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.

Why Women Should Vote

This is a copy/paste of a recent e-mail I received:

WHY WOMEN SHOULD VOTE!

Last week, I went to a sparsely attended screening of HBO's new movie "Iron Jawed Angels." It is a graphic depiction of the battle these women waged so that I could pull the curtain at the polling booth and have my say. I am ashamed to say I needed the reminder.

All these years later, voter registration is still my passion. But the actual act of voting had become less personal for me, more rote. Frankly, voting often felt more like an obligation than a privilege. Sometimes it was inconvenient.

My friend Wendy, who is my age and studied women's history, saw the HBO movie, too. When she stopped by my desk to talk about it, she looked angry. She was--with herself. "One thought kept coming back to me as I watched that movie," she said. "What would those women think of the way I use--or don't use--my right to vote? All of us take it for granted now, not just younger women, but those of us who did seek to learn." The right to vote, she said, had become valuable to her "all over again."

This is the story of our Grandmothers, and Great-grandmothers, as they lived only 90 years ago. It was not until 1920 that women were granted the right to go to the polls and vote.

The women were innocent and defenseless. And by the end of the night, they were barely alive. Forty prison guards wielding clubs and their warden's blessing went on a rampage against the 33 women wrongly convicted of "obstructing sidewalk traffic."

They beat Lucy Burn, chained her hands to the cell bars above her head and left her hanging for the night, bleeding and gasping for air. They hurled Dora Lewis into a dark cell, smashed her head against an iron bed and knocked her out cold. Her cellmate, Alice Cosu, thought Lewis was dead and suffered a heart attack. Additional affidavits describe the guards grabbing, dragging, beating, choking, slamming, pinching, twisting and kicking the women.

Thus unfolded the "Night of Terror" on Nov. 15, 1917, when the warden at the Occoquan Workhouse in Virginia ordered his guards to teach a lesson to the suffragists imprisoned there because they dared to picket Woodrow Wilson's White House for the right to vote.

For weeks, the women's only water came from an open pail. Their food--all of it colorless slop--was infested with worms. When one of the leaders, Alice Paul, embarked on a hunger strike, they tied her to a chair, forced a tube down her throat and poured liquid into her until she vomited. She was tortured like this for weeks until word was smuggled out to the press.

So, refresh my memory. Some won won't vote this year because-- why, exactly? We have carpool duties? We have to get to work? Our vote doesn't matter? It's raining?

Hey You! Volunteer for the Presidental Election!

There's going to be a HUGE crush of voters and votes cast in the upcoming presidential election. Your county election board is going to need an equally large number of volunteers to make sure that the election runs smoothly, that every voter who wants to vote can vote, and that every vote that is cast counts.

We need progressives who care about maintaining the integrity of our electoral system to volunteer NOW to work the presidential election. The earlier you sign up to volunteer, the more likely it is that you will be assigned to "plum" jobs of higher responsibility so that electorial integrity is maintained.

I volunteered for this past primary. It was an interesting, eye-opening, and highly rewarding experience, plus I got to meet and greet my heretofore unknown neighbors.

Progressives--please volunteer for this. We need more good people watchdogging the process.

Getting It Right--Remembering the History

In the last month or so I've been reading and contemplating essays and posts written by Very Important People who are Very Serious, Highly Influential and Highly Respected about how they got "it" (the Iraq Invasion and Occupation) wrong. I'm not going to bother with providing links here to these Very Important Thoughts penned by these Very Important People. Most of their writings can be boiled down to these nutshells:

1. I was misled and lied to, and didn't and couldn't know better.
2. I had an emotional reaction to anti-war "hippies."
3. I wasn't really for it, but felt I had to go along once it seemed inevitable.

I've been wondering how come it is that these people, with their advanced college degrees and their professional pedigrees and their network of connections and their ready-made public platforms could have been so gullible and so stupid, and how come lil' ol' nobody me--with no pedigree and no advanced education--got "it" entirely right? How come I knew that the US invading Iraq was wrong, wrong, wrong and that this was a horrible, terrible mistake?

How come? Well, for starters, I have a healthy skepticism of anybody who wants war. I also distrusted Bush and Cheney from the get-go. I also regularly read non-US media. As a rule, I am open to receiving information and evaluating opinions from all sources, and I don't have unexamined emotional knee-jerk discounting reactions towards differing opinions.

But I think the main reason that I got it right was that I hadn't forgotten the past.

I remembered, quite well, the grossly exaggerated claims of Iraq military and weapons super-strength (including claims of chem, nuke and bio weapons) made in the first Iraq invasion (Gulf War I) back in 1991, which were eerily similar to those being made in the run-up to this occupation. I remembered and was aware of the regular bombardment of certain areas of Iraq that had been ongoing since 1991, as well as the terrible impacts of the embargo. I remembered the reports of how the CIA and US military has had Iraq under constant surveillance and close scrutiny since 1991.

I remembered how, back in 1991, the US media reported noxious propaganda as fact (the cold-blooded murders of Kuwati babies in incubators being a particularly odious false claim.) I learned back then that Iraq was a secular, socialist dictatorship, and that Iraqi women under Saddam had rights near-equal to women in Western industrial countries.

I also learned that Iraq had a significant population of Christians. I learned about how Saddam Hussein came to power backed by our CIA. I learned about the long-standing history and frictions between ethnic and religious groups in Iraq--the Shiites, Sunnis and the Kurds, and that people in Iraq were possessed of the full spectrum of political leanings. I learned about the Kurdish separatist rebels who wanted to secede from Iraq, Iran and Turkey to form their own country, and who had engaged in repeated terrorist acts in these three countries and who had also fought a civil war inside Iraq--which led to military repression of the uprising and included the use of mustard gas by Saddam Hussein on a Kurdish civilian population (all with US blessings) because these people were supporting the rebels.
This incident became the well-known rally slogan for the Gulf War--"He kills his own people!" (which slogan was also successfully re-used as a pre-invasion rally cry). (Side note--I've always felt this was an ironic slogan, given that the Kurds themselves don't, and never have, considered themselves as "his" or Iraq's people.)

And I remembered how Bush and Cheney and Rumsfield and Schwartzkopf and Gingrich and the lot of the Republicans claimed that a military occupation of Iraq by the US would be far too difficult and wouldn't ever work. And I remembered how the US leaders told the Kurds that if they rose up to overthrown Saddam Hussein that the US would support them--but instead the US abandonded them and allowed the Republican Guard to murder them instead.

So I remembered my history. And I was right for that simple fact. I remembered, and because I remembered I didn't believe one freaking claim my leaders made. None of it was sensical to anybody who recalled what had transpired not long ago.

Blaming 9-11 on Saddam Hussein didn't ever make one bit of sense. Claiming on the one hand that Saddam Hussein was a madman (and warmongers always personalize a country full of people as a demonic incarnation) who had terrible weapons and wouldn't hesitate to use them was the same exact claim previously made that was also completely false. Claiming that an invasion and occupation would be a cakewalk was patently silly. Claiming that gas would be plentiful and cheap for all was obviously false. All of it, all of the endlessly repeated claims and all of the justifications were just propaganda designed to lead a bunch of fearful sheeple here in the US into supporting a never-ending occupation to directly control Middle East oil.

What kills me in reading the essays by these Very Serious and Very Important People who were totally wrong is that none of them seemed to recall or have taken into consideration what happened before 9-11. Their flawed analyses personify and have unconsciously incorporated the media and government propaganda concepts of a pre versus post 9-11 world. This is why they really were all so wrong, because for them, history is quickly forgotten. The history meant nothing. For them, anything that happened before 9-11 was irrelevant and meaningless.

For me--the history meant everything. That's why I got it right.

"Ten Commandments Weekend" for US?

Sen. Lieberman and Sen. Brownback have proposed Sen. Resolution 483 to establish the first weekend of May 2008 as "Ten Commandments Weekend"

Assholes. Here we go again.

This type of dog-whistle "resolution" is nothing more than cheap political pandering by Republicans (and yes, Lieberman is a Republican by his votes, positions and conduct--despite his nominal label as "independent") designed to trigger highly-predictable Pavlovian support by adamant Christianists and an equally predictable outcry by all others, which only serves to reinforce Christianists' false beliefs:

1) That the United States and its citizens are spiritually and morally bankrupt and that government promotion of Christianity is the most important step necessary to overcoming same;

2) That Republicans care about and will protect and promote their religion beliefs;

3) That this resolution and others like it are code for an implied promise that more direct and forceful actions by Republicans to "put God back in the public square" are sure to come if Republicans could only have more political power;

3) That their religion is under attack and that they are being persecuted and victimized by level-headed, rational secularists and others who object to religious pandering by elected officials on the grounds that it is a waste of time, effort and resources, is exclusive of other faiths and beliefs, and is against the clear and express foundational principles of our governmental system.

Damn Good Questions--Fed Bailout

Athenae at Firstdraft.com has written an amazingly powerful essay entitled "It's A Small Crime" reflecting on our passive acceptance and lack of outrage about massive federal bailouts for uber-wealthy corporate types versus the nasty judgments we reserve for poorer Americans.

Excerpts:

. . .

Let me ask a couple of questions here. Does Bear Stearns have a big screen TV? What about bling? Any bling they could sell?

. . .

Let me ask those questions, those questions we ask of every beneficiary of the smallest drop of government assistance. Let me ask why this is the ONLY scenario in which our parsimonious bullshit about personal responsibility, about choices and consequences, about "survival of the fittest" and other forms of sicko math, need not fucking apply.

. . .

Let me ask how on earth we can take all the time it takes to think up all the ways we think up to sit in judgement on every individual case we hear about, about how that person just didn't work harder, didn't suffer enough, didn't earn "our" money, didn't deserve "our" charity, didn't bleed in front of us enough, and all the while, all the fucking while, we give it away by the millions and never ask where it goes. All the while.

. . .

I think we should ask with the same nasty assumptions at the back of our throats, the same willingness to believe that somebody else is running a scam on us to get a fat government check, the same nasty, mean, small little pinchingness we use toward individual human beings. I think we should ask those questions. . . .

King Co. Animal Shelter--A Stinking Mess

The King County Council is holding a public hearing on April 14th about the deplorable shelter operations documented by an outside consultant. Per the consultant's report, these same systemic problems were occuring back in 1998. Despite increases in shelter operations budgets since then, conditions haven't improved, and are the same or worse than the last series of independent inspections.

Burnout of workers in animal care is fairly commonplace, especially in "kill" shelters. But there's apparently been no real recognition of the potential problems burnout can lead to by King County, so there's no system in place to minimize it, prevent it or deal with it.

So if you have staff or management working in an animal shelter who don't come from a mindset or a life philosophy that animals absolutely have basic rights and deserve our kindness and care, who don't feel personally responsible for the animals, and who aren't self-reflective and don't understand how humans can become uncaring and cruel because of burnout, then you have systemic disasters like what has been going on at the KCAC shelter.

In general I oppose privatization of public services, but in this case I conditionally support Councilman Bob Ferguson's call to privatize the shelter operations, as long as it is operated by a long-established animal welfare group such as the Humane Society or PAWS. These groups have the correct mindset towards animals, understand the challenges of shelter staff burnout, and know how to deal with it and keep it under control.

Among other things the consultant found:

1. Animals without food or water, sometimes for days.

2. Animals housed in filthy cages, not cleaned for days.

3. Numerous open cages while adoptable animals languished unseen in back rooms (note--KCAC has strict time limits on how long an animal is "adoptable" before it is euthanised).

4. Staff not following basics of santiary cleaning procedures or animal handling.

5. Staff not keeping accurate or complete, updated records.

6. Staff not cross-checking lost animal reports with shelter animals and not entering lost animal reports into computer system.

7. Non-compatable animals put together--leading to severe stress, food hoarding, fights and injuries.

8. Staff not relocating animals once non-compatability determined.

9. Animals not being vaccinated.

11. Cruelty and neglect reports not followed up, properly investigated or documented.

12. Outdated "contagious disease" notices posted in adoption areas falsely implying current outbreaks (which could negatively impact adoptions.)

13. Facility showing significant wear and tear (same physical plant problems as last time).

14. Unsanitary food storage and handling.

15. Sick animals housed with healthy ones. Quarantined sick and injured animals not closely monitored.

16. Substantial difference in conditions and staff conduct when consultant pre-announced versus surprise or "undercover" visits.

17. Significant management and staff turnover, with new management not having background in animal care/shelter management.

18. Staff "doing own thing" with animal care--not following procedures and guidelines.

19. Donations of food and money not used for animal care.

20. No follow-through on spay/neuter coupons leading to minimal improvement in pet overpopulation.

21. Disciplinary procedures inadequate or simply not followed.

Foreclosure Sharks in Puget Sound--Updated

In an unpublished decision entered yesterday, the Washington State Court of Appeals reviewed a trial court's decision and concurred that defendants:

Dick and Cecilia Pelascini;
Thomas Boboth; and
Pacific Shoreline Mortgage, Inc.

had violated the Consumer Protection Act.

Per the court's decision, they took advantage of a long-time homeowner who had fallen on hard times and was facing foreclosure and convinced her that they were helping her "save" her home by setting up refinancing when in fact they bought it out from under her for far less than what they would have paid via a public trustee's sale.

After signing the paperwork the "homeowner" (plaintiff) was allowed to stay put until the Pelascinis later decided to sell the home.

Then they evicted her.

From the decision:

The Pelascinis' argument rests on the false premise that they "did help plaintiff save her house." The trial court found that Pace-Knapp reasonably interpreted the Pelascinis' promises to mean that they would refinance her home, which means she would continue to own it.

Taking the unchallenged findings as true, we conclude that the Pelascinis deceived Pace-Knapp when they promised her that they would help her "save" her home and implied that they would refinance her loan. Simply stated, the point is that they saved her home for themselves so that they would not have to bid at the rescheduled trustee's sale. They did not help her save her home for her, as suggested. The Pelascinis' practice of preying on this and other vulnerable home owners on the eve of foreclosure is the type of practice likely to deceive future distressed owners in the same manner.

Despite claims by local corporate media and real estate professionals that the Puget Sound area is somehow immune to the national subprime scandal and its impact on housing markets, the blood is in the water here, the sharks have smelled it, and they are beginning to feed.

Why is it that predatory foreclosure sharks can't immediately be put out of business and be brought up on criminal charges?

UPDATE:

The Washington legislature just passed HB 2791 which on the face of it substantially increases regulation of the sharks. The bill apparently provides for increased plain-language disclosures, extends the right of recission (canceling) a contract for some additional days, requires the sharks to first determine if the homeowner can actually "buy back" the home under the terms offered, requires the sharks to act in the homeowner's best interests and establishes that the homeowner will receive at least 82% of market value if the homeowner is evicted.

Gov. Gregoire hasn't signed it yet.

Green Plug--Volunteers Needed

The 2008 Seattle Greenfestival is looking for volunteers to help run the two-day event April 12 and April 13 at the Washington Convention and Trade Center.

Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels is a scheduled keynote speaker.

Our city has lost a tremendous percentage of tree cover in the last decade. If there's a question and answer period I intend to ask the Mayor whether he's actually going to follow through on past ideas, promises, current plans and funding to re-tree the City.

Americans 0, Predators 100

Investigative reporter Greg Palast has a must-read article posted that exposes the back-scratching giveaways and the gross corruption behind the Bush administration's massive government bailout of predatory banks, brokers, corporations and lenders.

Gov. Spitzer was leading the charge on behalf of Americans to fight back against these predators. Palast explores how Spitzer's resignation at this critical juncture is a huge win for the predators, how the "exposure" of Spitzer's sexual escapades may have well been exquisitely politically timed, how the bailout does next to nothing for American homeowners, and how it is certain that so many of them will still lose their homes.

Article excerpts:

. . .

The press has swallowed Wall Street’s line that millions of US families are about to lose their homes because they bought homes they couldn’t afford or took loans too big for their wallets. Ba-LON-ey. That’s blaming the victim.

. . .

Now, what kind of American is ‘sub-prime.’ Guess. No peeking. Here’s a hint: 73% of HIGH INCOME Black and Hispanic borrowers were given sub-prime loans versus 17% of similar-income Whites. Dark-skinned borrowers aren’t stupid – they had no choice. They were ‘steered’ as it’s called in the mortgage sharking business.

. . .


Indeed, the feds actually filed a lawsuit to block Spitzer’s investigation of ugly racial mortgage steering. Bush’s banking buddies were especially steamed that Spitzer hammered bank practices across the nation using New York State laws.

. . .

Then, on Wednesday of this week, the unthinkable happened. Carlyle Capital went bankrupt. Who? That’s Carlyle as in Carlyle Group. James Baker, Senior Counsel. Notable partners, former and past: George Bush, the Bin Laden family and more dictators, potentates, pirates and presidents than you can count. . . .

There was no ‘quid’ of a foreclosure moratorium for the ‘pro quo’ of public bailout. Not one family was saved – but not one banker was left behind.

Oh Those Poor Kids!--Updated

Firedoglake nails the latest in Republican concern trolling right on its ugly little head:

Saw this headline in Yahoo!News: "Spitzer Scandal Tricky for Parents".

Change "Spitzer" to "Clinton", and you have stories that were originally written ten...years ago
...

Oddly enough, there was no handwringing about "what will we tell the kiddies?" when David Vitter was exposed. Or Larry Craig. (That's right: Nobody last year was writing stories about poor little kids asking their fathers "Daddy, what's a 'gay prostitute'?"*) Or Bob Livingston. Or Mark Foley. Or Newt Gingrich. Or Philip Giordano. Or Ken Calvert, Or Bob Packwood. Or Dan Burton. Or Helen Chenoweth. Or Jack Ryan...

Here's a question--have the Repugs done any studies showing how all those poor little kiddies who lived through the (raise back of trembling hand to forehead and bit lower lip) horrors of the media frenzy erupting from the Clinton sexcapades doing today? Are they irredemably psychically scarred?

Update: The media frenzy over any exposed sex scandal involving hypocritical political or religious power-players, while understandable, really is horrible to witness. Unlike the Repugs though, for me the horror doesn't arise from kids posing uncomfortable questions to their parents about sex. Nor does the horror arise from the reporting of the facts, per se. After all, investigating claims and providing the public with accurate information about the conduct of people in positions of authority is a central role of media.

What's truly horrible is the media's delighted gutter-delving into salacious details which are unnecessarily repeated and analyzed ad nauseum under the pretense of "serious reporting" while all the other news, which may be far more pertinent, and far more important, for media to report on and for citizens to know about is treated as nothing more than white noise in the background.

Now that is the true horror. And try as I might, and as I'm sure many of you do too, it's hard not to pulled into the frenzy. But it's important to keep trying.

Winter Soldier Testimony Starts Tomorrow

The IVAW is holding "Winter Solder" hearings starting March 13, 2008.

The four-day event will bring together veterans from across the country to testify about their experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan - and present video and photographic evidence. In addition, there will be panels of scholars, veterans, journalists, and other specialists . . .

To quote one serviceman who plans on testifying:

I never dreamed that I would ever find myself thoughtlessly going along with things that I would be ashamed to tell my family of, that I would have to choose sides within my own unit, or that I would ever find myself whittled into the form of a pawn on some spoiled rich boy's chess board. No, I never thought that I, the descendant of so many proud soldiers, would ever have to choose between my loyalty to the Army, and my loyalty to the People of the United States.

To speak publicly and openly of one's own personal shame and moral failings, and to relate the shameful acts of others who once were one's loyal "brothers in arms" takes tremendous courage.

I imagine these soldiers already know what they're going to face after testifying. I hope this isn't the case, but if the past is prologue, the personal lives of the soldiers who are "going public" will be severely scrutinized, distorted and relentlessly publicized by right-wing whackjobs in an effort to discredit them and their stories.

What a shame.

Second Chance Act Passes Senate

The Second Chance Act passed the Senate yesterday. From the Reentry Policy Council of State Governments:

The U.S. Senate passed today the Second Chance Act of 2007. This landmark bill, introduced by Senators Joseph Biden (D-DE), Sam Brownback (R-KS), Patrick Leahy (D-VT), and Arlen Specter (R-PA), provides critical resources designed to reduce recidivism and increase public safety. The legislation passed the Senate by unanimous consent and now proceeds to the President’s desk for signature.

The passage of the Second Chance Act reflects the strong consensus that improving prisoner reentry is not a partisan issue, but a matter of public safety, improving lives, and making effective use of taxpayer dollars," said Assemblyman Jeffrion Aubry, Justice Center board member and chair of the New York State Assembly Correction Committee.

The Second Chance Act includes key elements of President Bush’s Prisoner Reentry Initiative, announced in the 2004 State of the Union address, which provides for community and faith-based organizations to deliver mentoring and transitional services. The bill will also help connect people released from prison and jail to mental health and substance abuse treatment, expand job training and placement services, and facilitate transitional housing and case management services.

ECS has qualms, on basic principle, of funding any "faith-based" programs and initiatives, but I am willing to suspend same for now.

This bill is a veritable sea-change from highly-punitive YOYO policies and attitudes regarding "freed" ex-offenders that is long overdue.

Here's the deal people. The United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world--1 in 100 citizens are currently in prison or jail. In addition, there's one hell of a lot of people who have a "criminal history" who aren't incarcerated.

If you allow a situation to occur where ex-offenders can't get jobs or housing, regardless of the seriousness of the offense or the length of time passed since the offense, and you also allow a situation to occur where you don't offer help for the mentally ill or addicts, well then that 1 in 100 number (and the exorbinant cost of housing prisoners) just may contine to rise with no end in sight.

The Wire--It Ain't Over

The finale of HBO's series The Wire aired tonight.

I will miss it.

What a truly extraordinary body of work. Everything about this series--the intersecting and paralell storylines, the cast, the locations and the settings--all of it was near-flawless in execution.

The series' truly masterful storytelling allowed viewers to see far beyond stereotypes and 30-second headlines, to gain clear-eyed insights into the similar political, ethical and moral dilemmas faced by others (regardless of class) and to gain a sense of renewed empathy and civic responsibility for the tremendous challenges facing all of us who are part of the systemic, lurching behemoth that is real life in modern urban America.

If you don't have access to HBO and have never seen the series, run like hell to your local video store and rent it.

Goldie's Right (Once Again)

Goldie over at HorsesAss has an excellent post up that pretty much captures my own sentiments about the fevered, mean-spirited pro and anti candidate opinion pieces rapidly suffocating the progressive blogosphere.

To quote Goldie:

No doubt my friends in the establishment press are looking forward to a bitter and divisive brawl between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton all the way up to the Democratic National Convention, but the truth is that even at its nastiest, the 2008 presidential nominating process has thus far been an extraordinarily civil war compared to previous campaigns. Still, while the candidates have mostly managed to stay out of the muck, their partisan supporters in the blogosphere are now poised to march into combat rakes in hand, the posts and comment threads of many of our leading blogs serving as battlefields in an increasingly bloody war of words.

To which I caution my comrades in the progressive netroots… who the hell cares?

There isn’t a nickel’s difference between Obama and Clinton on most policy issues, at least not substantive enough that it can’t be overcome by a commanding congressional majority, and both candidates arguably occupy the same center/center-left ideological niche. We may prefer one candidate’s health care plan over the other, or one candidate’s historical record on the occupation of Iraq, but both Obama and Clinton largely share the same agenda, and either would be far preferable to the Republican alternative. But most important to movement progressives like me, while both are good Democrats, and both have clear paths toward victory in November, neither is exactly what we would call a “netroots candidate,” and thus neither deserves the sort of unrelenting partisan passion that now threatens to distract our ranks, if not actually split them.

Working the Primary--It's a Trust Thang

I've been hired to work as a polling site supervisor for the upcoming Feburary 19th primary election. To get the job I simply called the King County Records & Elections office. That's it.

The woman I spoke to said they were desperate for workers, so if you're looking for some temp work this is a good gig. I'll earn about $400 for attending a one-day traning session and working the day of the election.

As a site supervisor, prior to the election I am given a key to the site and I have free access to ballots, equipment and supplies. I also transport the ballots post-election to the counting center (I get to pick a poll worker from the "opposite" party to come with me while transporting ballots, but if there isn't an actual "opposite" available, I can simply designate somebody.)

While I deeply appreciate this opportunity, and I need the money, I am really bothered that our elections are still run primarily on trust. I care deeply about the sanctity of the vote, and it seems inconceivable to me that I can be hired as a site supervisor and be given such free rein simply by making a single phone call asking for a temp job.

Realistically, if the votes from just one small polling site were tampered with it probably wouldn't make a damn bit of difference in the outcome of our elections. But what if it did? Or what if one political party gamed the system by signing up party loyalists en masse to work at several polling places? Or what if a computer hacker gained remote access to the system via work at a polling place? I imagine that King County has instituted double-checks of some sort (especially given the fallout from the razor-thin election victory of Gov. Gregoire over Dino Rossi in the last general election), but still, what if the double-checks can be circumvented at the polling site?

WA Lawmaker Moves to Ban Plastic Bags!

Woo-hoo.

I strongly support Rep. Chase's proposed legislation to ban the flimsy bags!

http://blog.oregonlive.com/breakingnews/2008/01/some_washington_lawmakers_want.html