I was pressed for time on that post. Didn’t want to cross the 100′ barrier and sound like I was reporting something.
At the time I made that post (4:30pm), the staff reported that roughly 800 people had been through those polls.
Category: United States
US politics
Go Vote! Today is important!
Today is Election Day! Make the time to vote please! We have all seen that everybody’s vote counts. Voting is a civic duty and is important to the democratic process. (For the asinine Stacey Campfields out there, "democratic" is not to be confused with the Democratic political party. Until fear mongering, constitution shredding, AT&Tism, and Homeland Security improprieties in the name of protecting your freedoms, completely erode it, you live under a democratic form of government. Specifically, the United States of America is a Representative Liberal Democracy.)
I also encourage you to print your sample ballot and, at the bare minimum, do an Internet search on the candidates you will be choosing. To go the polls and vote on someone because their name rings a bell, or one name sounds better than another is not helping anyone’s cause. Your wild guess may knock a potentially good candidate out of office. If you are in Knox County, your sample ballot is online. Print it, spend a few minutes researching your candidates, and vote knowledgeably! Remember, your employer is obliged to give you time off to go to the polls.
Update: See also: Video of me encouraging voting and far better video of Todd Jordan encouraging voting.
The New Tax-free Country Within The United States
Here’s what the Lakota Nation looks like:
United States Loses Territory in the Mid-West
“We are no longer citizens of the United States of America and all those who live in the five-state area that encompasses our country are free to join us,” long-time Indian rights activist Russell Means told a handful of reporters and a delegation from the Bolivian embassy
…
A delegation of Lakota leaders delivered a message to the State Department on Monday, announcing they were unilaterally withdrawing from treaties they signed with the federal government of the United States, some of them more than 150 years old.
…
Lakota country includes parts of the states of Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota, Montana and Wyoming.
[Source, AFP]
Is the South next?
Happy Holidays You Bigots
Update: I’ve had it explained that this is just one of those fluff things that The House does.
Things you learn over coffee
I ran out of grounds again. Yes, pathetic. I indulged myself and stopped into the local convenient store for a cup of overpriced Joe only to learn that my neighbor, who wanted to go fight in Iraq, got denied by the National Reserves because 16 years ago, when he was 18, he purchased 5 ounces of marijuana from a police officer (which made his crime a double felony). The clerk chimed in that on her parent’s 60 acre farm, her brother used to grow pot by the barn and her mother never understood why no one mowed the grass by the barn. Her mother would pay her $10 to mow it; her brother would then pay her $20 to not mow it. So, indirectly, she was making a killing off of pot. She also had a good laugh when her child came home from school declaring she had learned that smoking pot will make you hallucinate (what are the schools teaching these kids! Oh right, Newspeak). I had to rant my belief that we will pay for an illegal war by 1) reducing government infrastructure costs (ie. release 800,000 prisoners), 2) increase gross national product via larger work force (ie. 800,000 new employees to the workforce), 3) increase income tax revenues (ie. 800,000 new employees with taxable income instead of using taxes to support them in prisons), and 4) sell a high demand product which is already in demand, all ready in a supply chain, all ready being manufactured and heavily tax it (ie. make marijuana legal). I’m not saying I support people running out and getting stoned off their butts; we are talking about a substance less harmful than beer. In my conspiracy mindedness, I’m documenting, that what you will see in the next 5 to 10 years, was predicted right here! My neighbor suggested I should run for congress. Somehow I don’t think I’d get far on the "Dude! Make it legal man." campaign.
In short, I bought a cup of coffee and learned that my neighbor and the store clerk toke it up.
Joe Biden catches onto Twitter!
Presidential hopefuls should be making us their friends by talking candidly with Twitter.
joebiden Online now for a live chat via Washington Post until 5pm; submit your question: http://tinyurl.com/2ng8dj 2 minutes ago from web
Look at how close Twitter puts you to the action!
Narration with supplemental commentary: [audio:http://realityme.net/wp-content/uploads/2007/10/joebidencatchesontotwitter.mp3]>
Today’s USA Today Ad
America is not made safer by making the Constitution weaker. I want to print several of these and put them all over town!
Who put me on this soap box? With a tinfoil hat?!
Is Oak Ridge getting rougher? My reply to Atomic Tumor:
I often wonder if its not that things are getting rougher but that things are getting smaller. Years ago living in a small down with 3 television stations, the focus was on local news with bits of highlights of nation and world the half hour before local. I am sure school shootings happened but if you were in Wilmington North Carolina and the shooting was in Denver Colorado, it didn’t really impact you.
Now as the shooting is happening its beeping across cell phones around the globe like a stock ticker. We know everything about everyone as it happens. That’s good! But we must maintain a sense of perspective which is hard to do under the current fear mongering administration. The government, the media, and the preachers have people scared into giving up their rights! These people aren’t thinking; baaaa baaaa. Re-read 1984. Look at the what’s happening in the UK and how it could easily happen here. Watch Wag the Dog. I’m not saying go totally tinfoil hat on us, but if we don’t shock some common sense into some people, we are going to speed down a bad path. GW Bush 2008!
As an example, the Rocky Elementary School Principal is adamant that the children’s safety at the school relies on enclosing the entire property in a horrifically ugly hurricane fence. Will it have barbed wire? This will destroy a community school. No one will be able to use the playground on the weekends. Home values will fall. Is there really a threat to the children? I haven’t seen it and I’m not stupid or blind. But the principal is so caught up in the security assessment by some for profit firm (that’s what the firm is supposed to do!) that he doesn’t even want people talking about the fence.
In summary, we are now inundated with information that makes the world smaller but also stresses us with somebody else’s problem. Fear mongers react instead of respond thinking “this will happen to us†and in an oddly self-fulfilling prophecy, their lives get scarier because of the increased security due to "the threat."
Update: Suzanne point out that the crime figures reflect that Oak Ridge is just getting rougher. From City-data.com crime index (higher means more crime, U.S. average = 323.2):
- 2000 = 361.1
- 2001 = 368.8
- 2002 = 462.5
- 2003 = 478.4
- 2004 = 506.7
- 2005 = 507.1
- 2006 = 450.3
President GW Bush 2004-indefinitely
You know…if we were in World War III I wonder if we would have an election in 2008…
WASHINGTON, Oct. 17 — President Bush warned today that Iran would be raising the risk of a “World War III†if it came to possess nuclear weapons. [Source, The New York Times]
Does the United States have a prime minister?
…Mr. Putin made clear that he might seek to become prime minister of Russia when he steps down as president — an approach that Mr. Bush wryly said he might want to emulate. [Source, The New York Times]
Narration: [audio:http://realityme.net/wp-content/uploads/2007/10/presidentgwbushindefinitely.mp3]
Update: Tim Grieve of Salon has the quote as:
Reporter: Mr. President, following up on Vladimir Putin for a moment, he said recently that next year, when he has to step down according to the constitution, as the president, he may become prime minister; in effect keeping power and dashing any hopes for a genuine democratic transition there …
Bush: I’ve been planning that myself.
[Source, Salon, It was a joke (we think)]
Threat Level isn’t concerned but put in a freedom of information request anyway.
On Nov 3, 2004, I suggested GW would take the 2008 election.
Update narration (with apologies for the poor read-done in tired haste, bad impersonations, and my sound effects didn’t work): [audio:http://realityme.net/wp-content/uploads/2007/10/gwtakes2008withedits.mp3]
Presidential Hopefuls and their phones
Everyone knows Rudy uses his phone. Someone needs to teach him some manners. What other presidential hopefuls are using their phones? Twitter is a short messaging service that lets you barrage your friends (and others) with the overly mundane in your life. People have found different uses for Twitter from marketing to exhibitionism (look at me look at me) to making announcements and sharing information on the Internet. Presidential hopefuls have accepted that they can reach a large audience and become closure to the constituents by using (or having their staff use) Twitter.
Democrats
- Joe Biden
Hillary Clinton (doubtful that’s her)The Real Hillary Clinton- Chris Dodd
- John Edwards
Mike Gravel- Dennis Kucinich (doubtful that’s him)
- Barack Obama
Bill Richardson
Republicans
- Sam Brownback (maybe)
Rudy GiulianiMike HuckabeeDuncan HunterJohn McCain- Ron Paul
Mitt Romney- Tom Tancredo (maybe)
- Fred Thompson
Uhhhh
- Keith Sprankle
- Stephen Colbert
Ralph Nader
Spectators to the abolishment of freedom
I just watched the University of Florida student getting tasered and read the account of the falsification of the police report. I am appalled! The video indicates no wrong doing! The questions seemed appropriate and Kerry seemed willing to answer. The growing abusive police state in this nation must be contained! What growing abusive police state? The abusive police state that commands on of our military personnel, who put his life at risk to protect your freedoms, to stand up so the officer can shoot him. The students who sat idly by should have risen from their chairs when the officers stood threateningly behind the student. They should have made a human barricade and assured the freedom of speech that our forefathers gave their lives for during the Revolutionary War. How we dishonor them! Our government exists by the will of the people and if the government is stepping out of line then the people must step up! Besides, what’s college if you haven’t been arrested at a protest?
Easier said than done you say? I would have sat idly by also if I were there you say? You don’t know me very well then. All that said, I acknowledge that maybe there were other circumstances not conveyed in the video or the media that led to this event. Perhaps the student had an altercation with the police earlier.
As Naomi Wolf has rightfully pointed out, the tasering of Andrew Meyer will be remembered as a watershed moment in American history. That much is certain. The only thing that remains to be seen is how we, as Americans, react to it. Will we sit passively by while our Constitution and our Democracy are murdered right before our eyes?
…
The choice is clear: either we fight fascism right now with all our power, or we will be the next ones on the ground with a policeman’s knee on our throats and 50,000 volts of electricity coursing through our bodies.
[Source]
Update: Is that officer laughing?!
My Senators Do Not Represent Me
Why?
Statement of Purpose: To restore habeas corpus for those detained by the United States.
Tennessee: Alexander (R-TN), Nay Corker (R-TN), Nay
[Source]
See also and also. On the positive side, at least http://www.senate.gov/ is using ColdFusion.
George Carlin: education and the owners of America
First, that title says "George Carlin" so if you think you can click play on the video below and not hear a word that starts with F and rhymes with duck then you’re delusional. Second, I don’t think you’ll laugh, but you might cheer George on. Third, well, just watch the video.
Are we a nation of six year olds?
Warning! Some adult language in the video. Also if you believe the 9/11 attacks were because of "your freedoms" you might have a hard time listening to this.
See also. Oh man! I just watched that whole thing. You really should see the last 2 minutes!
