November 5, 2004

• Doing pretty well…

  Not that I need logical reasons for my feelings — I understand that
  feelings aren’t rational and any “reasons for feelings” that I come up
  with are purely post hoc.  Despite that bit of logic, this morning
  I have found a few good reasons for feeling good.

  • Our little wood stove is keeping the indoors temp sixty
    degrees
    or so warmer than the outdoor temp.  That’s important when it’s
    sub-zero outside.  It’s about 54°F in here now.  Not exactly
    t-shirt weather, but I can live with it, in a few layers of sweaters,
    long johns, etc.  Could use another layer of socks on my feet,
    though.  I’ll do that after I post this.  Meanwhile my feet
    are tucked up on the base of my chair out of the worst of the
    draft.  Doug is over in Couch Potato Heaven under two layers of
    blankets, playing GTA San Andreas, a privlege he’s earned by keeping
    the dishes washed regularly.
  • After Greyfox related to me some of the news from last
    night’s
    meeting in town, I have a couple more reasons to be glad that Doug is
    Doug.  There are many worse things he could be addicted to than
    video games and online RPGs, and a lot worse behaviors he could engage
    in than taking apart electronic equipment and littering his room with
    the arts materials he salvages from it. 
    So he hasn’t shoveled out my car and the driveway yet… he HAS gotten
    most of the roof cleared of the foot or so of snow that was up
    there, and I’m not planning to go to town again for almost a
    week.  He’d probably have gotten more done, but he’s been sleeping
    through most of the daylight hours and I don’t want him on the roof in
    the dark unless absolutely necessary.  I’m not real keen on having
    him out there with the axe splitting wood in the dark, but that is
    absolutely necessary.  Having him up all night tending the fire
    while I sleep is just great.  His sleep schedule also frees up the
    PS2 for my use during the day.
  • Greyfox has been having random attacks of happiness.  I
    realize that this is sorta secondary to my own warm fuzzies, but I am
    sorta empathetic and it feels good to know that the Old Fart is feeling
    good.
  • I  have been getting work done at KaiOaty. 
    I’ve done a few readings, some posted there and others mailed by snail
    or e.  I transcribed one past-life reading that Greyfox did, and
    have his assuraces that he will do more soon.  I have even gotten
    some of the indexing done that I had been neglecting before I started
    neglecting the entire site a year or so ago.  If I need to explain
    why it feels good to get work done, I’m afraid it would do no good to
    explain, anyway.  It’s a Virgo thing, maybe.
  • Life is
    good.  Being somewhat debilitated and physically challenged (okay,
    let’s just cut the PC crap!  I’m a gimp.) isn’t exactly reason for
    celebration.  Being over sixty has it’s drawbacks as well. 
    Nobody’s clamoring after me with scholarship money or job offers any
    more, but nevertheless I still contend that getting older is better
    than the alternative.
  • The political news is good, too, even though just as happened
    four years ago we may end up with four more years of daShrub. 
    Always the bastard child of Candide and Pollyanna, I see this crap as a
    hopeful sign that maybe my fellow Amurrikans may someday get a
    bellyfull and rise up in protest.

  B E L L A C I A O – Kerry Won. Here are the Facts. -

  Kerry
  won. Here’s the facts.
  I know you don’t want to hear it. You can’t face one more hung chad.
  But I don’t have a choice. As a journalist examining that messy sausage
  called American democracy, it’s my job to tell you who got the most
  votes in the deciding states. Tuesday, in Ohio and New Mexico, it was
  John Kerry.

  Most voters in Ohio thought they were voting for Kerry. CNN’s exit poll
  showed Kerry beating Bush among Ohio women by 53 percent to 47 percent.
  Kerry also defeated Bush among Ohio’s male voters 51 percent to 49
  percent. Unless a third gender voted in Ohio, Kerry took the state.

  So what’s going on here? Answer: the exit polls are accurate. Pollsters
  ask, “Who did you vote for?” Unfortunately, they don’t ask the crucial,
  question, “Was your vote counted?” The voters don’t know.

  Here’s why. Although the exit polls show that most voters in Ohio
  punched cards for Kerry-Edwards, thousands of these votes were simply
  not recorded. This was predictable and it was predicted. [See
  TomPaine.com, "An Election Spoiled Rotten," November 1.]  http://www.tompaine.com/articles/an_election_spoiled_rotten.php

  Once again, at the heart of the Ohio uncounted vote game are, I’m sorry
  to report, hanging chads and pregnant chads, plus some other ballot
  tricks old and new.

  The election in Ohio was not decided by the voters but by something
  called “spoilage.” Typically in the United States, about 3 percent of
  the vote is voided, just thrown away, not recorded. When the
  bobble-head boobs on the tube tell you Ohio or any state was won by 51
  percent to 49 percent, don’t you believe it … it has never happened
  in the United States, because the total never reaches a neat 100
  percent. The television totals simply subtract out the spoiled vote.

  Whose Votes Are Discarded?

  And not all votes spoil equally. Most of those votes, say every
  official report, come from African-American and minority precincts. (To
  learn more, click here.)

  We saw this in Florida in 2000. Exit polls showed Gore with a plurality
  of at least 50,000, but it didn’t match the official count. That’s
  because the official, Secretary of State Katherine Harris, excluded
  179,855 spoiled votes. In Florida, as in Ohio, most of these votes lost
  were cast on punch cards where the hole wasn’t punched through
  completely-leaving a ’hanging chad,’-or was punched extra times. Whose
  cards were discarded? Expert statisticians investigating spoilage for
  the government calculated that 54 percent of the ballots thrown in the
  dumpster were cast by black folks.

  (To read the report from the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, click here.) http://www.usccr.gov/pubs/vote2004/ready/ready04.pdf

  And here’s the key: Florida is terribly typical. The majority of
  ballots thrown out (there will be nearly 2 million tossed out from
  Tuesday’s election) will have been cast by African American and other
  minority citizens.

  So here we go again. Or, here we don’t go again. Because unlike last
  time, Democrats aren’t even asking Ohio to count these cards with the
  not-quite-punched holes (called “undervotes” in the voting biz). Nor
  are they demanding we look at the “overvotes” where voter intent may be
  discerned.

  Ohio is one of the last states in America to still use the
  vote-spoiling punch-card machines. And the Secretary of State of Ohio,
  J. Kenneth Blackwell, wrote before the election, “the possibility of a
  close election with punch cards as the state’s primary voting device
  invites a Florida-like calamity.”

  But this week, Blackwell, a rabidly partisan Republican, has warmed up
  to the result of sticking with machines that have a habit of eating
  Democratic votes. When asked if he feared being this year’s Katherine
  Harris, Blackwell noted that Ms. Fix-it’s efforts landed her a seat in
  Congress.

  And some people say that crime does not pay.  But I’ve known better for most of my life.
  

  • 11:36 am
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