Saturday, June 26, 2004

Moore's greatest endorsement
While I usually am not Michael Moore's biggest fan, I honestly cannot wait to see F9/11. A testimonial of sorts:

And in Pensacola, Fla., Monica Moody, a 20-year-old restaurant hostess who described herself as a conservative Republican, proved to be Mr. Moore's perfect target.

"Oh my goodness, I cried," Ms. Moody said. "I'm still trying to process everything. It really makes me question what I feel about the president. I'm still going to respect him as our president, but it makes me question his motives. Of course, I think that's the whole point of the film, to question his motives. But after watching it, I do question my loyalty to the president. And that's scary for me."

Nader, drop out
I am shocked:



Did I say shocked? Because I was lying. How typical of the king idiot and his moron-squad.

Pro-choice Catholics told to confess
And I'm sure pro-death penalty Catholics will soon be chastised, too, right? Right...

North Korea talks unsuccessful
The war in Iraq has given North Korea the biggest window they've seen yet to manipulate the world community. With the military stretched thin in Iraq and Afghanistan, there is a zero chance of American forces hitting the ground en masse in Korea. Thus, the North Korean government can pretty much have its way in most of these talks, as it doesn't fear any serious new retribution. But, I mean...it's not like anyone warned Bush that the war might take attention away from North Korea or anything...

A Republican in a sex scandal?
I leave for a week and the world turns on its head...

Despite his party affiliation, it irritates me that events like this can lead to a resignation. On the other hand, it was a smart personal move by Ryan. And on the other other hand, seeing Republicans get nailed for moral hypocrisy is always entertaining.

We're back
I had an excellent vacation, and I'll be catching up on what's happening in the world for the next couple of days....and probably doing a lot of posting in order to regain my hits. I hope the public was able to survive without my insight.

Sunday, June 20, 2004

And I'm out
My delayed vacation begins now - I'm out until Friday to Saturday.

Palast reveals the black vote secrets
Very interesting:

In the 2000 presidential election, 1.9 million Americans cast ballots that no one counted. "Spoiled votes" is the technical term. The pile of ballots left to rot has a distinctly dark hue: About 1 million of them -- half of the rejected ballots -- were cast by African Americans although black voters make up only 12 percent of the electorate.

This year, it could get worse.

These ugly racial statistics are hidden away in the mathematical thickets of the appendices to official reports coming out of the investigation of ballot-box monkey business in Florida from the last go-'round.

How do you spoil 2 million ballots? Not by leaving them out of the fridge too long. A stray mark, a jammed machine, a punch card punched twice will do it. It's easy to lose your vote, especially when some politicians want your vote lost.

While investigating the 2000 ballot count in Florida for BBC Television, I saw firsthand how the spoilage game was played -- with black voters the predetermined losers.

Florida's Gadsden County has the highest percentage of black voters in the state -- and the highest spoilage rate. One in 8 votes cast there in 2000 was never counted. Many voters wrote in "Al Gore." Optical reading machines rejected these because "Al" is a "stray mark."