Republican Treason on Iran

Whenever most of us questioned de facto GW Bush’s foreign policy abortions, partisan Republicans accused of us “undermining the Commander-in-Chief [of the Armed Forces],” treason, appeasement, “hating America,” blah blah blah.  But now it’s OK for them to do the same with President Obama?*  Excuse me, but someone who lived in the Muslim World some years — as a civilian — and even has Muslim relatives, might have a little more insight into the matter than Red State farmboys on The Hill … or even Blue State politically-correct cosmopolitans for that matter.  (Awful stereotypes, both, of course…)  Even someone driven out of the church of his choice by the GOP!  (So much for “No Religious Test for holding any office under this Constitution”!)  This from the folks who seriously talked about nuking Iran … or having Israel do it?!  So much for the Myth of Republican Foreign Policy Expertise….

(*–Some MSM still feel the need to call him “President Barack Obama,” like he’s some foreign leader we’ve never heard of or something!!)

Cash for Clunkers!

You read it here first 7 months ago. 

As for those who think it’ll benefit foreign manufacturers more than domestic, well, that’s OK too, since we all live on the same planet, breathe the same air, yada yada yada!  Though, sure, we’d prefer to benefit our own assemblyline workers and chartered / originated corporations — so let’s keep this up long enough for them to build (more) cars that qualify!

Saving endangered Native American languages

There’s a fair bit about this online, but I’ll just highlight the following:

Canada’s National Post newspaper recently did a multimedia series including the Delaware Indian language Munsee, called Lunaape (ie, Lenape)* at the Moraviantown Reserve in southern Ontario.  Behind the scenes of that story is that First Nation’s Bruce Stonefish, profiled in the Newark Star-Ledger a few years ago.  He’s behind a weeklong Language Immersion summer camp at Moraviantown (PDF) that at least went on as late as 2007, maybe last summer too, I’m not sure.  Various ‘official’ and other Lenape and other groups got together with Philadelphia’s University of Pennsylvania a year ago to rap Indigenous Language preservation.  “Unofficial” is that article’s “Lenape Nation of Pennsylvania,” but they seem to be kicking butt in promoting the language at least!  (See here, and this curriculum intended for parents to catch on to and share with children.  I’m not sure if their Lenape language is Munsee or Unami [see "Language Links" below the lessons on that page].)

As you may have seen, Stonefish has taught some lessons to some of my kin, the Nanticoke Lenni Lenape in New Jersey, and visited the State of Delaware, where my Nanticoke ancestors lived after 1742 or so.  But the Nanticoke Indian Association a couple years ago started to resurrect the Nanticoke language with the help of an Anishnabay (or Ojibwe or Chippewa) dialect from Manitoba, since it’s a sister Algonquian language.  Maybe you heard how Hollywood did something similar for a Virginia tribe descended from Jamestown’s neighbors (WaPo link may break).

Why?  In my reading, the folks at St. Thomas University in New Brunswick, Canada, say Native Language Immersion is the best if not the only way to treat some of Natives’ social problems both on the Reservation and in larger Settler society, from problems with school grades and academic learning in general, to cultural preservation, to self-destructive behavior, a/k/a internalized oppression/repression/genocide.  Bicultural competence is something many people in Canada know something about.  We’re literally talking about saving lives in many cases.  As Stonefish’s Immersion Camp brochure states: “In order for the Lunaape Language to survive, it needs to once again become an instrumental part of our lives, our everyday conversations and everyday view of the world. Within our language we will find our original Lunaape worldview. It is within our language where we will find the concepts of how we related to all that is around us. It is within our language where the Lunaape people will find keys to understanding our true original identities, gifts and responsibilities to ourselves as well as those around us.”

(*–Both words are correctly pronounced “luh-NAH-pay,” more or less.  The vowel in the first syllable is closest to an American English schwa, that upside down ‘e’ thingie, or more technically, a vowel in an unaccented syllable.)

Dennis Haysbert

Too funny!: Last night I saw a promo for The Unit, and I thought it was an insurance commercial!

Cuomo for Supreme Court?

With Justice David Souter retiring, we could use a real “liberal” in his place.  Former New York Governor Mario Cuomo may be one of the greatest unsung legal and moral-philosophical minds alive in America — and God Himself knows we could use more morality on that High Court these days, nevermind law-abiding!

As if somebody knew something was coming, we have this piece on Cuomo’s visit to the Court last month.  I actually didn’t know Clinton almost nominated him in ‘93, maybe because I was otherwise occupied.  But it seems Gov. Cuomo still considers a need for him in other fora:

“You have 100 cases a year at the Court, and five or six of them are really significant, maybe.”  When the Clinton offer came, Cuomo says, the deciding factor in saying no was the prospect of “never being able to speak out again” on issues like the death penalty or poverty.  “Even now, nobody is talking about poor people,” Cuomo laments.  After serving as New York governor for three terms, he said that virtual vow of silence seemed impossible.*  He’s been happy doing other things that help people in recent years, Cuomo says.  “One does what one can.”  He counts his mediation in the asbestos case as one of his endeavors that has benefited those who need help.  Through the mediation, a new $500 million fund was created to compensate thousands more victims of asbestos-related disease who could not have received anything from the depleted Johns-Manville fund.

Talking about giving up the Court to help people puts me in mind of the line about the college professor: “He’s a doctor, but not the kind that helps people”!!  At 76 though, Cuomo is a few years older than Souter, and we may need rather to pull a Clarence Thomas and nominate a 30-something radical prophet who’ll stand up for law and justice and democracy for the next two generations on the Court.  Damned shame.  If it wasn’t for anti-Italian/anti-Catholic bigotry, he would’ve been President as early as ‘88 instead of George I … or certainly ‘92, when America could’ve done a whole lot better than William Jefferson Clinton.

I just saw a quote of Mario’s I’d never heard before, but which speaks of my own marveling at how decent, respectable, thoughtful moderate Republican politicians of the ’70s and ’80s have become monsters since:

There are few things more amusing in the world of politics than watching moderate Republicans charging to the right in pursuit of greater glory.

God grant you Many Years, Governor — Ad Multos Annos!

(*–Tell Scalia, Governor!!)

Alex Haley’s Red “Roots”

According to this page (text-search him — no matter what Google’s cache says, he’s there!), the author who in his famous book traced African roots and heritage, also claimed Cherokee ancestry.  Cool twice over!  Whatever one may say about the book or the man, God be good to him.

Nuclear Winter technically a bigger threat to civilization than Global Warming?

That’s the impression one gets from reading recent research about the potential effects of a much smaller nuclear exchange than usually envisioned during the Cold War between the U.S. and the USSR … together with the continuing emphasis the Doomsday Clock guys put on nukes vs. GW.

(I have to note the irony that the scientists who GAVE us nukes and dangerous technology are the ones who now demand that THE REST OF US DO SOMETHING to save them, er, the world, from catastrophe!  ‘Stop us before we kill again….’  They could stand more self-restraint, less hubris, better ethical training, themselves.  But like Republicans with Reaganite financial deregulation, many of these folks seem to think the solution to the problems of technology is MORE TECHNOLOGY.  Another funny thing: For most of my life, I thought the expression “mad scientist” indicated anger.  It’s only recently that I realized it means they’re crazy, just like in Mad Cow Disease! [No, I didn't just learn that mad can still sometimes mean crazy; just that it did in those two particular uses.])

“WE SHALL REMAIN” Public broadcasting series on Native America

…debuts tomorrow night (Monday) on PBS-TV: as they say, consult your local listings.  The idea is a series of Native perspectives on the history of the settlement of what is currently the U.S.  The producers concede in a public email that they couldn’t cover all bases:

“With 560 federally recognized tribes in the US, it was impossible for us to tell everyone’s story,” says WE SHALL REMAIN executive producer Sharon Grimberg.

If you have Native roots, now it’s your turn to share your experiences through WE SHALL REMAIN’s Online Story Sharingtool. It allows Native people across the country to publish video, audio, or written pieces on the Web sites of public media broadcasters in their communities.

Not to mention the hundreds of Native communities/groups not yet “federally recognized”….  We ALL Shall Remain!!!

Anti-abortion, but Pro-Obama at Notre Dame

As per tradition, the University of Notre Dame has slated America’s President (of the Federal Executive Branch, anyway…) to speak at graduation.  Right-wingers, conservative/Republican Catholics, and some self-appointed anti-abortion spokespeople are piling-on this great school and American tradition, and even trying to get the local Catholic bishop to apply the (thumb)screws.

The U. is clear they don’t agree with Obama on everything … as I’m sure they haven’t agreed with ANY speaker on EVERYTHING.  Sign a semi-official online petition in support of the school, academic freedom, and civil dialogue.

As a great(?) man once said, I ain’t never heard of anything so dangerous it couldn’t be talked about!

Fox News Biden libel on economy

I have a journalism background (as opposed to what Fox News Channel serves up), and this fake edit just might be actionable, making VP Biden seem to claim last week that “the fundamentals of the economy are sound,” when the footage is actually from the campaign where he was quoting McCain and vigorously disagreeing with that assessment (as most of us then and now.  You’d think nobody would even use that particular expression after this past Election Day!).

Of course, nobody sues for libel or slander anymore, and so public discourse goes down the toilet where Reagan, the Repugs, and the Fundies sent it starting in the ’70s.

See Greenland!

Aka, Kalaalit Nunaat.  This tourism etc. site is very user friendly, with downright seductive photos!  Next plane to Reykjavik!!!

They say after WW2 the people wanted to “modernize,” and so traditional Inuit ways are disappearing.  I have mixed feelings about that as someone looking into my own Indigenous heritage/s.  Recently I saw a documentary, mostly about Inuit in Nunavut Territory, Canada, but one who often trekked more than a thousand miles over ice to NW Greenland in Spring had to fly one recent year because the ice wasn’t there or thick enough.  And subsistence whaling and sealing there was said to be becoming alot harder because they relied on the ice traditionally, just like the polar bears we hear so much about now, with Global Warming.

Indigenous issues aren’t all cut and dried, so to speak….

Global Warming Update: 3-4 foot sea rise, many Northeast Katrinas

By the end of this century!  (That crashing sound you hear is Northeast Seaboard property values … and not just Jersey and Long Island either….)

IBS, fiber therapy, and string in poop

WARNING: IMMATURE CONTENT!

Just kidding … sort of.

For those of you allergic to “too much information,” read no further.

I mean it!

OK.  As you may remember, I’ve been diagnosed with Irritable Bowel Syndrome since 1999.  (Nope, I didn’t get to party like it was 1999!)  Though I’ve had it at least since 1990.  Mostly IBS-Diarrhea (IBS-D).  But I didn’t get to see a truly helpful gastroenterologist until 2002 or so.  He put me on high-fiber therapy, specifically fiber supplements (pills like Fibercon) and any other fiber I could cram into my eating habits.*  Since then,

and here’s where it gets graphic,

sometimes when I’m on the toilet, I feel something hanging out of my bunghole, just taking its grand old time passing/dropping.  Recently, with greatly increased soluble fiber dosage (Thanks, Heather, the acacia powder  really does seem to help! [aka "gum arabic"]), sometimes I see whitish strings in my stools there in the bowl – too long to be worms, an inch or more – and eventually I solved the mystery of the hanging business by getting a fistful of TP and just grabbing what was hanging … and it was a rubbery/plasticky stretch of material that I could feel breaking stiffly just inside my anus, like there was more in there — definitely not a lifeform, Mr. Spock.

Well, I just got around to Googling “string in poop” (without quotes), hoping for some unvarnished, un-PC, honest, forthright discussion.  And although Yahoo Answers isn’t necessarily C. Everett Koop, all told, several links seem to have the ring of truth in them, like this one, this one, this one, and this one.  Could your gastrointestinal tract really do that to fiber, twist it and pound it into unrecognizability?  Think about how long the tract would be all stretched out, like they say, and all the muscles squeezing and twisting, acids, weird and normal fluids and bacteria and other things you’re eating, fermentation, reactions … and I could see it.  I may run it by my doc just to make sure, but I feel alot better about it just now, so much that I wanted to spread the word, because apparently I’m not alone!  Even beyond Yahoo there was this page (text-search for “string” — quotes not necessary).  In its basic nature, fiber is sort of waxy, hence I guess the occasional weird forms it gets metamorphosed into.

WHEW!  Thank you, Jesus!  Amen!

(*–Dietary fiber, to be clear, in light of what follows!  However, he failed to differentiate between soluble and insoluble fiber.  Most Americans trying to eat reasonably-healthily — not our traditional steak-and-potatoes — have no shortage of insoluble fiber in their diets: raw vegetables, even some cooked ones like broccoli, carrots, and other ‘yummy’ things like that.  This is the kind that goes right through you.  When you have IBS-D, you don’t wanna overdo that, though you shouldn’t go without it either, or so I’ve read, and so I do, mostly.  [Screw whole grains!!]  Soluble fiber isn’t greased lightning [correct spelling!], but goes slow enough to soak up all that excess fluid that otherwise sends you “running.”  That’s what IBS-D’s need tons of: beans [they're not just good for your heart], other fibery, mushy stuff like that, and other soluble fiber.  Wikipedia is all over fiber.)

Obey!

What’s the deal with these online weight-loss ads that seem to slip the word “obey” in with hardly any grammatical sense at all?  It’s almost like they’re trying to hypnotize you, or make you feel guilty, one or the other (or both?)!

Or is it like “Obey your thirst”?!!

Recession Advice: Stay Home

As seen on KABC-TV Los Angeles previously, and on ABC News tonight probably courtesy of the NY Times Wednesday, now is not the best time to relocate if you don’t absolutely have to, unless you have money to burn, or if price is no object of course….

When I was a reporter in the suburbs and exurbs of one of this country’s major cities in the ’80s, “homeless hotels” and mega taxicab fares to jobs closer-in to that city were being picked up by some local Public Housing Authorities, but I don’t hear or read that in this week’s stories.  Were Bush/Cheney really worse for the needy — of whatever supposed “class” — than Reagan/Bush?!  Persons more in-touch with recent homelessness and hunger stats than I, might know.  Maybe it’s just the combined onslaught of the whole last 28 years (DLC/Clinton included).  I guess our REAL long national nightmare isn’t quite over yet….

Freedom from debt collectors!

1. Did you know there’s a Statute of Limitations on many debts?!!  It varies by type of debt and by State, but basically if you avoid payments long enough [hopefully through no fault of your own, but sincere financial difficulty, sez I, but hey, the law is the law!], you’re Free and Clear!!!!!  Not that the predatory bastidges deserve the consideration….
2. And after you browse this Federal court ruling, you may never give a debt collector the time of day again, may never agree to one of those mostly-bogus partial-as-payment-in-full arrangements, may never even stipulate that you have ever owed anything to anyone again!!!!!  Point being, be extremely careful, and if possible, get legal advice.
3. Aren’t debt speculators the ones who caused the current Depression?!!!!
4. From today’s research by me, it’s clear there’s alot of shady, barely-legal, deceptive, manipulative, maybe even illegal stuff going on by debt collectors.  Now THERE’S something (also) worth a probe!

SO HELP YOURSELF TO A “BAILOUT”!!!!!

“Paging Mr. Taj Mahal”

In the ’90s once I was connecting through Denver’s then-Stapleton International Airport. During both ends of the round trip I spent quite a while cooling my heels there, so long in fact that for years afterward I could recite their First Amendment p.a. message from memory!

What I still remember though was at one point somebody used the automated p.a. paging system many, many times to page “Mr. Taj Mahal” — pronouncing Mahal “MAY-hall” (like racer Bobby Rahal*).  With the mispronunciation(?) it took a few times to seep into my conscious brain and make me realize, OH! That’s a prank!  Ha ha, very funny, right up there with “Amanda Hugginkiss” and all those other Bart Simpson pranks.  As a HUGE fan of The Blues Brothers, and a very minor fan of blues in general, I should’ve remembered maybe it wasn’t a prank after all!

Congrats, sir, and Many Years.

(*–Hey, Rahal’s Lebanese-American.  Is he Orthodox?!!)

Global Warming satellite sabotaged?

Inquiring minds wanna know….

The 2 Most Powerful Governmental Leaders in the Americas are now both Black

President Obama and Governor General Jean of Canada meet before Harper meeting

I missed this picture in U.S. media from President Obama’s Canadian trip.  HE is the elected President of the United States of America, with his finger on The Button, the son of a Black African student with distant kin descended from chattel slaves.  SHE is Michaelle Jean, appointed “Governor General and Commander-in-Chief of Canada” by Her Majesty The Queen of Canada and Her Other Realms and Territories, Elizabeth II, on the advice of HM’s Canadian Prime Minister of the day.  Mme. Jean is a Haitian immigrant to Quebec, her first language is French (or Haitian Creole), and she is descended from chattel slaves.  In the name of The Queen, she holds all constitutional power in Canada, though according to custom, she too governs in Privy Council, acting only on the advice of HM’s Canadian PM of the day … normally.  She’s married to a White Frenchman, and they are raising an adopted little Haitian girl.

Some photo op, eh?!  Every Black kid on Earth should get a copy free!

Canadian media covered their meeting in greater detail than you’ll find elsewhere: here, for now (link will break).

2010 Census: Part-Indians, Part-Blacks, etc.

After looking over this 2001 story from a fine journalistic publication that maybe needs a new name(!!), IOTM that ‘traditional’ Census-Indians and Census-Blacks are poorer, disempowered, oppressed, discriminated against, etc., raising the question whether an increasing number of ‘non-traditionals’ laying claim to their Mixed Race Ancestry skews the demographics in ways that harm the discriminated-against, darker-skinned Americans?  (The same thing has been happening in Canada.)  ‘Ah, yes, Indians have now made it into Scarsdale, Redmond, Beverly Hills, West Palm Beach, so we don’t have to worry about them anymore!’

I ask this of myself too (as I did last May).  For logistical reasons I was not counted in the 2000 Census, but in 1990, feeling cheeky, I wrote myself down as Native American, in the only choice allowed me before 2000’s multiple-choice Census.  (Though I wasn’t living in a particularly upscale neighborhood at the time.  [I've been growing slowly in my Native self-consciousness since my mother informed me of it in the early '70s ... more quickly since I got on the Internet in the late '90s!])

Ironically, this is the flip-side of a concern voiced by some Black leaders in the runup to 2000 — that traditional Census-Blacks claiming other races or ethnicities might dilute their political strength.  Remember that Congressional, State, and Local legislative and election districts are re-drawn every ten years in part on the basis of race (along with Party registration, neighborhood voting habits, income, etc.) — including Federal-Court-ordered “majority-minority” districts to redress racist housing segregation or exclusionary zoning.  So this isn’t just about paid-up membership in the NAACP.

Maybe those of us interested in claiming additional identities officially besides the one (North) America thinks we belong to, for which we don’t suffer as much from (North) America actively anymore [I'm choosing my words carefully here], should assert a specifically Mixed i.d., distinct from African-American or Native American or whatever — standing totally in solidarity with our oppressed cousins, whatever our internal disagreements.

What term or terms to use?  Metis, to those who have ever heard of it, usually connotes French-Canadian-Indian, although the term, as I have reported, historically and again now increasingly has broader usage.  Mestizo, again to those who have heard of it in the U.S., usually connotes a Spanish-Indian Mix somewhere in the family tree, although some have tried to apply it also to us Eastern U.S. “tri-racial isolates” (a term we have traditionally eschewed).  Mulatto is usually thought to mean a Black-White Mix, although Jack Forbes believes that historically it was mostly Black-Indian.  It’s said Forbes tried to broaden the local (colonial Carolina and New Jersey) term Mustee/Mestee* to cover all us “tri-racials.”  I once toyed with the equivalent Irish Gaelic term, Meascach, at least in regard to myself.  Some folks at the National American Metis Association have used the historic English Halfbreed or even its historic contraction ‘Breed, though my question here is what if my Native blood quantum — a racist, racialist, and unconstitutional category in the U.S. — is less than “Half”?  I haven’t seen anybody trying to revive the terms Quadroon and Octoroon, or any of the dozen or more other historical terms Forbes chronicles!

We could unite on a term like Mixed Aboriginal, going on to specify the Mix we wish to claim for ourselves on that same line on the Census form, eg, “Mixed Aboriginal: Irish and Nanticoke Indian.”  Except apparently the 2010 form won’t accommodate such a thing; see this 1.7MB PDF, and when it opens, go up in what is usually the page number box in the Reader toolbar and type “Sec1:5″ without spaces or quote marks, then hit Enter/Return.  We get only 17 letters and spaces.  [I'm sure someone tried hard, but this is not well-designed even generally speaking.  What if someone is both Asian and Pacific Islander, as many traditionally-"Asian/Pacific Islanders" are?  What if they're more than one "other race (sic)"?: Jewish, Arab, Turkish, Kurdish, Iranian/Persian, Azeri/Azerbaijani, Kazakh, Indigenous Siberian, Tatar, Chechen, Aboriginal Australian?  By some estimates Armenians and Georgians are Asian too.  Many of these are small groups in this country, but it could happen!]

Yup, the 2010 Census discriminates against us ‘Breeds: Part-Indians, Half-Blacks, part-Whites, whatever, wanting to claim “All My Relations”!  They want to break us into tiny little pieces!  Actually it wants to break down traditional Census-Blacks and Census-Indians, hoping to be done with legal or political obligations to them.  That’s called genocide, the same old story. 

 

(*–I believe it’s pronounced mis-TEE, derived from the same French, Spanish, and Latin words like Metis [formerly, Mestis and Mestif] and Mestizo.)

New Repug boss wants to be “Hip-Hop” Mussolini

I swear!  “Make the trains run on time“?!!!  “One-armed midgets”?!!  “Off the hook”: Does that mean he won’t answer his phone?  We can only hope….

Of course, the Republican Party isn’t “in the crapper.”  They just feel like they are because they don’t have (obvious) absolute power for the moment, like they have for most of the last 28 years.  But that’s true not because of “PR” or a dearth of young, Hispanic, or Black ”messengers” in Virginia and North Carolina, but because they put THIS COUNTRY, INDEED, THE WORLD, IN THE CRAPPER, INCLUDING YOUNG PEOPLE, HISPANICS, BLACKS, NATIVE AMERICANS, WOMEN, AND EVERYBODY ELSE, INCLUDING THEMSELVES!!!  (Ever hear of cutting off your nose to spite your face?)

To think it’s PR, that substance doesn’t matter, is the ultimate in self-serving cynicism.  It’s kind of like Big Tobacco getting us hooked all those years they knew they were killing us.  Or Big Energy “putting lipstick on a pig,” pretending to be “green” — Please, “Clean Coal”?!!!  Hitler* had Goebbels and Riefenstahl, PR geniuses, “hip” messages and state of the art, and even held on for a while; but win or lose, they were equally wrong.

They’re gonna do “beyond cutting edge”?  That worries me, after a decade of stolen elections, stolen airwaves, stolen bookstore shelves, stolen bandwidth, stolen cable TV space, stolen newspapers, hijacked websites and campaigns, lies, racism, sexism, pseudo-religious bigotry, lock-step churches, wedge pseudo-issues, government funding of “conservative” religion, corruption we haven’t even begun to investigate and prosecute and fine and jail, one or maybe even two fake wars with real casualties, etc etc etc.  If we thought we could rest a little after 12:01pm EST Jan. 20, we may have been sorely mistaken.  Like the man said, I guess democracy and justice really do demand eternal vigilance.

Maybe the GOP picked this loon because his last name sounds like steal….

This new ad campaign is gonna look like that tokenist national convention they had in 2004, where just about the only People of Color were on-stage in front of the cameras.  “Hip-hop” Repugs, can you imagine?!  They won’t touch us.  Now, if they cared about more than just the votes of youth, Blacks, and Hispanics, etc., we might be seriously worried.  But all they really want to do is make their next big stolen election look credible where folks don’t typically vote GOP — that’s what really concerns me.

(*–Don’t blame me, he started it by quoting Mussolini!)

“If only outlaws have guns….”

…it’ll be pretty easy to identify them before they commit crimes.  Kind of like an Outlaw I.D. card, right?!!*  “Conservatives” like that, don’t they?!!!

(*–Only more dangerous….)

Remember Next November

… in 2010 … who the Republicans voted to bail-out, and who they told ‘Drop Dead.’  They were OK with letting crooked bankers rob us blind, but when it came to union auto workers and the rest of America, they thumbed their noses, except Senators Specter, Snowe (an Orthodox Christian!), and Collins.

Yes, the GOP is as amenable to “bipartisanship” in opposition as they were in so-called leadership.  Why should WE?!!  They march in goose-step, hoping with Rush Limbaugh that America goes down like the Titanic … apparently even McCain, Mr. Conciliatory, is celebrating the Depression.  (’Why do “conservatives” hate America?’)  Not hurting THEM too much, is it!  I’ll take a “Limousine Liberal” over a hypocritical, self-declared ”Compassionate Conservative” any day!!!

In the interest of Full Disclosure, apparently I’m going to get a few more dollars in Food Stamps, and that one-time $250 lump-sum in my SSI/Disability (which will probably claw-back the Food Stamps!  Talk about taking from Peter to pay … well … Peter!).  Again, frankly, most individual beneficiaries of Bailout 2.0 are gonna sock it away in the bank and not “Go shopping” like us pobres who have NEEDS, so really, it would’ve done more good going more to us.  But then, apparently not even Specter, Snowe, and Collins, as Repugs, could stomach that.  And Specter comes from Philly….  With friends like him….  But hey, where else are we gonna get the money to pay your “Eat the poor,” upward-transfer taxes, eh?!!!  Wages?  Lotto?  Dean Graziosi?!

Further Evidence/Analysis: Global Warming to last 1000 years or more

Report from America’s NOAA, ‘liberated’ on January 20(!).  I’ve been saying up to 2,000 years more at least; worse if we continue doing very little about it.  This report says the problem is that while some carbon dioxide precipitates out of the upper atmosphere after a shorter amount of time naturally, other CO2 takes much longer: it’s a mixed picture, a complex system.  They don’t mean “irreversible,” as a read of the article indicates, so they shouldn’t say that; they mean very long term — way beyond the next Electoral Cycle!  The thing is, we have to get cracking, because everything we can do now will make a difference down the road, even if not for us or our children or grandchildren.  It’s way past late for political games with China and India and the Third World, Bushies!  As Red Green says, we’re all in this together.  As we started learning about trash in the ’80s, There’s no more “away”!

Will life on Earth survive such a prolonged assault, is the question.

Repugs to filibuster Al Franken?

Go ahead.  Let’s put them on TV round the clock.  With MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow providing fact-checks and analysis.  See how fast Americans and the world tire of Republican legal tricks and technicalities … especially the next time they accuse us of the same.

Remember that this is the party that started seating losing, rejected House members a couple years ago, because you can’t filibuster in the House.  Maybe House Dems should change that rule….

Second thought, Senate filibusters are the reason we have an unconstitutional, undemocratic de facto supermajority requirement to pass any legislation there, the magical 60 votes instead of 51, or even just a majority of Senators present at the time of the vote.  I say let bills pass or fail on a simple, (small-D) democratic majority … might rile-up more people to vote out the arrogant GOP if they showed their true colors in the Senate more often, which would be better for the country … and the world.

Override “Open in New Window”

Another of my cyber pet peeves is when websites force links to open in new windows for no apparent reason other than to clutter your desktop and monopolize your RAM.

Now, sometimes there’s a good reason, like if it’s a completely different site of a completely different author / company / whatever, or a completely different or tangential subject.  But if it’s your own site, intimately related, etc.???

Like probably many of you, my websurfing is somewhat undisciplined, a kind of Cyber Attention Deficit Disorder.  (Very time-consuming!)  To minimize confusion, I try to minimize open windows or tabs at least: one ‘trail’ or series of related pages visited, or subject, per tab or window.  This I guess is more the method to my madness about forced New Windows.  Plus, Opening New Windows is time-consuming too, especially in XP for some reason, setting the hard drive going like a coffee grinder.

So, what I often have to do is routinely right-click –> Copy Shortcut, paste it in the address window, and hit Enter or the Go To arrow (IE 7, aka The Cripple!!!).  It’s a minor thing, but shows messy (or inconsiderate!) programming, of the website AND of Internet Explorer.  And it really p___es me off when I forget, and that coffee grinder starts up, and you can’t stop it till it’s completed its inexorable course!  [Is exorable even a word?]

I once wrote to Microsoft that they should add to the right-click menu an “Open in THIS Window” option, but they never really got back to me.  Better yet, how about a context-sensitive (ie, appearing only when applicable / necessary) “Override ‘Open in New Window’”?  Until then…

Open THIS in a New Window!!!!!  or…

I gotcher “New Window” right heah!!!

ROUNDUP: Fitzmas II et cetera

Remember Fitzmas carols?!  They’re singing U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald’s praises again for accusing Rod Blagojevich – remember, innocent till proved guilty, and it’s possible not all us Eastern Orthodox Christians are saints (yet!) – but let’s remember all we got out of him in the Plamegate Treason case was a token conviction of Scooter Libby who took the fall for probably Cheney and many other scum, then walked unconstitutionally.  I have a feeling Blago’s right, and we haven’t seen the end of this, and there’s more to be revealed.  Meanwhile let’s get the Bu’ushists on their way out the West Wing, so they don’t get away with all their High Crimes, and nobody else in the future thinks they will either….

Did you hear about the White Racist vigilantes during Katrina in New Orleans killing poor Blacks escaping the flooding Lower Ninth Ward while cops batted an eye?  Me neither.  (Yeah, OK, it’s Katrina vanden Heuvel from The Nation….)  Sign the petition.

Did you hear Orthodox, former Evangelical bigwig, Frank Schaeffer sounding almost like a progressive conservative?!!!  (What those he calls “conservatives” and “progressives” have in common is Classical Liberalism, as he articulately characterizes without using the term.)  Alright, a pissed one, who forgot in that particular article to take some of the blame himself for driving the Religious Wrong all these years.  (That may be in his new autobiography, thankfully.)  He owes most of us a big honkin’ apology, quite frankly (no pun intended).  But, hell, welcome aboard, Franky, the water’s warm!  Besides, you’re my brother in Christ now, so I have to forgive you.  Do any of us get to retract our mistakes (or any do-overs, to use W’s typically-childish boxball analogy)?

Cheney: If President does something during war, it’s legal.  “Go F*@# yourself,” “Dick”!  Or let your cellmate do that for ya….

Finally, for something completely different(?), “Ten Ways to Make Your Kids More Likeable (and Yourself Too)” or something like that.  Happy Solstice!

The phrase “one-world government” is ungrammatical.

Unless it’s preferring to limit government to a single world, say Earth, so it doesn’t also cover, I dunno, Mars, the Moon, Europa, Venus….

Why do they use the hyphen, making “one world” a single adjective instead of part of a phrase, as in, “I support (or oppose) one world government” or even just “a world government”?

My first encounter with the expression was I think on the back of a Keith Green album (along with anti-Catholicism) when I was spinning Christian Contemporary music on my college radio station in the early ’80s (I also spun Adult Contemp, Classic Rock, Classical, and read and wrote news), and it sounded as conspiracy-theorist then as it does now … even with some religious tilt I don’t quite comprehend, even after spending most of the ’90s among Protestants.

Inquiring minds wanna know!

Fake Credit Crisis?

This guy told Rachel Maddow on MSNBC the Minneapolis Fed says we’ve all been lied to, to the tune of a trillion bucks or more.  [Kind of like the fake Social Security Crisis?!]

This paragraph is his upshot:

The real crisis is in the real economy – ya know, the real world of jobs, wages, health care premiums and pensions that Washington has totally ignored as it keeps writing checks to its well-heeled campaign contributors on Wall Street under the guise of a lending crisis. Adding insult to injury is the last thing I discussed with Rachel – the fact that because the bailout money came with almost no strings attached, the financial industry recipients of the taxpayer largesse are either hoarding the money, using it to pay shareholder dividends and executive bonuses, or devoting it to efforts to buy up smaller competitors.

He concludes:

…pundits and politicians were using an admittedly real problem to manufacture the perception of a full-on earth-shattering crisis so as to justify the biggest taxpayer heist in contemporary American history.

You do the math now.

I don’t buy everything Maddow or her guests say, but more and more I find her a necessary reality-check on the MSM and, well, reality … perhaps especially now that we will supposedly not only win but occupy the White House.  She’s truly a D.Phil. to watch out for!

Bush-Cheney-Powell Treason?

Isn’t lying your country into at least one war a fundamental undermining of its military position akin to treason?  Especially if those same parties are claiming we have millions of “enemies” all over the world to be worried about?

I quote Article III, Section 3 of the U.S. Constitution of 1787:

Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort. No person shall be convicted of treason unless on the testimony of two witnesses to the same overt act, or on confession in open court.

Certainly no bigger aid or comfort can be given to our alleged enemies, Muslim terrorists, than to divert half our armed forces from the “Global War on Terror,” to what Bush and others have admitted was a war of choice (ie, aggression) against Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and his government and political party, leaving us fighting the GWOT with one hand tied behind our back.

And we are all witnesses.

How long have Europeans been here more-or-less continuously?

This Wikipedia article reminds me that it’s probably been pretty much 1,000 years, not just since 1492.  Leif Erikson and Co. didn’t just visit.  There were Norse settlements in Greenland and coastal northeastern Canada from around AD 1000.  They first settled in Greenland in 984, the original Norse settlements disappearing, possibly to malnutrition, ”by the late 1400s.”  Seasonal settlements seem to have dotted coastal Canada starting not long after 984, and tantalizing evidence is that Norse visited and traded even farther down the coast, into New England, and less credibly, even farther south.  In the same late 1400s, Spanish, Portuguese, Basque, and French fishermen started seasonally fishing Canadian  Maritime waters once again, making use of coastal lands in doing so, soon after Spanish and Portuguese ‘rediscovered’ the Americas, farther south.

When you think about it, it’s doubtful that Vikings didn’t have intimate relations with Native women, by force or voluntarily, so they may have even left behind Mixed-Blood descendants among the Aboriginal populations here.  So even when Europeans seemed to disappear from here, in a sense they may not have.

IQ and Thanksgiving

I just read here about Inuit (Canada Eskimo) traditional knowledge being called (in the Inuit language, Inuktitut) Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit, or IQ.  LOL!  That’s so cool!  I know *I* couldn’t pass this IQ test!!!  Hell, if what we laughably call civilization collapsed tomorrow, I’d probably unknowingly eat some noxious weed growing out of the ground and croak!  That’s right, we’ve all been “taught” how to survive in a supermarket – or worse yet, McDonald’s - and Heaven forbid we should ever find ourselves without one!  Seriously, we should all learn some Native knowledge about wherever we live, in case we need it someday;* we probably need it NOW!  It might help us more to “walk lightly over the earth.”

(*–Interestingly, it took the Peanuts gang to remind many of us that when Squanto, one of the last Patuxet Indians after a British smallpox epidemic devastated “New England” and the Maritimes, taught the Plymouth “Pilgrims” and Co. how to survive in their accidental new home in Massachusetts [vs. New York], he was passing on to them the traditional knowledge of his by-then-dead village nation, something not done lightly by Indigenous Peoples today because they usually end up regretting it.  Had he not done so, the colonists might have died, or abandoned the colony.)

Renewable energy

Great Wikipedia overview here.  We gotta do it, people, governments, charities, everybody!

Except burning stuff solves nothing, whether it’s imported or domestic.

I only recently heard of geothermal heat-exchange, which sounds like a no-brainer just about universally!  Heating and air-conditioning from the same cheap process and equipment?  Many buildings can even be retrofitted.

How about legally requiring implementation of as many non-burning renewable energy technologies as possible, with government help for the needy to do so, etc etc etc?!!!!!  It seems there’s so much that can be done RIGHT NOW.  We can’t let this slip by us like we did with motor vehicle gasoline mileage standards since Reagan: remember when we were supposed to be up around 100 mpg by the ’90s?!!!

Detroit Bailout: A Modest Proposal

How about if Washington bails-out Ford, GM, and Chrysler (How many times do we get to bail-out Chrysler?!!) the way it bailed-out the TV-makers?  Ban all existing motor vehicles from the road as of February, and allow only new Fords, GMs, and Chryslers from then on!  Congress can even give out coupons to help folks “make the transition.”

(OTOH, it’d be great for Global Warming, improving our oil-independence, and we could dump the used cars on China and India so they don’t have to manufacture new ones for a while, helping their greenhouse emisions and our economics simultaneously – get back some of our money and “paper” from them!  Hmmm…!)

PS: Isn’t it weird that Repugs, including W., are OK with bailing-out banks and bankers and speculators, but not Union-dominated / Blue-State Ford, GM, and Chrysler?  Hmmm….

No more Highlanderz?

When I was in the media, I wasn’t in sales, so it didn’t automatically occur to me that this was pursuant to a very-limited-time contract.  Nor OTOH that this would go on forever!  Brain just wasn’t engaged at all — pure pleasure!  At least the video clips are still available.

(Who are we kidding, anyway?: The Ford Flex is just a glorified station wagon.)

City farming grows

Good thing, with the Perfect Storm coming: Peak Oil, Global Warming, yada yada yada.  But I don’t think you can really call it “subsistence” if you’re not subsisting on it, if it’s merely supplementing your bought-food — as good an idea as it can be.

Hu’s on First

Speaking of the leader of Communist China, there’s actually a Chinese (et al.) restaurant at Winnipeg’s minor-league baseball stadium called “Hu’s on First,” a takeoff on the old Abbott and Costello baseball routine, “Who’s on First?”

(The team is the Winnipeg Goldeyes, so I wonder if they serve goldeye at Hu’s?  Sounds like one nasty fish, in both temperament and flavor!  But I guess if you smoke the hell out of anything it can be rendered fit for human consumption….  Canadian cuisine, gotta love it, eh?  While in the Northwest I was a vegetarian,* so I only tried a couple tiny bits of alder-smoked salmon one day for the local cultural experience, and it seemed interesting; though of course salmon doesn’t need the help.  And nowadays you can buy smoked salmon in the Sahara I think!!!  I even tried alder-smoke-flavored potato chips there once, but it was too much of a good thing, if you know what I mean.)

(*–Of course, fish is not a vegetable.  You wouldn’t think of saying that, but for all the self-described vegetarians who eat “vegetables” such as fish, chicken, milk, cheese, eggs, yogurt, butter, etc etc etc….)

“Elective dictatorship”

That’s the pejorative critique of parliamentary government (ie, Westminster-style).  Part of the problem is that AFAIK, political parties under that system are themselves elective dictatorships, whether their “Leaders” are voted on by MPs, or more widely by party members nationwide.  The model is Party as Political Machine.  They could use more of a committee-style leadership or shared authority within the party like our Democratic and Republican Parties with their national committees, or House and Senate party caucus leadership teams.  This doesn’t rule out “strong leadership” when needed, as U.S. State and local party machines prove.  Today I can’t see a U.S. party chairman picking-and-choosing primary contestants like parliamentary Leaders do, even in Canada (Stephen Harper, Paul Martin, etc.).  We do sometimes have “party-endorsed” or “committee-endorsed” primary candidates, but that doesn’t prevent challengers from running, or even winning the primary.  But abroad, combine “elective dictatorship” within the party, and strong “party discipline” within Parliament, and you have your little dictators.  Especially if it’s thought the Monarch or President isn’t allowed to decline their “advice.”

Bill Richardson for Secretary of State

He has the personality, the skills, the experience, and respect from friend and foe alike.

Hillary Clinton?  I’m not sure she can work for someone else, especially Obama who beat her for the nomination; I’d trust Bill C. better in this regard.  Furthermore, does Hillary have the personality? skills?  She DOESN’T have the experience.  America’s friends abroad like her, but you don’t make peace with your friends: Do our foes like or respect her?  I don’t know that they do, whereas I do know they like or at least respect Richardson.

Besides, we need our Senate Democrats.  New York’s current Governor is a Dem, but there’s no guarantee NY voters would elect a Democrat to succeed Hillary eventually.  Remember Al D’Amato?  With GOP/corporate hackers stealing elections, and how stung they feel after last week’s losses, let’s not give them the chance.

In this day and age, State is too important a job to treat as a mere political plum, or even an intra-Party olive branch.  And the Senate is also too important to risk: Realistically, we have a year and a half to turn this country around, or get it well on the way.  We can’t expose ourselves – or the nation – or the world – to Republican political games in Congress.

“Highlanderz” video available

Yes, it’s true!  They’ve added it to the Late Late Show video clip page now.  If you can, listen with headphones for the full audio effect, including all kinds of funny, subtle snippets you couldn’t hear on TV last week.  (Nothing dirty, just hilarious!  “I enjoy golf!”  Well, OK, “we’re packing so much heat that our kilts are extra long” … but that’s not subtle, and I already mentioned it last week….)

I nearly fell on the floor when Craig – er, “Angus” – stood in an alley with flip-sign messages like in that INXS video, saying things like ”Braveheart is Australian,” “Scotty is Candian,” etc.!!

Obama’s campaign money

No small bit was made of what seemed like gillions of dollars the Obama Presidential Campaign had raised and spent on staffing, advertising, etc., especially opting out of federal campaign financing and limits – all as if a Democrat had displaced the Republicans awash in money from their wealthy and large individual and business donors.  But according to Obama’s people, McCain/Palin and the national GOP had 20 million more than Obama/Biden and the Democratic National Committee as of October 15.  Just to set the record straight.

Let Democrats be Democrats

After all, they didn’t elect us because we’re Republicans, but because we’re Democrats, right?  If they wanted Republicans, they would’ve elected Republicans, right?  Even the Republicans were calling for “change” from the way things have been going; so logically, it was a question of whose “change” the voters wanted, right?  And it was ours, not the Republicans’.

By all means, let’s try to bring as many Republican lawmakers on-board as reasonably possible — that could only be better.  But if we ourselves end up changing into Republicans, then haven’t we betrayed those who voted us in?

How many Republican members of Congress have become Democrats, literally or figuratively, since they came to power in ‘94, huh?  Only two or three, right?  They didn’t betray their voters, so how can we betray ours?

In any case, hasn’t President-elect Obama shown us we don’t need those rich and corporate campaign donors and lobbyists???

Think the Election went off without serious problems?

Think again.  Brad Blog reports a slew of them, including an Al Franken 12-point exit-poll win reduced to a virtual tie in “results” by suspicious voting machines … a probable 60-seat Democratic-caucus Senate imperiled by suspicious voting machines … a question of whether California’s anti-Gay referendum really passed … a question whether the good people of Alaska really intended to send a convicted felon back to the Senate … and a GOP threat to sue if any results diverge much from exit polls – talk about chutzpah!!!  Also material on Black Box Voting.org.  And I read somewhere an allegation of vote-machine hacking in Virginia.  And another from our Republican Irony Department: Alleged “voter fraud” by Pennsylvania’s fired fascist senator Rick Santorum, formerly a young GOP rising star.

Could I be as Irish as I am and not suspect that the powers behind the power have ‘allowed’ us a President Obama in order to fuel a roaring comeback in 2 or 4 years???  Have they shown as much real concern for the things they claim they’re concerned about, regarding Obama, as about their own power, cynicism, manipulativeness, enrichment (trillion-dollar-bailout, anybody?!), “liberties” (theirs not ours), impunity, corruption, etc.?

Change Prez election procedures?

If you think too long and hard about the question, they might close Comments on you!  (Maybe that’s one of the MSM’s problems!!)  So here’s what I was gonna say (and maybe more):

• Simple paper ballots, hand-completed in ink (X, check, or circle; no dots to fill in or chads), hand-counted in public at the polling place, no matter how long it takes (no matter what Wall Street or Fox News say), with protections against old-fashioned stuffing. Yes, LOW-TECH. It was good enough for the Founding Fathers….
• Enough precincts for the population to have no more than a reasonable wait.
• Non-partisan administration of elections. (And no “privatization” of THIS!)
• Federal regulation of elections to Federal-related offices: Presidential and Vice-Presidential Electors, Senators, Representatives.
• Right to Vote: no more “determined by the legislative authority of each state,” like when the 2000 Fla. GOP legislature threatened to throw out the vote and select GOP Electors themselves.
• Total public financing of campaigns, no private or party or third-party (eg, Swiftboats) donations or money at all … with an amount of free ad time on TV, radio, satellite, and cable.
• Automatic voter registration with citizenship / adulthood.
• Regional Primaries.
• Enforce truth-in-advertising standards, especially if now we’re paying for them!!!
• Paid holiday, and/or mandatory paid time-off for those who can’t plan to take the whole day off.  No matter what employers say.
• Simultaneous 24-hour polling nationwide, so as not to disenfranchise the West.
• No re-election of President: only one term ever per person.
• Make the presidential runner-up President of the Senate as effectively originally (just, no longer VP, since that has become an important part of the Prez’s Administration), with only a tie-breaking vote, but chairing Senate sessions, etc.
• Require polling places to be able to accommodate all expected voters indoors in any way possible, in case of bad weather, even if they have to be tents in parks, rental trailers, commandeered big-box stores, supermarkets, malls, etc.
• Electoral Votes for Puerto Rico, US Virgin Islands, Am. Samoa, Guam, and Northern Marianas Islands — maybe one or two apiece. After all, they’re Americans too, and affected by Presidential decisions! (How about a voting Senator and Rep. apiece, too, and 2 Sens. for DC?)
• No ballot initiatives at the same time as elections for President or Congress, effectively “federalizing” state and local issues (so much for States’ Rights!!); nevermind that I&R is unconstitutional in the first place, denying States “a republican form of government,” ie, representative democracy!
• Warmer-weather elections and changes-of-government
• Apparently it needs to be clarified that Federal Courts have NO role in election of a president or VP
• Put teeth in the requirement that Prez and VP can’t be from the same state, by adding “in the last 4 years,” to avoid another Dick Cheney sham-move from Texas to Wyoming to be eligible
• Lame-duck restrictions on abuse of powers, maybe for the final six months of his/her term, maybe unless consented by a supermajority of Congress or the Senate (”advice and consent”), or something

Biggest defeat of U.S. forces ever

…was at the hands of an American Indian confederation in the Midwest, the (original) Battle of the Wabash (River), near present Ft. Wayne, Indiana(!).  Seems the Revolutionary War didn’t end there with the 1783 Treaty of Paris, which amounted to little more than a ’separate peace’ between His Majesty King George III on the one hand, and the United States of America on the other.  Hostilities continued between Old Northwest Natives and their Native allies on the one hand, former allies of The Crown, and illegally encroaching U.S. settlers on the other, unrestrained by the U.S. government (as usual).  What the Wikipedia article leaves out is that British forces took a few years to evacuate the Midwest, leading the Indians to believe they might rejoin the struggle – and to feel betrayed and abandoned by their Britannic ally when they didn’t.  In addition, the Lenape of this war were the first Native Nation the new U.S. had signed a Treaty with (ceding it most of central Pennsylvania), and had been promised a seat in the Continental Congress as well as a Lenape-led Indian state in what became instead the Settler state of Ohio.  (Cf. Delaware County, Ohio.)

Long story short, although the Paris Treaty transferred Britain’s claims over the Old Northwest to the U.S., the US still had to “treat with” the Native Nation-occupants before exploiting any part of the territory itself or on behalf of its Settler-people.  This the US failed to do.  In fact, President George Washington, other “Founding Fathers,” and many other settlers had long improperly speculated on land in the Ohio Country, back to the French and Indian War as a result of which its claims transferred from France to Britain … and Washington’s home-colony of Virginia (then including West Virginia) even long claimed Ohio as part of its territory.  King George had tried to put a stop to all this illegality with his Proclamation of 1763,* setting colonial boundaries at the top of the Appalachian Mountains and restricting settlement to the West, but was unable to police it in such a remote area against his own settlers.  Many Native Nations were acquainted with Britain’s Sovereigns and their ostensible rule over their settlers and colonies, and again, felt betrayed when the settlers got other ideas, with impunity.  Thus the colonists, especially their Planter elites (the future Founding Fathers), sowed the seeds of continuing conflict with Sovereign Indian Nations west of the Eastern Seaboard – just as many of their encroachments on the coast were also at first illegal, only justified by Treaty after the fact.  Is it any wonder that they were (are!) said to “speak with a forked tongue”?

(*–I can’t find a comprehensive online treatment of the Proc. of 1763, ie, that isn’t narrowly-focused on U.S. or Canadian interests.  However, there were and are many more Indian Reserves in eastern and central Canada — Ontario and eastward — than in the U.S. east of the Mississippi, in part because the British Crown continued to ‘honour’ this Proclamation somewhat, whereas the U.S. assimilated, denied, or ”removed” west the overwhelming majority of its eastern Indians.  OTOH, Founder speculation and Settler western ambitions, along with Crown resistance to them and attempts to protect the legal rights and territories of the Natives sort-of under his protection, were a significant cause of the U.S. Revolution in the first place — a cause little-emphasized in standard U.S. histories and school systems.)

E-voting “malfunctions”?

When it happens repeatedly, is it a “malfunction,” or is it performing EXACTLY AS PROGRAMMED?!?!?!  The first law of computer programming: Garbage In, Garbage Out = GIGO.

Funny, I haven’t seen complaints of attempted votes for McSame being accidently recorded for Obama/Biden … just like in ‘04!

Just because it seems to record a vote for Obama ONCE after many, many tries, does that guarantee that that vote will “stick,” or that it won’t happen to the next user, or a subsequent user, of that machine?  Modern science says a result must be repeatable … even computer science!  (Yes, I know it’s easy to forget computers are supposed to be actually scientific…!)

Virtual Poll Tax disenfranchises lower-class voters

MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow’s nickname for overlong lines at polling places.  I seem to remember allegations that these were sometimes engineered in Ohio in ‘04 by Republican Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell in Democratic precincts, by assigning them busted voting machines….

5 GOP dirty tricks to keep Dems from voting

Watch out for these and many others.  Ignore them, even!

Report and Track Voting Problems

…at Huffington Post, the NEW “most trusted name in news”!!!

Voter Fraud

…is not at all a serious problem in this country on a national scale, and never has been.  Hype about it is a mere Republican and/or racist / bigoted scare tactic, ‘red meat,’ or worse: a way to take away our rights and freedoms, suppress votes, not to mention waste taxpayer dollars “investigating” it and setting up complicated systems to “prevent” it, which work like polar bear repellant: “Haven’t seen one around here in years.  It must be working!”