Shocking E-Voting Error Stats

Here's a link to a compilation of statistics from votersunite.org that lists the HUGE error rates recorded on some e-voting machines in (of course) BATTLEGROUND STATES.

Bradblog also has a report about the recent announcement that the Social Security Administration has shut down its database "temporarily" for "maintenance"--meaning that voter registrars now can't complete and process ANY new or updated voter registrations because they can't match registration and ID info with the Social Security's database info (now required as part of the HAVA (Help America Vote Act).

I am alarmed, afraid and absolutely disgusted.

Palin Babbling = Religious Conflict?

Everybody in the liberal blogosphere, and, finally, some mainstream media pudits, are rightfully pigpiling on the babbling, incoherent answers that Gov. Palin has given to normal, and often softball, questions posed in her interviews with Charles Gibson and Katie Couric.

While Gov. Palin hasn't been widely known nationally, she obviously is experienced at being in the public eye, and being scrutinized and presenting herself well in public. She has college education in media, has worked in media, has been in public competitions, has given speeches, and has been interviewed many times before.

So why, suddenly, was this woman babbling like she's Miss Teen South Carolina? Why couldn't she coherently recite GOP talking points? Hell, even I could do that. Even I can spout stock GOP answers and framing, and I don't agree with one damn thing that they do. I could be a pretend Repug at the drop of a hat.

Obviously she's NOT unintelligent. And she has solid experience being in the public eye.

So why was Palin babbling?

Here's one answer: As we know, Palin is a lifelong member of the Asemblies of God. Her Wasilia church is neopentecostal, meaning they are Biblical literalists and End Times believers. They are in-your-face, proud, reactionary, superstitious, anti-science, judgmental and angry people. Neopentecostals firmly believe that America is being punished for the sin of allowing abortion, accepting gays, and of being a secular democracy. They believe in literal demons and demonic possession. They believe in black magic witchcraft. They believe that their mission is to re-claim America for Christ and to install a theocracy through force of will and force of arms. They believe that Armageddon is coming--soon. And they believe that Alaska is going to be a safe haven for all true believers during this time.

So how does this relate to the babbling?

Consider: The question that preceded her babbling and the interview meltdown had to do with America's strained relations with Russia.

Now, if she was able to be true to herself, and to be "correct" and honest, and be able to say what she really believes, she would have started reciting Biblical passages that support AOG dogma, and she'd tell the viewing audience all about the prophecies and the signs pointing to the imminence of Armageddon, and how Russia and the U.S. will shortly destroy the world with nuclear weapons, etc. and how she was chosen for her mission by God, and that she intends to help bring about the end of the world so that Jesus will come back, ad nauseum.

BUT, she can't do this--not now. She likely believes that she has the CENTRAL role in the fulfillment of AOG end-times biblical prophecy. But she knows full well that if she does start Bible-thumping that the GOP campaign, which is her ONLY avenue to national power, will be kaput.

The internal conflict between believing something absolutely different than what you're saying, but really, really, really wanting to say what you really believe, is what causes severe anxiety and leads to babbling. She was spouting gibberish because she really, really wanted to say something other than stock GOP talking points.

Her religion demands in-your-face, unapologetic, confrontational and highly public proclamations of belief. But due to campaign constrictions she can't espouse them.

So she is in psychic conflict. Palin's psychic conflict is the root of her anxiety and the root of her incoherent babbling.

What she truly believes and wants to say is verboten if she wants to be elected vice president. But she's not being a good AOG member, or a good Christian if she lies, and if she doesn't take full advantage of this golden opportunity to proselytize.

What I'd Like to See Happen

Here's just some issues that haven't been part of the national election discourse that I'd like to see happen under an Obama/Biden administration (in no particular order):

1. Close all secret prisons.
2. Close Guantanamo Bay.
3. Review & revise the No-Fly list.
3. De-fund US support for Colombia's right-wing dictatorships.
4. Fully fund large-scale world-wide reforestation efforts.
5. Eliminate subsidies and pork for "industries" aimed at wealthy consumers, i.e., fur farms, horse-racing, yacht builders.
6. Prosecute multi-national oil and chemical corporations for their environmental crimes in Latin America, and commit to increaed funding for the International Criminal Courts.
7. Substantially increase and publicize prosecutions of white collar criminals and wealthy tax evaders.
8. Shut down bio-weapons programs and military bio-research.
9. Shut down all military weapons programs that use animals as "test subjects."
10. Establish severe criminal penalties and allow for removal of corporate shield protections for corporations whose policies and practices lead to consumer data theft and consumer ID theft.
11. Outlaw using animals as "test subjects" for consumer products in favor of using advanced technologies readily available.
12. Eliminate advertising of prescription drugs that have been on the market for less than five years.
13. Pass ethics reforms requiring all members of congress to regularly disclose all contacts with industry and trade group lobbyists.
14. Eliminate the Office of Faith-Based Initiatives.
15. Re-institute the ban on automatic weapons.
16. Go after whackjob white supremacists planning domestic attacks.

Yell Fire

Lyrics by Michael Franti & Spearhead:

A revolution never come with a warning
A revolution never sends you an omen
A revolution just arrived like the morning
Ring the alarm, we come to wake up the snoring

They tellin' you to never worry about the future
They tellin' you to never worry about the torture
They tellin you that you'll never see the horror
Spend it all today and we will bill you tomorrow
Three piece suits and bank accounts in Bahamas
Wall Street crime will never send you to the slammer
Tell all the children in the arms of their mommas
The F-15 is a homicide bomber

TV commercials for a popping pill culture
Drug companies circling like a vulture
An Iraqi babies with a G.I. Joe father
Ten years from now is anyboby gonna bother

Yell Fire, yo, yo ,yo
Here we come, here we come
Fire, yo, yo, yo, yo
Revolution a comin'
Fire, yo, yo, yo, yo
Fire, yo, yo, yo, yo

Everyone addicted to the same nicotine
Everyone addicted to the same gasoline
Everyone addicted to a technicolour scream
Everybody trying to get their hands on same green
From the banks of the river to the banks of the greedy
All of the riches taken back by needy

We come from the country and we come from the city
You play us on the record, you can play us on the CD
All the shit you given us is fertilizer
The seeds that we planted you can brutalize them
Tell the corporation you can never globalize you
Like Peter Toss said Legalize It
Girls and boys hear the bass and treble
Rumble in the speakers and it make you wanna rebel
Throw your hands up, take it to another level
And you can never, ever, ever make a deal with the devil

Yell Fire, yo, yo, yo, yo
Here we come, here we come
Fire, yo, yo, yo, yo
Revolution a comin'
Fire, yo, yo, yo, yo
Fire, yo, yo, yo, yo

Congress--For Once Read the Fine Print!! UPDATED

I don't really know if allowing behemoth financial "institutions" to avoid bankrupty by providing taxpayer support is sound or sane economic policy. I'm not an economist and I have no background in finance.

But, I've got a really, really, really bad feeling about the rush by Bush Republicans and their Neo-con supporters to push Congress into immediately passing their ready-made legislation package authorizing the bailout.

We've seen this movie before, and we all know the plot.

There have been similarly "urgent" needs and pressuing of Congress from this very same crowd to pass the Patriot Act, the Clear Skies Initiative, FISA "reforms" giving telecoms retroactive immunity, Iraq War authorization, ad nauseum.

I don't trust anyone in the Bush crowd to ever do the right thing for the majority of Americans, and I see no reason why Congress isn't being given the time to read the fine print. Who knows what poison pill is in the details?

There's no reason that the United States can't simply suspend stock market trading altogether on a per-week time frame, which will give Congress and citizens time to actually read, consider and debate the proposal. Americans should demand more time. After all we're being asked to foot the bill, aren't we? Other nations have suspended trading temporarily and it's done them no lasting harm--namely Russia, India and Venezuela. If they can do it, we can do it too.

UPDATE--My intense suspicions about the fine print appear justified.

Shout Out--Great Blog on Alaskan Culture

Just a shout out to a Alaskan Exposure, a really great blog about living in Alaska.

Here's a small sample:

I've been fascinated with this Alaskan immunity to grotesque levels of filth for months when I happened upon a feral child scurrying around my local dumpster. The small girl popped her head up from where she sat wedged between the dumpster and a cement curb. She stared at me while seated in a cluster of fast food wrappers and oil stains. Suddenly she darted out from the dumpster, and I realized she was wearing nothing but a saggy pair of underwear. Her parents were shoveling out their truck bed while her brother lounged around on top of the dumpster.

This wasn’t the first time I wanted to call social services in Alaska. One day I happened upon an Alaskan baby playing with a plugged in power drill. I can see the church newsletter headlines now - Stigmata on Alaskan infant proves Jesus blesses natural gas pipeline!

Palin--You're Either With Us or Against Us

Did you know that Palin claims to be a big fan of both the Seahawks AND the Steelers?

http://www.assistbythemitten.c om/2008/09/palin-says-shes-ste elers-and-seahawks.html

If she’s really a fan of either team, she’d have to know that she can’t have it both ways. You’re either with the Seahawks or you’re with the Steelers.

Smells like more political pandering–just like McCain changing the name of the football team to pander to the audience when re-telling and re-telling and re-telling one of his cherished POW tales.

Wash St Atty Discipline

Here are links to July and August Washington State Bar Association discipline notices.

It's as good as reading local police blotters.

Keep in mind that not all attorney misconduct makes it to the "public notice" stage.

Animal Killing Cat Haters Like Palin

In my lifetime I've had the misfortune to meet some cat-hating animal killers like Palin.

To a person, all of them were self-righteous, rigid, bigoted, vindictive, cruel, abusive and full of sniggering mean-spiritedness. Often they were dog "lovers."

What is it about cats that brings out such hatred, rage and violence in a particular personality type?

I think it's because even though cats are small, vulnerable, and easily harmed, they will not submit to an abusive person. Rather, if you hurt a cat, they will either leave you or fight you--sometimes to the death.

When pressed, most cat haters will admit that they have harmed and been mean to cats on at least one occasion.

A cst's loving bond and feelings of loyalty with humans are based on mutual respect and trust. With a cat it must be earned and it must be consistent. Cats don't and won't respect, love or be loyal to a person who hurts them. A dog will. Even a terribly abused and maltreated dog will keep wagging its tail and returning to its abusive "master" when called, even when it knows what's in store for it.

One confirmed cat-hater I met told me a "funny story" about how when he was a little boy growing up in Bumfuck, Texas that his older brother and uncles used to take him out and let him watch them shoot cats, and then when he was a bit older, they let him participate.

Other cat-haters I've met have been compelled to share similar stories with me.

This guy didn't realize he was telling me this, but he had been emotionally and psychologically abused by these men who he loved, admired and respected. He couldn't see that this was the source of his cat-hatred--he was projecting this childhood trauma.

Imagine a small child, witnessing such savagery. Killing people's pets for fun. He'd have only two choices--refuse to go along and be punished (by being excluded, scolded, or mocked for being weak and a sissy) or pretend that this was "fun" and be included, accepted and praised.

Sarah Palin's father was apparently quite the "big man" hunter. Undoubtedly she experienced similar traumas witnessing animal murders, and has resolved them in the same way--by denying the childhood horror, projecting her weakness and shame onto the objects of her hatred and also adapting the abuser's persona and values (becoming a hunter herself).

These people are completely disconnected from their "shadow side." They hate cats because cats do what they could not and could never do--refuse to go along with abuse and fight back. So now, as adults, they project their own dark ugliness, their unacknowledged abuse, their secret shame, and their moral failings onto an "other" and vanquish the "other" by hating it and killing it--again and again.

McCain: "Let's Do the Photo Op"

So I was screwing around on the internets reading what Vietnam POW-MIA families think about McCain when I came across a link to a blog kept by the family of a wounded Iraq-Afg vet.

These people are not by any stretch liberals, or dems. So I was seriously wowed to read a post from early 2007 about a visit McCain paid to their wounded relative at Walter Reed:

A few weeks before Chuck was wounded I watched a TV movie that protrayed Jerk's time as a POW during Vietnam. I was intrigued by the story and developed a lot of respect for what he endured, and the fact that his wife waited all those years for him to return home. I knew bits and pieces of the story before watching the movie, and I knew his arms were badly damaged due to the torture he received. I had a lot of respect for the man... then I met him.

When he first walked in I was honored to meet him. He shook my hand and Alice's hand, then walked over to Chuck's bedside. After a lousy 5 minutes or so, the Jerk said (and I quote):

"Well, we all know what we're here for... let's do the photo op."

EXCUSE ME!!!??? The PHOTO OP???!!!!

I was so beyond pissed I wanted to wrestle the Jerk to the ground and kick his ass - over and over and over again! I was so stunned by his comment that all I could do to save my dignity and not stoop to his incredibly LOW level, I walked out of the room. The Jerk's photographers took some pictures and he left. I didn't even say good-bye when he walked out... I was full of rage and anger. And as Chuck can tell you, NO ONE wants to talk to me when I am that state!!!

I keep reading and hearing and seeing credible evidence about what a truly awful, abusive, lying, sociopathic scumbag McCain really is.

But I still don't understand how it is that he has voted against vets and vet support so consistently over so many years, given that he was a vet.

And I keep wondering: WTF is wrong with McCain the "wounded war hero" that he doesn't actually support veterans? What secret shame is he trying to keep at bay? What really happened to him in Vietnam? Did being tortured fuck up his mind? Was he a rat-fink while captive and did he do and say some awful things to the other prisoners? Was he far less honorable than the others?

Methinks it's fair game to re-visit his real history and real war record. And, come to think of it, it's total bull for him to assume the "hero" mantle. What, exactly, was heroic about his war service? Did he save other soldiers? Fight with superhuman bravery?

Nah--his "heroism" really consisted of flying around thousands of feet in the air and bombing the shit out of people living in villages.

Palin Pick Is Really About Pricks

Like everybody else, I've been reading and watching and discussing McCain's choice of Sarah Palin as VP.

Here's my take: She's good looking, has incredible charisma, is telegenic and articulate. She is flirtatious, sassy and sarcastic.

She is brimming with sexual power.

Don't believe me? Look again at her convention speech, but with the sound off. Watch the way she suggestively bites her moistened, pink lips, how she uses a coyly dropped chin and gazes from up under her raised eyebrows, and how her eyes twinkle. These are classic "come-on" gestures.

Before the Palin pick, McCain campaigned quite a bit at macho, hard-hat "guys guy" events--at factories, at construction sites, and, infamously, at the Sturgis biker rally, just to name a few. When McCain made his joke about offering up wife Cindy as a "Miss Buffalo Chip" contestant, most liberals and Dems thought it was grossly sexist, demeaning, crude and insulting--not only to his wife but to women in general. This response missed the subtext of the offer, that being "My wife will submit herself sexually to me and to you if I wish it."

All of this "guy's guy" campaigning was McCain's attempt to gain "dick cred", but despite working so hard to showcase his machismo, McCain's messaging and his ability to project a true power persona were failing. That is until the "Palin pick."

Republicans really do know their authoritarian base. What that base really wants is a ruler who has a big dick and who displays it and uses it.

With Palin, McCain gains the stiff dick machismo factor with Republican men that was previously lacking. She's his sexual talisman.

Her popularity has nothing to do with her history, her character, her acts while in office, her stance on issues or positions, or her experience. If it were, she would have never, ever in a million years been chosen as VP.

What picking Palin is really about is that in the deep, dark blackness of Republican male souls they just really, really want to fuck her, or watch her be fucked. She sexually excites them. The Palin vp pick is simply and exclusively all about giving base Republican men a hard on.

In their eyes, that McCain can "get" a real-life Caribou Barbie, a sexually charged woman like Palin, instantly conveys on him the crucial big prick power.

Dominionist Summer Camps--Torture & Interrogation

Here's a link to the Patrick Henry College's summer camp "leadership" programs for Christian teens, which is run by a Dominionist nut-job.

Apparently signing up to send your son or daughter to a summer camp to experience realistic role-playing at interrogation, torture and spying to develop their skills for a future career with the CIA is de riguer with patriotic Dominionists--they want to overthrow secular democracy and install a theocracy so that Jesus comes back.

Barbie as First Lady?

Am I the only one that thinks that Cindy McCain's choice of clothes for her first appearance at the RNC promoting hurricane relief was completely bizarre?

That woman was dressed up like a little girl's Barbie doll.

She was wearing a bright gold, highly-stylized, avante-garde retro-cocktail type dress under a matching fitted jacket with oversized upturned lapels (aka 80s Michael Jackson), black, ankle-killer stiletto heels, and about five pounds of strands of large pearls.

The whole outfit was grossly ostentatious, waaaaaaay over the top and frankly, tasteless. Her get-up would be appropriate if she was a presenter at a red carpet awards shows, or if she was royalty, but it wasn't at all appropriate for a presentation on hurricane relief.

Laura Bush, in contrast, dressed the part of a first lady to perfection. Simple, elegant and understated.