New Theme
Updated the look and feel a bit, hope it makes it a bit easier to get around and read the posts. Tell me what you think.
At Least I Am Not The Only One
I have never liked Bush (I know *gasp*), but it seems the rest of the country (or at least most of them) has caught up with me. SEE PEOPLE, all that screaming was not just hot air. Its so good that the rest of you have finally seen the light. Seems the latest CBS news poll has Bush’s approval rating at 34 (!!!) percent. A new all time low. Dick’s is at 18 DOWN from 23 (HA HA HA).
Read the full poll here, and the full Katrina poll here. (both PDF)
Really its his own fault. After years of telling people that the Arabs are out to get us, he has convinced all the red necks (and a good amount of the rest) that every Arab is a bad Arab. The rabid dog of bigotry is now biting the hand that feeds it. The truth is the UAE company that wants to buy the ports will most likely do just as good a job as anyone else at running them. But Bush Co. have stoked the fires of hatred and mistrust too well. And now its gonna get him impeached.
Follow my logic on this one, he is gonna piss off enough voters that the backlash is going to extend to the midterm elections, the Democrats could get enough votes to take back the senate, and if all goes as planned the house as well, then its a hop skip and a jump to Dick forced to step down after getting charged with leaking secret CIA agent names, with the half the “brains” (the other being Rove) out of the way
Bush fucks up so bad he goes down hard. We should all start office pools to see what it will be that gets him in the most trouble, my guess it will be some simple cover up of some sex he had with a secretary…ohhh wait that was Bill. No my real money is on starting an illegal war, illegal torture, destroying the environment, bankrupting the nation to give tax cuts to the rich, his slash and burn tactics for higher education and “no child left behind”, illegal domestic spy program…you know take your pick.
From here.
The latest CBS News poll finds President Bush’s approval rating has fallen to an all-time low of 34 percent, while pessimism about the Iraq war has risen to a new high.
Americans are also overwhelmingly opposed to the Bush-backed deal giving a Dubai-owned company operational control over six major U.S. ports. Seven in 10 Americans, including 58 percent of Republicans, say they’re opposed to the agreement.
CBS News senior White House correspondent Jim Axelrod reports that now it turns out the Coast Guard had concerns about the ports deal, a disclosure that is no doubt troubling to a president who assured Americans there was no security risk from the deal.
The troubling results for the Bush administration come amid reminders about the devastating impact of Hurricane Katrina and negative assessments of how the government and the president have handled it for six months.
In a separate poll, two out of three Americans said they do not think President Bush has responded adequately to the needs of Katrina victims. Only 32 percent approve of the way President Bush is responding to those needs, a drop of 12 points from last September’s poll, taken just two weeks after the storm made landfall.
Mr. Bush’s overall job rating has fallen to 34 percent, down from 42 percent last month. Fifty-nine percent disapprove of the job the president is doing.For the first time in this poll, most Americans say the president does not care much about people like themselves. Fifty-one percent now think he doesn’t care, compared to 47 percent last fall.
Just 30 percent approve of how Mr. Bush is handling the Iraq war, another all-time low.
By two to one, the poll finds Americans think U.S. efforts to bring stability to Iraq are going badly – the worst assessment yet of progress in Iraq.
Even on fighting terrorism, which has long been a strong suit for Mr. Bush, his ratings dropped lower than ever. Half of Americans say they disapprove of how he’s handling the war on terror, while 43 percent approve.
In a bright spot for the administration, most Americans appeared to have heard enough about Vice President Dick Cheney’s hunting accident.
More then three in four said it was understandable that the accident had occurred and two-thirds said the media had spent too much time covering the story.
Still, the incident appears to have made the public’s already negative view of Cheney a more so. Just 18 percent said they had a favorable view of the vice president, down from 23 percent in January.
Americans were evenly split on whether or not Cheney’s explanation of why there was a delay in reporting the accident was satisfactory.
Monday Confessional
So it’s Monday again, time to let the whole world know what I have been up to. I am up to being very poor lately. While this is not so bad, as I have lots of people who love me and plenty to eat and a warm place to sleep at night, being poor is never really that good. My hours at work have been cut back to 20 a week, the gas station is hiring and it looks more and more appealing every day. On the plus side I get plenty of time to do things like art, reading, and working on my personal projects. To bad none of them pay the bills. I have been trying to get a little business repairing computers and designing websites going. We will see how that turns out. Other than that things are going well, I am happy most of the time.
I have been worrying more and more about global climate change as of late. It seems like an odd thing to worry about, but really I don’t believe that I am compulsive about it. I sort of think that people in Europe might have felt this way during World War 2. They knew the Germans were coming, however they didn’t know when they would get there or what they would do when they arrived. Their fear was not irrational, Germany was on the war path, and no one would have told them that they were being silly or Chicken Little.
In positive news I might be giving my car to my mother soon in exchange for her car and 2000 dollars. While this is yet one more thing I can not afford right now, it will be better as my mother’s car gets much better gas mileage than mine does and is in better shape. I got that car simply to do a year of AmeriCorps and only paid 1500 dollars for it. A pretty good deal really. I am tired a lot as of late. I need to sleep more; perhaps going to bed earlier would be a good option. A nice relaxing week is what I need; I am not sure it’s what I will get. Pretty busy at work, trying to squeeze all the work I used to do in an 8 hour day into a 4 hour one. Well that’s about it for me, I know you are all gasping with delight at how exciting my life is right now. Try to realize that its not how much money you make, or where you work, but how you feel about your life that counts.
Electronic Voting Does Not Equal Good Voting
Why in an age of super computers and space ships we cant seem to get a simple thing like voting is beyond me. Seems that a guy in California found out that Diebold was going to use voting machines that were not certified so he took the documents that prove it and showed them to the world. You are saying to yourself “what a hero, he should be lauded for his bravery!” Right? Well think again, he is being charged with theft and going to get the shaft. What the fuck people. We are in bad shape if our elections are no longer free, fair and open.
from here.
A word processor accused of stealing damaging documents about electronic voting machine manufacturer Diebold Election Systems was arraigned Tuesday on three felony counts.
Stephen Heller was charged in Los Angeles Superior Court with felony access to computer data, commercial burglary and receiving stolen property. He pleaded not guilty.
It’s a devastating allegation for a whistle-blower,” said Blair Berk, Heller’s attorney. “Certainly, someone who saw those documents could have reasonably believed that thousands of voters were going to be potentially disenfranchised in upcoming elections.”
The charges arise from Heller’s alleged disclosure two years ago of legal papers from the Los Angeles office of international law firm Jones Day, which represented Diebold at the time. Heller was under contract as a word processor at Jones Day.
The documents included legal memos from one Jones Day attorney to another regarding allegations by activists that Diebold had used uncertified voting systems in Alameda County elections beginning in 2002.
In the memos, a Jones Day attorney opined that using uncertified voting systems violated California election law and that if Diebold had employed an uncertified system, Alameda County could sue the company for breaching its $12.7-million contract.
The documents also revealed that Diebold’s attorneys were exploring whether the California secretary of state had the authority to investigate the company for alleged election law violations.
The Oakland Tribune published the legal memos on its website in April 2004. By then, the issue of whether Diebold used uncertified systems was already receiving widespread attention, because many of its systems failed during the March 2004 primary. As a result, poll workers had to turn away some early voters in San Diego County, and Alameda County voters had to use paper ballots.
A subsequent report by the secretary of state’s office found that Diebold had marketed and sold its systems before gaining federal qualification and had installed uncertified software on election machines in 17 counties.
The company’s AccuVote-TSx model was banned in May 2004, but Diebold machines were conditionally recertified by Secretary of State Bruce McPherson last week for use in 17 counties for this year’s elections.
McPherson ordered Diebold to make long-term programming changes and submit the modifications to a federal panel for recertification.
The conditional recertification follows a turbulent history for Diebold’s electronic voting systems.
In November 2004, the company settled a civil lawsuit brought by two activists and later joined by the state attorney general after he dropped his criminal investigation of the company.
Diebold paid $2.6 million to settle the suit, which alleged that the company had sold its touch-screen voting systems to Alameda County through misrepresentations about their security and certification.
One of the activists, Jim March, said he was the person who actually turned over the allegedly stolen documents to the Oakland Tribune and the state attorney general’s and secretary of state’s offices.
Sandi Gibbons, spokeswoman for the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office, refused to call Heller a “whistle-blower.”
“We call him a defendant,” she said. “He’s accused of breaking the law…. If we feel that the evidence shows beyond a reasonable doubt in our minds that a crime has been committed, it’s our job as a criminal prosecutor to file a case.”
Although state law protects whistle-blowers from retaliation by their employers, they can still be criminally prosecuted, said Tom Devine, legal director at the Washington, D.C.-based Government Accountability Project.
“It’s very rare that it’s successful,” he said. “It’s a tactic where the primary goal may be to scare other would-be whistle-blowers rather than a realistic attempt to obtain a conviction.”
Heller’s preliminary hearing date will be set at a trial conference April 24.
If convicted on all three counts, he could face up to three years and eight months in state prison, Gibbons said.
Time To Get Our Shit Together
Are you ever having a wonderful day, maybe you are viewing a vivid red sunset, and suddenly you think to yourself “that sunset is red because of air pollution.” Or maybe you have nightmares about the extinction of the human species due to global climate change. Do you worry about what will happen to the polar bears when the ice is gone? Do you fret about the end of farming due to dust bowl like conditions in the Midwest? Maybe I am the only one. But I shouldn’t be. Everyone should be worried about this stuff. The whole world should be putting down the guns and bombs and spending all its time on fixing this problem.
But we aren’t. We are heading head long into the biggest challenge our species has faced since global nuclear war. Never has the whole lot of us been in more danger. Simply put none of the cool things we have ever wanted to see are going to happen if we can’t get past this hurdle. We will never colonize space, never cure cancer, never figure out the big bang, never travel to new star systems, and never create artificial intelligence. Instead we will slowly battle for survival as the earth develops a fatal fever.
We buy our SUV’s, start our wars, burn coal, gas, and oil for power, killing ourselves with convenience. We wont use solar energy because then we would have to have less energy hogging homes, we wont use wind power because we want our ocean views, we wont drive the hybrid because it isn’t “cool” looking enough. When the aliens find our ruins in a million years will they conclude that we convenienced ourselves to death? Will future generations live like every bad road warrior movie, because we couldn’t be bothered? Will our grandchildren inherit a world gone absolutely mad?
Imagine a world where global warming runs wild. The middle of North America, the bread basket of the world, is now a desert. Greenland has melted and the seas have risen up to ravish most of the coastal cities. New Deli, New York, Boston, all uninhabitable. Temperature regulating ocean currents shut down due to salinity changes in the ocean, and northern Europe becomes an artic wasteland, while at the same time many other parts of the world turn into desert wastes. Most of the large land mammals die off, large portions of the ocean are barren wastelands. People die left and right due to lack of food. Wars are wagged over the scant amount of fresh water resources, and large refuge populations wander the wastes seeking shelter any place they can. Hurricane season is all year now. The southern United States is an endless wasteland of broken homes and demolished cities. The Sahara expands to swallow most of Africa, while the interior of Asia dries to a brittle crisp. The Canadian Shield and Siberia become some of the few habitable regions left in the world. And on and on and on.
The problem is not enough people are doing enough. We simply are not ready for this. We can not put aside our petty life styles to think about the big picture here. Humans can go the way of the dinosaur. One day an ant or cockroach could crawl up onto the top of an abandoned building and survey a world devoid of human being. It chills me to the core.
Every action we take should be filtered though an “is this good for the species” filter. Every purchase you make, every trip you take, every piece of food you eat, everything should be looked at from a larger view point. Or else we are dead. No more wars, no more freedom to choose an SUV, no more lax environmental laws. It all has to change and change soon or we are screwed. Not just the poor, or the foreigners, all of us. We are all trapped on this little blue ball, and frankly we are in for a ruff ride ahead of us. Wake up people, its time to get our shit together.
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