Category: Politics

Politics

Vote Receipt

I need someone to explain to me why this is not possible:

Vote Receipt

If we truly live in the greatest democracy in the world, our election system needs to be beyond reproach. Why this is not on the agenda of our congressional leaders is unconscionable. This issue is just as important as campaign finance reform and just as non-partisan. One person, one vote, one record. It is the baseline from which everything else in this country springs from and it needs to be fixed.

Evil Will Prevail

I’ve been singing this song to myself for the past few days. It doesn’t make me feel any better, but I find it strangely comforting. It was written almost 10 years ago by Wayne Coyne.

Evil Will Prevail, by The Flaming Lips

With loving hands
and their arms are stretched so wide
they can’t seem to take a breath
knowing evil will prevail
and a million people seems like a lot
and a million people can’t be wrong…
With loving smiles
and their mouths are stretched so wide
they can’t even take a breath
knowing evil will prevail
and the magic bullet is the
glowing mother ship
and the mother zaps you dead…
with loving hands knowing evil will prevail
knowing evil will prevail
knowing that evil will prevail
knowing evil will prevail
knowing that evil will always win…

A New Day

I’ve never really talked about why I do this site. I don’t consider myself a writer by any stretch of the imagination, I don’t think that I have a “readership” to cultivate, and I’m not looking to change any minds. The only reason I write this stuff on this site is for me to be able to come back in 1, 3 or 15 years and read what I was thinking about or what was going on at that time in my life. I’m writing to my future self. The fact that it’s on a publicly accessible web site is just so I’ll be able to access it from pretty much anywhere in the world. Occasionally I get all worked up and try to appeal to the outside world, but for the most part themuy is just a dumb journal. If you’re reading this, thanks, but I’m not talking to you. I’m talking to me.

So, with that being said, I’ve got something on my mind today. I want to write down exactly how I feel right now so I can look back on it in the future. I may not feel this way in a few hours, days or years. I may feel this way for the rest of my life.

Yesterday, America went to the polls to elect our next president. Today, all indications are that George W. Bush will continue to be our president for four more years. I personally believe this to be a turning point in American history and that we are heading down a road that will lead to the demise of our country, or at the very least will reduce the United States to a shell of its former self.

It’s easy for someone who is interested in politics to demonize the other side. I try to control myself with respect to that. I recognize that everyone is trying to do what they think is best for their country, just like I am. The fact of the matter is that this country is deeply divided. The events of the last two days have only served to further deepen that divide. The differences between the left and the right are crystal clear at the moment. The lines have not been more clearly drawn. It truly is black and white these days.

For a while there I thought that I was on the side of a tide of change that would help re-build this country and move us toward a better future. I was way wrong. The majority of the people in America are not with me. They are not interested in the common good or their common man. They think the only way to happiness is through money and power and Christianity. They believe that homosexuals are second class citizens and should be beaten down. They believe that Iraq attacked the United States on September 11, 2001. They believe that the health insurance and drug companies will protect them instead of their corporate profits. They see no problem with faith-based initiatives while denouncing the Taliban. They believe you can defeat terror cells of a few dozen people with tanks and airplanes and bombs.

I can’t understand how my beliefs can be so far out of whack with the majority of my country. I find it hard to believe people are such sheep. I cannot fathom how people can foster an atmosphere of intolerance and think they are doing “god’s work.”

What do you say about the atmosphere of a country where people believe one of Bush’s best lines in the debates (of which he lost all three) was when he called Kerry the most liberal Senator.

lib·er·al

  • Not limited to or by established, traditional, orthodox, or authoritarian attitudes, views, or dogmas; free from bigotry.
  • Favoring proposals for reform, open to new ideas for progress, and tolerant of the ideas and behavior of others; broad-minded.

I feel that the tenants of American democracy are being re-written by the conservative majority of this country. They are weakening the separation of church and state. They are working to weaken the rights of the individual. They are embracing intolerance. They are demonizing the word ‘liberal.’

The despair I feel today is overwhelming. As bad as it’s been the last four years, the next four are going to be unbearable. Bush will elect 4 Supreme Court judges. He will help turn this country into an overbearing monster of bigotry and hate. He will abandon the poor and assist the rich. He will lead us into World War III. He will protect corporate interests at the expense of those who elected him. He will turn every other country against us—he practically already has. He will miserably fail the war on terror. He will believe that God is speaking through him. He will view death as a reward. He will lie to the American people repeatedly and audaciously. He will think he can do no wrong and will not have to answer for his mistakes.

I am not hopeful. I am not optimistic about the future of this country. I don’t even feel that this is my country anymore. I am confused and pissed off. And for all my hatred of George Bush and everything that he stands for, I find it very hard to come to terms with the fact that America has picked him to lead their country.

One Week to Go

Finally!

Where the candidates stand on the issues.

“This is an updated version of a document that was prepared for a Congressional Black Caucus Foundation forum held on September 10, 2004. This version incorporates material from a completed questionnaire received from President Bush’s campaign staff on September 7, 2004.”

Ignore everything you hear in the media about this election and just read these reports. Then vote next Tuesday. It’s really not that hard.

Air America in Atlanta

Good news!

I just read in the AJC that Air America Radio will be available in Atlanta this week. Tune in to AM 1690 to listen.

Instead of linking to the article (the AJC forces you to create an account to view any online content), I’m cutting and pasting it here:

Air America radio coming to Atlanta

Air America, the left-leaning national talk radio network, has landed a home on an Atlanta radio station — on the far right end of the AM dial.

The voices of Chuck D., Randi Rhodes, Al Franken and Janeane Garofalo will be heard at AM 1690 sometime next week once technical issues are resolved, said Air America president Jon Sinton, who is based in Atlanta.

The 1690 spot on the dial recently was running classic country music but is now playing nothing as station owner Intermart Broadcasting prepares for the Air America launch. Current call letters are WSWK-AM but Sinton said the owners plan to change that to WWAA-AM.

Air America, which began six months ago as a counterpoint to conservative talk radio, enters a crowded Atlanta market for gab. There are at least eight other talk radio stations in town, from powerhouse 750/WSB-AM to black talk 1380/WAOK-AM to Real Radio 105.3 on the FM side.

But most Atlanta talk stations are populated with conservative talkers such as Rush Limbaugh on 640/WGST-AM and Laura Ingraham on 920/WGKA-AM.

“As far as I know, the last really liberal talk show host on a major Atlanta station was me,” said Mike Malloy, a metro Atlanta-based veteran talker who left WSB-AM in 1997 after two stints. He recently joined Air America with a 10 p.m. to 1 a.m. show. “I think metro Atlanta has a huge potential audience. Air America is proving in market after market the audience is there.”

Eric Seidel, a media consultant and former WGST-AM station manager, disagreed: “It will never be a factor in this market. There isn’t a large enough audience for this type of talk to make it economically viable.”

The modest signal doesn’t help. With 10,000 watts during the day from a tower in Dekalb County near Decatur, Air America will have city-grade strength for about a 20-mile radius, according to www.radio-locator.com. At night, with 1,000 watts, the coverage area is smaller.

This means most anybody outside the Perimeter with a low tolerance for static will have to catch Air America on the Internet or the two subscription-based satellite radio networks, XM and Sirius.

Nationally, Air America has weathered a rocky start which included financial problems and management turnover. It is now in about 30 cities. “We’re 150 days in and we’re already in half the top 20 markets,” Sinton said. “We’ve shown tremendous growth.”

Validate Me

I’ve been trying really hard to resist talking politics on this site, so I thought I’d steer clear of hard issues a bit and just talk about something I know about. I just did a little research on the design and technical merits of George W Bush and John Kerry’s respective Web sites.

Take a look at the 2 screen shots below:

John Kerry

George Bush

Kerry’s site has a calm and easygoing vibe about it. Not too much cluttter, the various areas of the site are clearly laid out and there is simple top navigation. I particularly like the “Take Action” box in the upper right. It has very clear instructions and is prominently displayed. The web site’s iconography is very friendly (although a little too close to Windows XP’s icon set) and helps contribute to the easygoing and friendly vibe. The site makes me feel “calm”, for lack of a better word.

Now, look at George’s site. What a cluttered mess. It looks like a bomb went off in a web design shop. Let’s just throw everything on the page! It’s strange that the first image I saw when going to Bush’s site is a big picture of Kerry. I also can spot 9 instances of the word “Kerry” on the page, and that’s only above the fold. To be fair, this is the day after the DNC Convention, so I’m sure Bush wants to quickly defuse any momentum they’re getting, but please. I thought Bush’s people were the one’s saying that Kerry is focusing too much on bashing Bush and not enough on espousing his own views. I guess they’re not practicing what they preach.

But, back to the design. Where am I supposed to look? What’s the page’s flow? Literally everything on the page screams for you to look at it. And what’s the deal with those tabs across the top of the page (Economy, Compassion, etc)? Those are the tiniest tabs I’ve seen in some time. They’re just shoved in between the header graphic and the rest of the page. It really shows how important these issues are to Bush (in comparison to, say, bashing Kerry). It reminds me of the time I was driving in Atlanta with my sister and we passed that huge church right off 75 near Paces Ferry Rd. You know, the really really big, enormous one that requires the 5 story parking deck? Anyway, my sister pointed out that the cross on top of this huge structure was about 6 feet tall — really tiny in comparison to the rest of the structure. My sister looked at it and said, “kinda shows you how much all of this has to do with God, huh?”

I should note the similarities between the left navigation of each site. It’s interesting how Bush’s says “Stay Informed” while Kerry’s says “Get Informed”. I don’t know which site came up with the navigation links first, so I don’t know who ripped off who. But, it’s clear that they’ve been checking out the competition. And the fact that both sites have an official blog just blows my mind.

Next, I went to take a look under the hood. Both sites utilize tables for the structure of the page. I really wasn’t expecting table-less CSS design, but it would have been cool. Oh well. I didn’t poke too much more into the code because frankly, it’s boring to do that, but I will say that Bush’s tables are the most overly complicated (right off the bat it’s nesting tables 3 deep) and I counted 36 font tags (to Kerry’s one) on the page. Kerry definitely wins in the utilization of CSS.

The real test came when I ran both pages through the w3c validator. Of course, neither site validates. But Bush’s site is the big loser when it comes to number of errors. Here are links to the validations:

John Kerry’s Site
George W. Bush’s Site

Number of errors:

Kerry: 28
Bush: 276

So, if good web design and coding is important to you, I think it’s pretty clear who you need to vote for this November.