybody who can hack into a PC can
hack into a central tabulator?"
Harris nodded affirmation, and pointed out how Diebold
uses a program called GEMS, which fills the screen of
the PC and effectively turns it into the central
tabulator system. "This is the official program that
the County Supervisor sees," she said, pointing to a
PC that was sitting between them loaded with Diebold's
software.
Bev then had Dean open the GEMS program to see the
results of a test election. They went to the screen
titled "Election Summary Report" and waited a moment
while the PC "adds up all the votes from all the
various precincts," and then saw that in this faux
election Howard Dean had 1000 votes, Lex Luthor had
500, and Tiger Woods had none. Dean was winning.
"Of course, you can't tamper with this software,"
Harris noted. Diebold wrote a pretty good program.
But, it's running on a Windows PC.
So Harris had Dean close the Diebold GEMS software, go
back to the normal Windows PC desktop, click on the
"My Computer" icon, choose "Local Disk C:," open the
folder titled GEMS, and open the sub-folder "LocalDB"
which, Harris noted, "stands for local database,
that's where they keep the votes." Harris then had
Dean double-click on a file in that folder titled
"Central Tabulator Votes," which caused the PC to open
the vote count in a database program like Excel.
In the "Sum of the Candidates" row of numbers, she
found that in one precinct Dean had received 800 votes
and Lex Luthor had gotten 400.
"Let's just flip those," Harris said, as Dean cut and
pasted the numbers from one cell into the other.
"And," she added magnanimously, "let's give 100 votes
to Tiger."
They closed the database, went back into the official
GEMS software "the legitimate way, you're the county
supervisor and you're checking on the progress of your
election."
As the screen displayed the official voter tabulation,
Harris said, "And you can see now that Howard Dean has
only 500 votes, Lex Luthor has 900, and Tiger Woods
has 100." Dean, the winner, was now the loser.
Harris sat up a bit straighter, smiled, and said, "We just edited
an election, and it took us 90 seconds."
On live national television. (You can see the clip on
www.votergate.tv)
Which brings us back to Morris and those pesky exit
polls that had Karen Hughes telling George W. Bush
that he'd lost the election in a landslide.
Morris's conspiracy theory is that the exit polls
"were sabotage" to cause people in the western states
to not bother voting for Bush, since the networks
would call the election based on the exit polls for
Kerry. But the networks didn't do that, and had never
intended to. It makes far more sense that the exit
polls were right - they weren't done on Diebold PCs -
and that the vote itself was hacked.
And not only for the presidential candidate - Jeff
Fisher thinks this hit him and pretty much every other
Democratic candidate for national office in the
most-hacked swing states.
So far, the only national "mainstream" media to come
close to this story was Keith Olbermann on his show
Friday night, November 5th, when he noted that it was
curious that all the voting machine irregularities so
far uncovered seem to favor Bush. In the meantime, the
Washington Post and other media are now going through
single-bullet-theory-like contortions to explain how
the exit polls had failed.
But I agree with Fox's Dick Morris on this one, at
least in large part. Wrapping up his story for The
Hill, Morris wrote in his final paragraph, "This was
no mere mistake. Exit polls cannot be as wrong across
the board as they were on election night. I suspect
foul play."
Evidence Mounts That The Vote May Have Been Hacked
by Thom Hartmann / Common Dreams Nov. 6, 2004
When I spoke with Jeff Fisher this morning (Saturday,
November 06, 2004), the Democratic candidate for the
U.S. House of Representatives from Florida's 16th
District said he was waiting for the FBI to show up.
Fisher has evidence, he says, not only that the
Florida election was hacked, but of who hacked it and
how. And not just this year, he said, but that these
same people had previously hacked the Democratic
primary race in 2002 so that Jeb Bush would not have
to run against Janet Reno, who presented a real threat
to Jeb, but instead against Bill McBride, who Jeb
beat.
"It was practice for a national effort," Fisher told me.
And evidence is accumulating that the national effort
happened on November 2, 2004.
The State of Florida, for example, publishes a
county-by-county record of votes cast and people
registered to vote by party affiliation. Net denizen
Kathy Dopp compiled the official state information
into a table, available at
http://ustogether.org/Florida_Election.htm, and
noticed something startling.
While the heavily scrutinized touch-screen voting
machines seemed to produce results in which the
registered Democrat/Republican ratios matched the
Kerry/Bush vote, and so did the optically scanned
paper ballots in the larger counties, in Florida's
smaller counties the results from the optically
scanned paper ballots - fed into a central tabulator
PC and thus vulnerable to hacking - seem to have been
reversed.
In Baker County, for example, with 12,887 registered
voters, 69.3% of them Democrats and 24.3% of them
Republicans, the vote was only 2,180 for Kerry and
7,738 for Bush, the opposite of what is seen
everywhere else in the country where registered
Democrats largely voted for Kerry.
In Dixie County, with 4,988 registered voters, 77.5%
of them Democrats and a mere 15% registered as
Republicans, only 1,959 people voted for Kerry, but
4,433 voted for Bush.
The pattern repeats over and over again - but only in
the smaller counties where, it was probably assumed,
the small voter numbers wouldn't be much noticed.
Franklin County, 77.3% registered Democrats, went
58.5% for Bush. Holmes County, 72.7% registered
Democrats, went 77.25% for Bush.
Yet in the larger counties, where such anomalies would
be more obvious to the news media, high percentages of
registered Democrats equaled high percentages of votes
for Kerry.
More visual analysis of the results can be seen at
http://ustogether.org/election04/FloridaDataStats.htm,
and www.rubberbug.com/temp/Florida2004chart.htm.
And, although elections officials didn't notice these
anomalies, in aggregate they were enough to swing
Florida from Kerry to Bush. If you simply go through
the analysis of these counties and reverse the
"anomalous" numbers in those counties that appear to
have been hacked, suddenly the Florida election
results resemble the Florida exit poll results: Kerry
won, and won big.
Those exit poll results have been a problem for
reporters ever since Election Day.
Election night, I'd been doing live election coverage
for WDEV, one of the radio stations that carries my
syndicated show, and, just after midnight, during the
12:20 a.m. Associated Press Radio News feed, I was
startled to hear the reporter detail how Karen Hughes
had earlier sat George W. Bush down to inform him that
he'd lost the election. The exit polls were clear:
Kerry was winning in a landslide. "Bush took the news
stoically," noted the AP report.
But then the computers reported something different.
In several pivotal states.
Conservatives see a conspiracy here: They think the
exit polls were rigged.
Dick Morris, the infamous political consultant to the
first Clinton campaign who became a Republican
consultant and Fox News regular, wrote an article for
The Hill, the publication read by every political
junkie in Washington, DC, in which he made a couple of
brilliant points.
"Exit Polls are almost never wrong," Morris wrote.
"They eliminate the two major potential fallacies in
survey research by correctly separating actual voters
from those who pretend they will cast ballots but
never do and by substituting actual observation for
guesswork in judging the relative turnout of different
parts of the state."
He added: "So, according to ABC-TVs exit polls, for
example, Kerry was slated to carry Florida, Ohio, New
Mexico, Colorado, Nevada, and Iowa, all of which Bush
carried. The only swing state the network had going to
Bush was West Virginia, which the president won by 10
points."
Yet a few hours after the exit polls were showing a
clear Kerry sweep, as the computerized vote numbers
began to come in from the various states the election
was called for Bush.
How could this happen?
On the CNBC TV show "Topic A With Tina Brown," several
months ago, Howard Dean had filled in for Tina Brown
as guest host. His guest was Bev Harris, the Seattle
grandmother who started www.blackboxvoting.org from
her living room. Bev pointed out that regardless of
how votes were tabulated (other than hand counts, only
done in odd places like small towns in Vermont), the
real "counting" is done by computers. Be they Diebold
Opti-Scan machines, which read paper ballots filled in
by pencil or ink in the voter's hand, or the scanners
that read punch cards, or the machines that simply
record a touch of the screen, in all cases the final
tally is sent to a "central tabulator" machine.
That central tabulator computer is a Windows-based PC.
"In a voting system," Harris explained to Dean on
national television, "you have all the different
voting machines at all the different polling places,
sometimes, as in a county like mine, there's a
thousand polling places in a single county. All those
machines feed into the one machine so it can add up
all the votes. So, of course, if you were going to do
something you shouldn't to a voting machine, would it
be more convenient to do it to each of the 4000
machines, or just come in here and deal with all of
them at once?"
Dean nodded in rhetorical agreement, and Harris
continued. "What surprises people is that the central
tabulator is just a PC, like what you and I use. It's
just a regular computer."
"So," Dean said, "anybody who can hack into a PC can
hack into a central tabulator?"
Harris nodded affirmation, and pointed out how Diebold
uses a program called GEMS, which fills the screen of
the PC and effectively turns it into the central
tabulator system. "This is the official program that
the County Supervisor sees," she said, pointing to a
PC that was sitting between them loaded with Diebold's
software.
Bev then had Dean open the GEMS program to see the
results of a test election. They went to the screen
titled "Election Summary Report" and waited a moment
while the PC "adds up all the votes from all the
various precincts," and then saw that in this faux
election Howard Dean had 1000 votes, Lex Luthor had
500, and Tiger Woods had none. Dean was winning.
"Of course, you can't tamper with this software,"
Harris noted. Diebold wrote a pretty good program.
But, it's running on a Windows PC.
So Harris had Dean close the Diebold GEMS software, go
back to the normal Windows PC desktop, click on the
"My Computer" icon, choose "Local Disk C:," open the
folder titled GEMS, and open the sub-folder "LocalDB"
which, Harris noted, "stands for local database,
that's where they keep the votes." Harris then had
Dean double-click on a file in that folder titled
"Central Tabulator Votes," which caused the PC to open
the vote count in a database program like Excel.
In the "Sum of the Candidates" row of numbers, she
found that in one precinct Dean had received 800 votes
and Lex Luthor had gotten 400.
"Let's just flip those," Harris said, as Dean cut and
pasted the numbers from one cell into the other.
"And," she added magnanimously, "let's give 100 votes
to Tiger."
They closed the database, went back into the official
GEMS software "the legitimate way, you're the county
supervisor and you're checking on the progress of your
election."
As the screen displayed the official voter tabulation,
Harris said, "And you can see now that Howard Dean has
only 500 votes, Lex Luthor has 900, and Tiger Woods
has 100." Dean, the winner, was now the loser.
Harris sat up a bit straighter, smiled, and said, "We just edited
an election, and it took us 90 seconds."
On live national television. (You can see the clip on
www.votergate.tv)
Which brings us back to Morris and those pesky exit
polls that had Karen Hughes telling George W. Bush
that he'd lost the election in a landslide.
Morris's conspiracy theory is that the exit polls
"were sabotage" to cause people in the western states
to not bother voting for Bush, since the networks
would call the election based on the exit polls for
Kerry. But the networks didn't do that, and had never
intended to. It makes far more sense that the exit
polls were right - they weren't done on Diebold PCs -
and that the vote itself was hacked.
And not only for the presidential candidate - Jeff
Fisher thinks this hit him and pretty much every other
Democratic candidate for national office in the
most-hacked swing states.
So far, the only national "mainstream" media to come
close to this story was Keith Olbermann on his show
Friday night, November 5th, when he noted that it was
curious that all the voting machine irregularities so
far uncovered seem to favor Bush. In the meantime, the
Washington Post and other media are now going through
single-bullet-theory-like contortions to explain how
the exit polls had failed.
But I agree with Fox's Dick Morris on this one, at
least in large part. Wrapping up his story for The
Hill, Morris wrote in his final paragraph, "This was
no mere mistake. Exit polls cannot be as wrong across
the board as they were on election night. I suspect
foul play."
Friday, November 05, 2004
Electile Dysfunction
I haven't been up to watching even a moment of post election coverage, but I did see a snippet of Bush talking last night on a clip The Daily Show aired.
His arrogance was worse than ever, and apparently he thinks he's earned some political capital that "he plans to spend." He said that's "his style." He thinks 3 million votes was a mandate.
He doesn't know a mandate from a mandrill.
I thought I could learn to accept four more years of this parallel universe political insanity, but I don't see how that will be possible.
I tried not to believe Diebold rigged the results in Ohio but the fact is, I do think they were rigged.
Only one good thing has come from this nightmare: my friend Barcodie redeemed himself as a class act. Otherwise, I see nothing but downside.
I am leaving town for the weekend.
I have to get away, get on the open road with the music blasting, and shake off these horrible feelings. I need to do it before gas prices double again.
I need to be around my family, all yellow dog Democrats, so we can commiserate.
I feel like the phoenix, just before she finishes molting and turns to ash.
I haven't been up to watching even a moment of post election coverage, but I did see a snippet of Bush talking last night on a clip The Daily Show aired.
His arrogance was worse than ever, and apparently he thinks he's earned some political capital that "he plans to spend." He said that's "his style." He thinks 3 million votes was a mandate.
He doesn't know a mandate from a mandrill.
I thought I could learn to accept four more years of this parallel universe political insanity, but I don't see how that will be possible.
I tried not to believe Diebold rigged the results in Ohio but the fact is, I do think they were rigged.
Only one good thing has come from this nightmare: my friend Barcodie redeemed himself as a class act. Otherwise, I see nothing but downside.
I am leaving town for the weekend.
I have to get away, get on the open road with the music blasting, and shake off these horrible feelings. I need to do it before gas prices double again.
I need to be around my family, all yellow dog Democrats, so we can commiserate.
I feel like the phoenix, just before she finishes molting and turns to ash.
Thursday, November 04, 2004
Survivor and Apprentice Tonight
Probably a Survivor merge is coming, so we'll get to see the true players start to emerge.
Who's out tonight? Stupid Julie or obnoxious Rory.
Who's tonight's MVP? Ami. Just because she's so hot in that bikini, and our eyes need something soothing after seeing that smirking chimp all fucking week. Plus, she bats for our team.
In The Apprentice, I just don't like Ivana.
I have no idea who'll get fired, but I'd just as soon choose her. She's annoying.
Your picks?
Probably a Survivor merge is coming, so we'll get to see the true players start to emerge.
Who's out tonight? Stupid Julie or obnoxious Rory.
Who's tonight's MVP? Ami. Just because she's so hot in that bikini, and our eyes need something soothing after seeing that smirking chimp all fucking week. Plus, she bats for our team.
In The Apprentice, I just don't like Ivana.
I have no idea who'll get fired, but I'd just as soon choose her. She's annoying.
Your picks?
Wednesday, November 03, 2004
My Aching Heart
I am not angry today. I am sad. To the core of my being, I feel nothing but abject, numbing sorrow.
Anger will have to wait until I can free myself from the paralysis of this sadness I feel.
One thing I did this election, besides contributing money, displaying signs and stickers and Blogging my heart out for Kerry, was to reach out to my next door neighbor kids.
Jason and Jesse are in their 20's, but they still live with their parents in a sheltered, Jehovah's Witness household.
Their parents are sweet people, but their religion prohibits political involvement, so they stay out of it. Their kids had been apolitical as well, until recently.
Over the summer, I took every opportunity to talk to the boys about the importance of this election.
Yesterday, they proudly told me they voted in their first-ever election. For Kerry.
Today, Jesse came by to say he was baking me some cookies as a conciliation gesture- and as a thank you, for taking the time to get him involved, interested and excited about politics.
He was so disappointed his first vote didn't turn out as he'd hoped- but then I reminded him that he, his brother and I had essentially canceled out Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld's votes.
It was a sweet and heartfelt exchange that took some of the chill from my frozen heart.
While I am indulging myself in this wash of disappointment and sorrow, I find solace in remembering this:
Before Nixon started running for his second term, Watergate was discovered.
He was reelected in spite of what seemed to many of us a smoking gun of epic proportions.
It took two years into his second term to nail him, but he was nailed, and so was his criminal Vice President Spiro Agnew, for income tax evasion.
They left office in disgrace.
Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
Let's all hope that adage remains true. Justice, like revenge, can be a dish best served cold.
But let's forget revenge- let's all just pray for justice.
I am not angry today. I am sad. To the core of my being, I feel nothing but abject, numbing sorrow.
Anger will have to wait until I can free myself from the paralysis of this sadness I feel.
One thing I did this election, besides contributing money, displaying signs and stickers and Blogging my heart out for Kerry, was to reach out to my next door neighbor kids.
Jason and Jesse are in their 20's, but they still live with their parents in a sheltered, Jehovah's Witness household.
Their parents are sweet people, but their religion prohibits political involvement, so they stay out of it. Their kids had been apolitical as well, until recently.
Over the summer, I took every opportunity to talk to the boys about the importance of this election.
Yesterday, they proudly told me they voted in their first-ever election. For Kerry.
Today, Jesse came by to say he was baking me some cookies as a conciliation gesture- and as a thank you, for taking the time to get him involved, interested and excited about politics.
He was so disappointed his first vote didn't turn out as he'd hoped- but then I reminded him that he, his brother and I had essentially canceled out Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld's votes.
It was a sweet and heartfelt exchange that took some of the chill from my frozen heart.
While I am indulging myself in this wash of disappointment and sorrow, I find solace in remembering this:
Before Nixon started running for his second term, Watergate was discovered.
He was reelected in spite of what seemed to many of us a smoking gun of epic proportions.
It took two years into his second term to nail him, but he was nailed, and so was his criminal Vice President Spiro Agnew, for income tax evasion.
They left office in disgrace.
Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
Let's all hope that adage remains true. Justice, like revenge, can be a dish best served cold.
But let's forget revenge- let's all just pray for justice.
Giving Barcodeking his Due
As everyone knows, I lost $100 bet when Kerry lost the election.
I received the following e-mail from the winner of the bet, my politcal nemesis Barcodie, and I have to respect his constraint.
"Hi Karen,
It's over. Kerry has done the gracious thing and the right thing for the country. Don't feel bad. Your side fought the good fight for what you believed was right, just as the Confederates did during the Civil War. This time, unlike the last election, there really is no doubt whatsoever about who won. I'm glad that President Bush got a majority of the popular vote and a wide margin of victory, as well as the most votes ever cast for a U.S. president in our history. Those with "Selected Not Elected" bumper stickers on their Volvos will have to scrape them off.
In the words of a great Republican:
With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan--to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves, and with all nations.
--Abraham Lincoln, Second Inaugural Address, March 4, 1865
Lincoln knew that you had to win the war first, but that it was possible to be magnanimous in victory.
You can send the $100 to the Red Cross Disaster Relief Fund."
I will soon be sending the Red Cross a check, with instructions to apply the contribution to disaster relief in Clyde's home state of Florida.
I think Clyde deserves a pat on the back for being a most gracious winner.
As everyone knows, I lost $100 bet when Kerry lost the election.
I received the following e-mail from the winner of the bet, my politcal nemesis Barcodie, and I have to respect his constraint.
"Hi Karen,
It's over. Kerry has done the gracious thing and the right thing for the country. Don't feel bad. Your side fought the good fight for what you believed was right, just as the Confederates did during the Civil War. This time, unlike the last election, there really is no doubt whatsoever about who won. I'm glad that President Bush got a majority of the popular vote and a wide margin of victory, as well as the most votes ever cast for a U.S. president in our history. Those with "Selected Not Elected" bumper stickers on their Volvos will have to scrape them off.
In the words of a great Republican:
With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan--to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves, and with all nations.
--Abraham Lincoln, Second Inaugural Address, March 4, 1865
Lincoln knew that you had to win the war first, but that it was possible to be magnanimous in victory.
You can send the $100 to the Red Cross Disaster Relief Fund."
I will soon be sending the Red Cross a check, with instructions to apply the contribution to disaster relief in Clyde's home state of Florida.
I think Clyde deserves a pat on the back for being a most gracious winner.
Tuesday, November 02, 2004
The World Is Waiting
If you are reading this and have not yet voted, log off your computer, rush to the polls and cast a vote.
If you are tired of the roller coaster Bush has had us on since the Supreme Court appointed him, vote him out.
If you have to wait in line all day, cast your vote.
If you have to hitchhike, get to the polls.
This is the most important election America has ever held.
In a close race, your vote could be the one that decides whether we endure four more years of oppression, secrecy, lies, venomous partisanship and war, or renewed prosperity and a safer, saner country.
In the comments section, tell us you voted.
Lurkers, please delurk for this one day and tell us you voted.
If you are reading this and have not yet voted, log off your computer, rush to the polls and cast a vote.
If you are tired of the roller coaster Bush has had us on since the Supreme Court appointed him, vote him out.
If you have to wait in line all day, cast your vote.
If you have to hitchhike, get to the polls.
This is the most important election America has ever held.
In a close race, your vote could be the one that decides whether we endure four more years of oppression, secrecy, lies, venomous partisanship and war, or renewed prosperity and a safer, saner country.
In the comments section, tell us you voted.
Lurkers, please delurk for this one day and tell us you voted.
Monday, November 01, 2004
I Am George W. Bush and I Improve of This Ad
My Fellow Americans, I am asking for your vote to be your next president but don't take my word for it, listen to my words from before so you'll know I have licked the learning curveball and mastered the hard, hard work of becoming more of a presidential.
These are quotes from my presidential quotations:
"Too many good docs are getting out of the business. Too many OB/GYN's aren't able to practice their love with women all across the country."
"Free societies are hopeful societies. And free societies will be allies against these hateful few who have no conscience, who kill at the whim of a hat."
"That's why I went to the Congress last September and proposed fundamental supplemental funding, which is money for armor and body parts and ammunition and fuel."
"I didn't join the International Criminal Court because I don't want to put our troops in the hands of prosecutors from other nations. Look, if somebody has done some wrong in our military, we'll take care of it. We got plenty of capability of dealing with justice."
"Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we," he said. "They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we."
"But the true strength of America is found in the hearts and souls of people like Travis, people who are willing to love their neighbor, just like they would like to love themselves."
"More Muslims have died at the hands of killers than I say more Muslims a lot of Muslims have died I don't know the exact count at Istanbul. Look at these different places around the world where there's been tremendous death and destruction because killers kill."
"I want to remind you all that I -- in order to fight and win the war, it requires a expenditure of money that is commiserate with keeping a promise to our troops to make sure that they're well-paid, well-trained, well-equipped."
"As you know, these are open forums, you're able to come and listen to what I have to say."
"The ambassador and the general were briefing me on the -- the vast majority of Iraqis want to live in a peaceful, free world. And we will find these people and we will bring them to justice."
"This is historic times....whether they be Christian, Jew, or Muslim, or Hindu, people have heard the universal call to love a neighbor just like they'd like to be called themselves.
"Washington is a town where there's all kinds of allegations. You've heard much of the allegations. And if people have got solid information, please come forward with it. And that would be people inside the information who are the so-called anonymous sources, or people outside the information, outside the administration."
"...that's just the nature of democracy. Sometimes pure politics enters into the rhetoric."
"Security is the essential roadblock to achieving the road map to peace."
"It's very interesting when you think about it, the slaves who left here to go to America, because of their steadfast and their religion and their belief in freedom, helped change America."
"You've also got to measure in order to begin to effect change that's just more—when there's more than talk, there's just actual—a paradigm shift."
"All up and down the different aspects of our society, we had meaningful discussions. Not only in the Cabinet Room, but prior to this and after this day, our secretaries, respective secretaries, will continue to interact to create the conditions necessary for prosperity to reign."
"We are on the look. We will reveal the truth. But one thing is certain. No terrorist network will gain weapons of mass destruction from the Iraqi regime, because the Iraqi regime is no more,"
"I am determined to keep the process on the road to peace."
"I recently met with the finance minister of the Palestinian Authority, was very impressed by his grasp of finances."
"Oftentimes, we live in a processed world—you know, people focus on the process and not results."
"Israel has got responsibilities. Israel must deal with the settlements. Israel must make sure there's a continuous territory that Palestinians call home." (The White House, which late in the day produced a transcript of Mr. Bush's remarks, put the word "contiguous" in parentheses after "continuous," to indicate that "contiguous" was what Mr. Bush had meant.
"All up and down the different aspects of our society, we had meaningful discussions. Not only in the Cabinet Room, but prior to this and after this day, our secretaries, respective secretaries, will continue to interact to create the conditions necessary for prosperity to reign."
"We ended the rule of one of history's worst tyrants, and in so doing, we not only freed the American people, we made our own people more secure."
"I don't bring God into my life to—to, you know, kind of be a political person."
"Let freedom reign."
Folks, if you elect me your president, together we can make the pie higher. Be sure and vote on November 3 and make it a vote for Bush, and a more encroachable America.
My Fellow Americans, I am asking for your vote to be your next president but don't take my word for it, listen to my words from before so you'll know I have licked the learning curveball and mastered the hard, hard work of becoming more of a presidential.
These are quotes from my presidential quotations:
"Too many good docs are getting out of the business. Too many OB/GYN's aren't able to practice their love with women all across the country."
"Free societies are hopeful societies. And free societies will be allies against these hateful few who have no conscience, who kill at the whim of a hat."
"That's why I went to the Congress last September and proposed fundamental supplemental funding, which is money for armor and body parts and ammunition and fuel."
"I didn't join the International Criminal Court because I don't want to put our troops in the hands of prosecutors from other nations. Look, if somebody has done some wrong in our military, we'll take care of it. We got plenty of capability of dealing with justice."
"Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we," he said. "They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we."
"But the true strength of America is found in the hearts and souls of people like Travis, people who are willing to love their neighbor, just like they would like to love themselves."
"More Muslims have died at the hands of killers than I say more Muslims a lot of Muslims have died I don't know the exact count at Istanbul. Look at these different places around the world where there's been tremendous death and destruction because killers kill."
"I want to remind you all that I -- in order to fight and win the war, it requires a expenditure of money that is commiserate with keeping a promise to our troops to make sure that they're well-paid, well-trained, well-equipped."
"As you know, these are open forums, you're able to come and listen to what I have to say."
"The ambassador and the general were briefing me on the -- the vast majority of Iraqis want to live in a peaceful, free world. And we will find these people and we will bring them to justice."
"This is historic times....whether they be Christian, Jew, or Muslim, or Hindu, people have heard the universal call to love a neighbor just like they'd like to be called themselves.
"Washington is a town where there's all kinds of allegations. You've heard much of the allegations. And if people have got solid information, please come forward with it. And that would be people inside the information who are the so-called anonymous sources, or people outside the information, outside the administration."
"...that's just the nature of democracy. Sometimes pure politics enters into the rhetoric."
"Security is the essential roadblock to achieving the road map to peace."
"It's very interesting when you think about it, the slaves who left here to go to America, because of their steadfast and their religion and their belief in freedom, helped change America."
"You've also got to measure in order to begin to effect change that's just more—when there's more than talk, there's just actual—a paradigm shift."
"All up and down the different aspects of our society, we had meaningful discussions. Not only in the Cabinet Room, but prior to this and after this day, our secretaries, respective secretaries, will continue to interact to create the conditions necessary for prosperity to reign."
"We are on the look. We will reveal the truth. But one thing is certain. No terrorist network will gain weapons of mass destruction from the Iraqi regime, because the Iraqi regime is no more,"
"I am determined to keep the process on the road to peace."
"I recently met with the finance minister of the Palestinian Authority, was very impressed by his grasp of finances."
"Oftentimes, we live in a processed world—you know, people focus on the process and not results."
"Israel has got responsibilities. Israel must deal with the settlements. Israel must make sure there's a continuous territory that Palestinians call home." (The White House, which late in the day produced a transcript of Mr. Bush's remarks, put the word "contiguous" in parentheses after "continuous," to indicate that "contiguous" was what Mr. Bush had meant.
"All up and down the different aspects of our society, we had meaningful discussions. Not only in the Cabinet Room, but prior to this and after this day, our secretaries, respective secretaries, will continue to interact to create the conditions necessary for prosperity to reign."
"We ended the rule of one of history's worst tyrants, and in so doing, we not only freed the American people, we made our own people more secure."
"I don't bring God into my life to—to, you know, kind of be a political person."
"Let freedom reign."
Folks, if you elect me your president, together we can make the pie higher. Be sure and vote on November 3 and make it a vote for Bush, and a more encroachable America.
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