Entries from November 2004 ↓

I’ve been wondering why the birdseed was disappearing so quickly! (Sorry ’bout the quality, the cameraphone was all I had handy.)

The New York Times reprints a front-page article from 22 years ago, November 10, 1982:

Today, as we all know, mentioning the names of the war dead is part of a partisan “political agenda designed to undermine the efforts of the United States in Iraq.” Rather than mentioning the brave soldiers by name, we should realize that it’s not the public’s duty or the media’s duty to honor the sacrifices of those who have made the ultimate sacrifice, instead, it’s a duty which falls solely to the hugger-in-chief:

Amazing how he does that without ever attending a military funeral…

Tomorrow is Veteran’s Day, the commemoration of the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, when the War to End All Wars came to a close. This war we are now engaged in, like all wars, is evil. The soldiers who are fighting this war are brave men and women and deserve our respect. The men and women who sent them there on false grounds deserve our disdain.

I feel so safe, now that John Ashcroft has set my mind at ease:

Since the objective has been achieved, I’m sure we’ll now be seeing a dismantling of the Justice Department, the CIA and the Dept of Homeland Security. While we’re at it, why not get rid of the CIA, the armed forces and all local police departments. Amazing what you can accomplish in just 4 short years…

I’m not sure what to make of all these numbers, but over at ustogether.org, they’ve been doing some analysis of the voting results in Florida during this election. What they’ve found is that, in the smaller counties, where votes were cast on optical scan code machines, there is a discrepancy — often enormous — between the party affiliations of voter and the tallies of votes cast for each candidate.

Take Lafayette County, for example. The state’s breakdown of voter registration by county shows that as of October, 2004, there were 4,309 registered voters in the county. Of those voters, 570 were Republicans and 3,570 were Democrats, with the remaining 169 voters distributed among 2 dozen other affiliations, including “No Party.” That works out to 83% donkeys to 13% elephants.The state’s official tally of votes shows that 3,325 votes were cast in Lafayette County on Tuesday, for a turnout of 77%.

According to the national exit polls, 89% of people registered as Democrats voted for John Kerry, the Democratic candidate. Based on that figure, you would expect that Kerry would garner 2452 votes in Lafayette county: 83% (registered Democrats ) * 3325 (votes) * 89% (vote on party line). By the same calculations, Bush should have received about 392 votes. In actuality, Bush got 2460 votes and Kerry only received 845! In other words, 73% of the registered Democrats in Lafayette County voted for George W. Bush. I guess its possible, but… is it likely?

Rob Dixon at Rant World has been doing a close analysis of the Florida data, as has Goldstein at Enemy of the People. They’ve both pointed out, as has Dwight Meredith from Wampum in the comments on Goldstein’s entry, that party affiliation may not be a reliable predictor of voting preferences, since many Southeren voters may have maintained their party affiliations since the days when the South was solid for the Dems. (I have no evidence about that, but the South has been solid Republican for quite a while; the Republican’s Southern Strategy has been in operation at least since the days of Nixon. Would people have kept their affiliation with a party they disagreed with and voted against for nearly 30 years?)

Meanwhile, there’s some other funny numbers being reported by Audrey Mantey at Ideamouth. Seems that according to the Florida Department of State Division of Elections, as of the “First Set of Unofficial Returns”, more votes were counted in a number of counties than turnout would indicate. Palm Beach County, for example, reported a turnout of 452,061, and yet they also broke it down into votes by party, where the total came to 542,835. Then, the Palm Beach County Election Results page, shows a turnout of 404,666 on Election Day, with a total turnout of 547,340… Of course, this could be explained by the differences between early reports and final reports…

Finally, Thom Hartmann reports at Common Dreams:

Potentially very explosive, if true. And Ohio, Iowa and New Mexico are still counting…

Yesterday vanished for me. Like so many others, I’ve been walking around in a daze since I saw Forida called for Bush on Tuesday night. I had a bad feeling at that point, that we’d somehow horribly miscalculated. I still don’t understand how it happened.

• I don’t understand how we missed the significance of correlating these two items: 1) Karl Rove’s claim that he was going to bring 4 million more evangelicals to the polls and 2) the Gay-marriage bans on the ballot in 11 states., a surefire issue to mobilize the “God said it. I believe it. That settles it.” crowd.
• I don’t understand how the exit pollsters could have gotten it so wrong. Telephone pollsters have it tough, just trying to get people to talk to them when their phonecall interrupts dinner, but these were people walking out of the poll booths. How did they do such a bad job sampling? Or <conspiracy theory> were the pollsters right and therefore something fishy was going on with the machines?</conspiracy theory>
• I don’t understand how Kerry could have rallied all of us with “No retreat, baby, no surrender,” and then surrendered without every last vote being counted. Being a member of the reality-based community, he could have certainly acknowledged the fact that the numbers seem to indicate that Bush has won, but he didn’t have to give in before Ohio finishes its provisionals in 11 days. Would the country dissolve in a puddle of ooze if he held that call for 11 days?
• I don’t understand how someone can see 51% as a mandate, when damn near half the electorate voted against the president and his policies. The real world is not a winner-take-all game. Half the populations doesnt become disenfranchised on the strength of a minute margin of defeat.
• I don’t understand how some of those who voted the way I did, who felt the way I did, who believed the way I do — how some of them could tell us we have to now support the president in the name of national unity. I submit to the decision of the majority, and I recognize him (this time) as the duly-elected leader of this country, but I didn’t support him, his ideas, his policies and his beliefs before the election, and since then … nothing has changed.
• I don’t understand how half of my countrymen and women could be so alien to me. How can sane, rational adults believe in the contradictory nonsense which spews from this adminstration’s every orifice. How can they reconcile their professed belief in the sanctity of an unborn American child, while taking no issue with the 100,000 Iraqi civilians – mainly women and children — who have died since the beginning of this unnecessary war? How do they reconcile that belief with their belief in capital punishment?

It feels like we’ve crossed a threshhold into a new reality where one group’s twisted perversion of a beautiful religion becomes the standard translation. It’s been building for some time, but the change has been slow and we’ve been so immersed in it that we didn’t notice. It’s like the way Tuesday — Election Day — was a cool and bright fall day here in Maryland, where the air was so clear and crisp that the colors of the changing leaves shone in rainbow hues. On Wednesday, the clouds started moving in, and with the clouds a strong wind which blew the falling foliage into leaf-drifts on the sides of houses. Today, the rain came down all day and the trees are suddenly, obviously bare.

If the world could vote for US President, it would be a landslide for Kerry. At least, according to the unscientific survey at BetaVote.com. They’ve received over a half-million votes from over 230 countries and territories and as of 6pm PST tonight, the vote is running in Kerry’s favor by a margin of 88% to 11%. The only place you’re likely to see a spread like that among actual voters is in the District of Columbia, where Gore won by a margin of 70 points in 2000.

Now, this poll is just for fun, but the issues it raises are serious. Mainly: what is the meaning of national sovereignty in such an interconnected world? Is the outcome of this election limited in its impact to just the people of the United States? If so, then why is this election front page news in France, Germany, UK, South Africa, India, Russia, Brazil and China, to name a few? And if our election does resonate worldwide, then what is our responsibility to address the the concerns of those who are not entitled to representation?

Anyway, one really interesting question: what do the Cocos Islands, the Cook Islands, Kiribati, Niger, Niue, and Samoa have in common, and why is it that these are the only countries in the BetaVote list who have broken decisively for George W. Bush? Anyone have any theories?