Archive for the ‘Political’ Category
Tomorrow is the election finally. I will let you know how it goes at the polling place for us. We will be going as a family tomorrow with our eighteen year old daughter who will be voting for the first time. The only one missing is our son who will be voting in New Jersey. I urge you one and all to get out and vote. This election is too important not to.
I found this video and I thought I would share it with you. Enjoy.
We are in the home stretch of the election. This is the last weekend before Tuesday when the polls open up for everybody across our great nation. Early voting is going on even today as many places have extended hours and even days for those wishing to vote early. Turnout is tremendous with millions having already voted. No matter who you are in favor of getting the presidential office it is great that so many are out and voting. I subscribe to the feelings that if you do not vote you forfeit any right to complain what any of them do once they get into office. Not only for the office of president but all your elected officials. I am not one of the early voters as it is miles away to the election commission?where they are voting early and it is a mere hop and skip to my polling place. I do not know about your situation where you vote but here in South Carolina you can not wear any pins or shirts proclaiming who you intend to vote for. There is a law that prohibits campaigning withing 200 feet of a polling location and anything with the candidates on it slogan or whatever is considered campaigning. They won’t make you leave but they will insist that you cover up or remove any thing considered campaigning. As many of you already know I am no fan of Bush and am counting the days until he is gone. Right now it is 79 days and counting until he is out of the White House. Anyhow after much thought I have finally made my mind up for sure and I will go with Obama and vote straight Democratic ticket. This is something I have never done before. I always picked and chose each candidate on their merits. Lindsey Graham is up for reelection to and I may change my mind about the straight ticket yet. Oh well I said I was 100% mind made up but perhaps I am a little shy of 100%.
What I had intended to write about was the fact that after these elections the States of Virginia and Maryland are going to scrap touch screen voting machines in favor of old school paper ballots. I will?write more on that issue in the future as I strongly feel that there must be accountability in vote counting. The battle for the hearts and minds of voters on whether electronic systems are good or bad has been lost. The academics and computer scientists who said they were unreliable?have won that battle. At least in those two states. Now for the rest of them.
With election day fast approaching and thousands of early voters standing in lines for hours in some states it looks like we are going to have a record turnout at the polls this year. I hope we do not have any problems with voting machines like is being reported in at least two counties in West Virginia. According to the Charleston Gazette three Putnam county voters claim the touch screen voter machine changed their ballots from Obama to McCain. They also had three voters making the same claim in Jackson county. In both counties Republicans are overseeing the elections. They claim this is an isolated incident and that the voters themselves were responsible by not being more careful. Myself I hope they are correct and this is an isolated incident as we do not need anyone to feel like the vote count is not correct. I used a quote attributed to Joseph Stalin as the title to a recent post as it fits so aptly, Those Who Cast The Votes Decide Nothing. Those Who Count The Votes Decide Everything.
The last presidential debate is over and the candidates are steady feeding us a diet of bullshit. Both stretch the truth when it comes to the other ones record. I hate to out and out call either one a liar as that is a little harsh. Stretching or bending the truth will have to do in this instance. We are down to the home stretch and it looks like Obama has a slight lead in the polls which may or may not mean anything at all. Unless something happens to change my mind in the few days we have left I will be voting for Obama on November 4th. I have always liked McCain but am afraid his policies are still too close to Bush’s to suit me. I know he plainly told Obama that if he wanted to run against Bush he should have ran 4 years ago but 9 times out of 10 he has sided with Bush and I wouldn’t trust him to do anything right or tell us the truth either. Thank goodness he is leaving anyway it goes. One of my biggest concerns after McCain being tied to closely to Bush is his choice of running mates. I do not think she has the experience to be vice president and heaven forbid president. Plus there is the issue of her abusing power when she was mayor and then governor. Then the fact that her husband was behind the scenes meddling also. Would we end up with her husband pulling strings with officials like he did in Alaska? That is something I don’t really want to find out it will be much better if there is not even the chance for her to abuse power and let her husband use her office for his own vendettas.
As the election draws near, in Governor Palins home state of Alaska the report on abuse of power by the governors office is released. The Alaska legislative investigation finds that Palin violated state laws and abused her power by trying to have her former brother-in-law fired as a state trooper. Public office is no place to conduct a personal vendetta against anyone. Once again I see reason why I feel that Palin is not ready to be Vice President, and heaven forbid, President. Even more disturbing than her?unlawful acts and abuse of power while in office is the fact that her husband Todd was leading the way in the attempt to get his ex brother in law fired. Gov. Palin knowingly “permitted Todd to use the Governor’s office and the resources of the Governor’s office, including access to state employees, to continue to contact subordinate state employees in an effort to find some way to get Trooper Wooten fired. If she is elected will he be running things in the background of her office? Using her power to conduct his own agenda while using her office to empower him? I did not think that she was ready to be President and that is the criteria that we need to think of when voting as she will be a mere moment away from being President. This only reinforces my feelings that she is not ready for the office of Vice President. The only good thing about her running for office is the hilarious skits performed on Saturday Night Live depicting her. Whats bad though is Tina Fay merely had to use the governors own words to get laughs from the audience. Its sad McCain picked such as her for his running mate. He might have made a good President but I certainly can not vote for him because of her.
Like many of you ?I watched the Vice Presidential debate last night and was not impressed at all with Governor Palin. Between her dodging the questions put to her and instead talking about whatever subject she felt she knew best and her flirtatious winking to the camera I was very much put off by her. She reminded me of a beauty queen who is used to getting anything her way by simply using her good looks and flirting with some sucker of a man she can manipulate. I am sure there are plenty of men and perhaps women that were taken in by her looks and personality last night during the debate, but I for one am not one of them. I wanted to see someone who knew what she was talking about and was able to answer the questions put forth to her. Even when she did speak she was not factual. At one point she skirted a question and went to taxes claiming that Obama had voted 94 times to raise taxes. Well I thought I might look this up and see if she is correct and Obama had been lying himself. According to factcheck.org this is not true. According to them 23 of the votes were for measures that would have produced no tax increase at all, seven were in favor of measures that would have lowered taxes for many, 11 would have increased taxes on only those making more than $1 million a year and many of them were duplicate votes.
I know Biden made some misstatements himself like when he falsely claimed that McCain had voted against a failed bill to fund our troops with a deadline for withdrawal included. In actuality McCain never even voted one way or the other as he didn’t bother to even show up to vote for troop funding. I still have misgivings about eh Obama, Biden ticket but am definitely afraid of putting McCain in power with a Vice President that hasn’t a clue and could easily be President if something were to happen to a 72 year old McCain.
Bev Harris of Black Box Voting, has done us all a favor and released her 2008 Election Protection toolkit as an ebook. It’s like Cliff notes of Bev’s 8+ years of experience on the front lines of the modern voting rights movement. The ebook great information to get us actively involved in our democracy. The target audience is those who believe that the political process requires more than just showing up to vote once every four years those who know that somethings up with those voting machines that leave no paper trail or any other real evidence of the vote. You may remember Bev Harris from her Emmy-nominated HBO documentary ‘Hacking Democracy.’ I’ve been working on election integrity issues in Ohio for some time now and have met Bev several times. Her work is nothing less than groundbreaking. Please check it out.
The Security Group at the University of California in Santa Barbara has released a video that shows attacks carried out against the Sequoia voting system. The video shows an attack where a virus-like software spreads across the voting system. The coolest part of the video is the one that shows how the ‘brainwashed’ voting terminals can use different techniques to change the votes even when a paper audit trail is used. Pretty scary stuff. The video is proof that these types of attacks are indeed feasible and not just a conspiracy theory. Also, the part that shows how the ‘tamperproof’ seals can be completely bypassed in seconds is very funny (and quite disturbing at the same time)
Bev Harris of Black Box Voting, has done us all a favor and released her 2008 Election Protection toolkit as an ebook. It’s like Cliff notes of Bev’s 8+ years of experience on the front lines of the modern voting rights movement. The ebook great information to get us actively involved in our democracy. The target audience is those who believe that the political process requires more than just showing up to vote once every four years those who know that somethings up with those voting machines that leave no paper trail or any other real evidence of the vote. You may remember Bev Harris from her Emmy-nominated HBO documentary ‘Hacking Democracy.’ I’ve been working on election integrity issues in Ohio for some time now and have met Bev several times. Her work is nothing less than groundbreaking. Please check it out.
I haven’t did a lot of posting lately letting the political arena slide somewhat and not voicing my opinion on the candidates nor their potential vice presidents. Well you may know by now I am a staunch supporter of wildlife conservation and hunting but am dead set against the aerial hunting of wolves as has been promoted by GOP vice presidential nominee and Alaska governor Sarah Palin. She is in favor of opening up ANWR (Alaska National Wildlife Refuge) up to drilling that I oppose. I do agree that we can open up off shore drilling though. Opening up ANWR will do little to reduce our dependence on foreign oil and will threaten wildlife and habitat in a pristine area.
But I find the promotion of aerial hunting for wolves, bears and their cubs abhorrent to me. Governor Palin has done a lot to promote the killing of wolves and bears.
- Palin offered a $150 bounty on wolves with hunters only needing to present the left foreleg of a wolf to collect the money.
- She actively opposed a ballot measure that would have brought an end to aerial hunting and approved a $400,000 state funded campaign to sway voters on the issue.
- She also introduced legislation to make it easier to kill wolves and bears and which would have also removed the aerial hunting initiative from the ballot and block the ability of citizens to vote on the issue.
- The Board of Game, which she appoints, has approved the killing of black bear sows with cubs as part of the program and expanded the aerial control programs.
- The media is currently looking into reports that state officials implementing one of the aerial wolf killing programs illegally killed five-week old wolf pups just outside their dens
Warning: This video is extremely disturbing. It contains graphic images of aerial hunting of wolves — a brutal and needless practice that Governor Palin has fought hard to promote and expand.