Linkdump

The Bad Astronomer on the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) rejecting a gift of 50,000 DVDs of "An Inconvenient Truth" for its members.

Bad soldiers reported on Boing Boing, but Boing Boing also reports that they are being investigated for their cruelty.

Let's make this really clear: If trained election officials cannot get a voting machine to work properly, then the machine is broken. Doesn't matter if it's "human error", the frickin' machines DON'T WORK. If trained officials have problems, the general public won't be able to use the things either.

I Couldn't Put It Better

AmericaBlog responds to Newt Gingrich's call to destroy our freedoms to appease the terrorists.

Voting Machines Flip Votes

Mayor watches as his own vote is flipped. Along with the County Clerk, who told the Mayor that it was impossible and wouldn't happen. Time to ban voting machines that don't provide a voter verified paper trail, and don't allow their code to be examined by experts.

Fox Propaganda Channel Wants to do Comedy

MetaFilter reports. Best Comment:

"Wait - So FOX is going to start airing a fake news show that mocks liberals? How are we supposed to tell the difference?
- posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 1:45 PM PST on November 22

Diebold Punishes Whistleblower

Diebold has managed to punish a whistleblower who found evidence that the company had changed the software illegally right before an election, then intended to lie about it. More on Undernews and The Brad Blog.

From The Votemaster

Quoted from electoral-vote.com:

The problems with the vote in FL-13 are not over. In Sarasota County, one of the counties in FL-13 , over 18,000 people failed to vote for Congress, yet voted for other offices. Many of the voters complained that they did vote for Congress but the review screen at the end did not show their vote for Congress. The electronic equipment used does not allow recounts, as required by Florida law. This is going to court shortly. See this article for more. Another option would be for the House to seat Vern Buchanan (R) who won by 368 votes and then expel him, forcing a special election.

Even better would be for Congress to pass a resolution stating that it will not count the electoral votes in 2008 of states whose voting equipment does not have a paper trail. That would cause an uproar, but might solve the problem once and for all by forcing states to use only voting machines with a paper trail. ATM machines provide a paper trail. It would not be hard for voting machines to print a voter-verifiable paper receipt that could be deposited in a locked ballot box in case a recount was needed.

I'm for the "even better" option. If there's no paper trail, there is no vote. So let's punish states that don't require a paper trail.

GoogleBombing

Martin Luther King
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Martin Luther King

To see what this is about, read this entry.

Congrats To My Sister

Environmental Disaster

FilkerTom gets Peeved, for good reason, and somebody pointed him to this cartoon which pretty much sums the situation up for me. Anyone who thinks we shouldn't take care of the Earth because God will clean up after us really doesn't understand God, do they?

Midst all the Pain...

...good news from Iraq. A solid little story about teaching first aid despite cultural differences.

McCain on Republicans

I think McCain sold out long ago, but he gets this right:

"Hypocrisy, my friends, is the most obvious of political sins — and the people will punish it," said Mr. McCain, Republican of Arizona. "We were elected to reduce the size of government and enlarge the sphere of free and private initiative. We increased the size of government in the false hope that we could bribe the public into keeping us in office.

"We lost our principles and our majority," he said. "And there is no way to recover our majority without recovering our principles first."

Freakin' Idiots!

More absentee ballot problems in King County.

Any moron could have predicted this was going to happen. See, the absentee ballots required higher than normal postage. This meant that more ballots would be dropped off at polling places instead of mailed. Which meant that a smart and on-top-of-things King County would have made sure there were enough secure bags for all the absentee ballots being dropped off. Instead, they apparently sent out the usual number, leading to overstuffed bags that couldn't be properly sealed and bags that should not be used to store absentee ballots being used to, you guessed it, store absentee ballots.

ARGH. King County Elections needs some MAJOR overhaulin' and FAST, before the next major election. To many ballots are being "misplaced" too much of the time.

Suicide?

I wonder how John McCain is feeling now?

Voting Machines Should Be Banned

Man gets zero votes, despite voting for himself.

Honor Those Who Served

It's Veteran's Day.

Various Links

Iraqi bloggers react to the Saddam verdict. Here's another round-up of Iraqi opinions presented slightly differently.

Daryl Cagle collects Election Day Political Cartoons. Well worth a peek.

Terrorist Squirrel Causes Chaos in Colorado

It's impossible to do a recount if e-voting machines don't have a paper trail.

Warren Ellis has a political image.

Shrubya lies, admits it, is apparently forgiven by the corporate owned press.

huh.

Ok, so it looks like the House goes to the Democrats. That was predicted, despite Shrubya's assurances of "that's not gonna happen." (as an aside, why was he so sure it wasn't going to happen? Did he really not notice how unpopular he is? Or did he think Diebold would come through for him again?)

The Senate is much more interesting. For one thing, the pundits are saying that if the Democrats win in Montana and Virginia, then the Dems will control the Senate 51-49. But that's not true. There are two independents in the race, one who is very Dem and will no doubt work with them fine... and Lieberman. And both the independents are being counted as Dems by the pundits

Lieberman is NOT a Democrat anymore. Oh, he'll pretend to work with them so he can keep his seniority and such, but when it really counts, he'll vote with the Republicans. He's more Republican than half the Republicans in the Senate!

So what we have, if the Dems win in Montana and Virginia, is a split Senate, 50-50. This isn't going to be pretty.

Rummy Gone

Rumsfeld is stepping down. The military called for his removal just a few days ago, so this is a victory for our troops. I hope. Unless Shrubya finds someone even more useless to replace him, like some "close friend of the Bush family" who may not have the experience necessary to help our troops.

Election Pet Peeve

I hate it when races are announced as "won" before enough votes have been counted. Would it kill the media to wait until a race was certain before declaring a winner? Yes? Then death to the media!

I'm a bit of a radical as far as voting is concerned. I think all the votes ought to be counted before any results at all are announced.

Finally...

...a voting glich that goes towards the Dems. Boing Boing reports:

In New Jersey, a problem cropped up when the name of Democratic Senator Robert Menendez was automatically highlighted on some machines. That caused some two dozen voters to complain that the only way to de-select it was to press it again, which Republican Party officials said led to some people inadvertently voting for Menendez.

There should never be a default selection in a voting machine, so either the manufacturer of the machine screwed up, or someone tried to alter the vote. At least it was an obvious flaw, and hopefully nobody voted for the wrong person.

Predictions

What, do you think I have a crystal ball? I completely and utterly failed to predict anything during the last elections, so I'm not even going to dream of making any detailed predictions about this one. So I'll tell you what the polls say, if I'm reading them right (and I'm probably not). And if I make any predictions in the following, I'm probably wrong.

The Dems should take the House. Some polls indicate a tiny margin, most indicate that the Dems will have a solid hold on the House. I'm a pessimist, so I'll go with "tiny margin". That will hopefully be enough to get some investigations going and to temper the Neocons lust for death and spending, but I'm not counting on it.

The Senate is uncallable. It might go either way. Nobody knows. I say the GOPs will just barely hold on, or it'll be split down the middle (which keeps the real power with the GOPs). I doubt anything useful will come out of the Senate in the next two years.

Tomorrow both the Republicans and the Democrats will be touting the results, whatever they are, as a win. They will both be wrong. Our nation is so incredibly divided right now that everything is a loss. And I just don't foresee that changing soon. At the very least, Shrubya will have to be out of office before this nation can start to heal, and that's two years down the road minimum. So, no matter the results, we all lose in this election.

Flooded Polls

The Seattle Times has an update on where to vote if your poll is closed due to flooding.

Vote Today! If you can...

My aunt, who lives in Utah and is very conservative (in the traditional sense), had some news about the polling places down there. When she got to the polls at 7am, she couldn't vote because the voting machines just wouldn't work. Calls from frantic poll workers to the help lines weren't getting through because the problems were widespread. After waiting in line for 45 minutes, she was turned away from the polls.

She plans to go back and try again after work, but how many folks will just give up?

It's not a proper election. It's a farce. These crappy voting machines need to be tossed out, their makers sued for lying and providing crap to the counties, and paper ballots restored.

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Of course, human stupidity and greed aren't the only things that are stopping folks from voting. Up here in the Pacific Northwet (not a typo), we finally got all the rain we've been missing over the summer in the last two days. The results have been flooding. Lots of schools, traditional polling places, have been shut down in several counties.

I voted a week ago via mail.

Robocall Fun

The GOP, knowing that people don't like being called by robots, has started calling people and pretending to be Democrats. Worse, they are calling late at night. In at least one area, they keep calling until you listen to their whole message. And others just say the name of the Democrat to trick people into thinking the call was sponsored by the Democrats.

More dirty tricks by the thugs who lied us into the illegal and immoral Iraq war. If you vote Republican, these are the actions you support.

The Hypocritic Oath

Talking Points Memo Has It.

US Soldier Killed Herself Rather Than Participate In Torture

Alyssa Peterson deserves a moment of silence. And the apologies of all the gung-ho idiots who allowed torture to happen.

More Voting Machine Errors

This time in Texas. Why are all the reports of voting machine errors complaining that Republicans are falsely showing when voters vote for Democrats? Why aren't we seeing the opposite behavior as well?