electoral dysfunction

I took yesterday off from work, because of the blood-filled eyes. I was going to just rest them all day, but then I ended up getting on the computer and trying to catch up on the Ohio recount. In the process, I stumbled across an interesting comment on Metafilter that I thought was worth sharing. It’s all stuff I’ve written about here before, but I liked how the author set out to bring everything together. Enjoy… and share. (I haven’t checked all the sources, but the ones I did go to seemed legitimate. If you notice any that aren’t credible, or know of other links that make the particular case better, just leave a comment and I’ll update the list.)

Does this look like a Democracy?

1. 80% of all votes in America are counted by only two companies: ES&S and Diebold.

2. There is no federal agency with regulatory authority or oversight of the U.S. voting machine industry.

3. The vice-president of Diebold and the president of ES&S are brothers.

4. The chairman and CEO of Diebold is a major Bush campaign organizer and donor
who wrote in 2003 that he was “committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year.”

5. Republican Senator Chuck Hagel used to be chairman of ES&S. He became Senator based on votes counted by ES&S machines.

6. Republican Senator Chuck Hagel, long-connected with the Bush family, was recently caught lying about his ownership interest in ES&S by the Senate Ethics Committee.

7. Senator Chuck Hagel was on a short list of George W. Bush’s vice-presidential candidates.

8. ES&S is the largest voting machine manufacturer in the U.S. and counts almost 60% of all U.S. votes.

9. Diebold’s new touch screen voting machines leave no paper trail. In other words, there is no way to verify that the data coming out of the machine is the same as what was legitimately put in by voters.

10. Diebold also makes ATMs, checkout scanners, and ticket machines, all of which log each transaction and can generate a paper trail.

11. Diebold is based in Ohio.

12. Diebold employed 5 convicted felons as senior managers and developers to help write the central compiler computer code that counted 50% of the votes in 30 states.

13. Jeff Dean, Diebold’s Senior Vice-President and senior programmer on Diebold’s central compiler code, was convicted of 23 counts of felony theft in the first degree.

14. Diebold Senior Vice-President Jeff Dean was convicted of convicted of planting back doors in his software and using a “high degree of sophistication” to evade detection over a period of 2 years.

15. None of the international election observers were allowed in the polls in Ohio.

16. California banned the use of Diebold machines because the security was so bad. Despite Diebold’s claims that the audit logs could not be hacked, a chimpanzee was able to do it!

17. 30% of all U.S. votes are carried out on unverifiable touch screen voting machines with no paper trail.

18. Allnot somebut all — the voting machine errors detected and reported in Florida went in favor of Bush or Republican candidates.

19. The governor of the state of Florida, Jeb Bush, is the President’s brother.

20. Serious voting anomalies in Floridaagain always favoring Bush — have been mathematically demonstrated to be unlikely and experts are recommending further investigation.

OK, some of the arguments aren’t terribly strong, and some of the strongest arguments aren’t dealt with (like the fact that early exit polls showed Kerry to be leading in Ohio and Florida by a wide margin), but I still liked the idea of pulling everything together into a link-heavy narrative. (If I had more time, I’d keep working on it.)

While we’re on the subject of election irregularities, Keith Olbermann was back at MSNBC with an update today. While a few folks, like the people at the Blue Lemur site, took issue with how he presented the Clint Curtis story, it seems to me that, all things considered, he’s one of the more trustworthy sources out there. (He’s also the only mainstream newsman following this story.)

So, take all that stuff for what it’s worth. At the very least, we have a seriously flawed system that could fall victim to fraud. While I’m not willing to join the folks that believe this election was stolen yet, I believe, knowing what we already know, it would be absolutely un-American to walk away from this issue now, before the issues are resolved. (If we don’t take on election reform now, it’ll haunt us until the next American revolution.) So, let’s bring it up for a vote in Congress and see who’s willing to stand up and say that they aren’t all for making sure that every vote counts and for auditable paper trails. Let’s get it on the record.

Posted in Politics | 3 Comments

watching friends die on television is especially sad when they don’t believe in god

The other night, Linette and I were watching Great Performances on PBS. We hadn’t set out to watch it, but TIVO had saved it for us, so we thought that we’d at least invest a few minutes and see what it was about, before we just erased it and headed over to the season finale of America’s Next Top Model. We were happily surprised to find that the subject of this particular episode was clown/choreographer/actor Bill Irwin, a man who, with the help of our friend Doug Skinner, took Broadway by storm a few decades ago with his play Regard of Flight. So, we watched the show, hoping to catch glimpses of Doug. Having never seen Regard of Flight, we didn’t know what to expect. All we knew was that Doug, the co-writer and music director of the piece, appeared on stage for some portion of the performance. We didn’t know, however, as we’d soon find out, that Doug gets shot in the back (while playing piano) by Mr. Irwin… And now, I can say from experience, it’s fun to see your friends get shot on PBS.

As coincidence would have it, as I sat down here tonight to mention the fact that we’ve been watching our friend slouching over his keyboard and dying over and over again, said friend posted a comment at one of my earlier posts about the re-branding of Creationism as “Intelligent Design” … So, here, because I think it fits nicely, is the comment Doug just left.

For more on the agenda and techniques of the Intelligent Design movement — especially their master plan, The Wedge — here’s a link to the Introduction to “Creationism’s Trojan Horse“.

And here’s a review of the book, from the same site.

Personally, I don’t see any necessity for either God or Jesus. There’s not much evidence for either of them, and believing things that are untrue drives you nuts. If nothing else, you can point out that impregnating a virgin and killing the son to remove sin from the world was not only a sick idea, but remarkably ineffective.

I prefer to call myself an agnostic, since I have a deep distrust of human reason — whether applied to religion or to science. I’d be glad to treat christians with the same suspended judgment I use for UFO and Bigfoot believers. I’ve found, though, that christians make less sense, are more violent, and less fun at parties. To the lions with them!

So, I was wondering, are there any other folks in the audience who have appeared on an episode of PBS’s Great Performances?

Posted in Art and Culture | 3 Comments

last minute gift idea

For those of you who didn’t want to buy me whole, uncut sheets of Wacky Packs, I found something else that I’d like.

Posted in Mark's Life | 6 Comments

taking the red-eye home for the holidays

Sorry I haven’t been blogging much lately, but I’ve been trying my best to stay away… I got another scare a few days ago. My eye exploded again. It’s all full of blood. So, now I’ve got one eye that won’t stop fluttering (it’s been flickering like a strobe light for almost a month now), and one that’s full of blood. It’s not a terribly attractive combination. At any rate, I’ve taken this as a sign of impending death and I’ve decided to cut back on everything that isn’t directly tied to paying the bills and keeping the heat on. (I’ve mentioned it before, but I look at my eyes like warning lights. When they fill up with blood, I slow down. So far, it’s been a system that’s worked well for me.)

Anyway, I hope you all have happy holidays with your families, if I don’t see you before then.

UPDATE: The left eye, the one that flutters, is now also full of blood. This is the first time I’ve ever had both eyes blow out at once. Linette, trying to make me feel a bit less worried, told me that the blood really makes the blue parts of my eyes stand out. So, I guess I have that going for me.

Posted in Mark's Life | 11 Comments

nude beneath jim rockford: i have a beautiful body

In hopes of confronting my fears concerning public nudity, I took a full-nude, fat-assed lap around a locker room crowded with senior citizens last night. I made the circuit slowly, wishing everyone a warm and hearty “Merry Christmas” (or “Happy Holidays,” if they looked suspiciously un-Christian), and acting as though I didn’t care in the slightest that my business was flopping all around just inches from their old, exhausted faces. I didn’t go so far as to shake anyone’s hand, or pat anyone on the shoulder, as I’d planned to do when I first dropped my pants and headed out, but I’m confident those barriers will fall away as well, as I become more and more comfortable with my body. (I’ve decided not to follow politics anymore, and instead just to focus all of my attention on coming to love and accept my body.) By the end of January, I hope not only to be holding full, meaningful conversations in the nude, but conducting comprehensive self-exams for testicular cancer while stretched out along one of the narrow wooden benches in the locker room.

While my lack of clothing didn’t seem to upset anyone in the locker room, that, unfortunately, wasn’t the case once, having finished my nude rounds, I slipped into my new exercise outfit. You see, I chose to wear a new shirt that my mother-in-law had gotten me, and people seemed to think that it was quite funny. (The shirt says, “The Rockford Files” on the front of it.) No one came right out and asked me about it, but lots of people stared, and I could tell that a few were making comments behind my back… And, yes, it made me wish that I were naked.

As for the shirt, I asked Linette why she thought that her mom had gotten it for me, since I’d never mentioned the Rockford Files, or, for that matter, James Garner, to her. Linette looked at me like I was an idiot, pointed to the shirt, and said, “It has a phone on it.”

I’m still puzzling over that one.

Posted in Mark's Life | 7 Comments

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