Cory Capron has a very lucid examination of the terminology being used by both proponents and opponents of the Marshall/Newman amendment. The terms he examines are bigotry (often cited by opponents) and polygamy (often cited by proponents).
Cory’s sets aside all emotion and examines the terms and tries to find logic supporting or opposing either term’s use in this debate. Check it out for yourself:
corycapron.blogspot.com/2006/10/on-bigotry-and-polygamy.html
So I just finished “Lies my Teacher Told Me” by James W. Loewen and recommend this book to everyone educated in the United States and to everyone interested in American history.
Mr. Loewen sometimes beats a point to death, but in general it is excellent, exhaustively researched and packed with citations and bibliographic details. The author explores a whole lot of myths and deliberate deceptions found in high school history textbooks and examines why the myths have evolved the way they have. It is an interesting exercise and it is sure to broaden your perspective a little. I learned many new things and learned to dig a little and find out more; which should be the point of most schooling.
Last night, Erci and I went down to a firestation off Yates Ford Road to attending training for how to be an election officer on election day. We’ve decided to help the county run the election this year. Every year pretty much every county in the state is short-handed for volunteers to work the election. It will be a long day (5:00 am until about an hour and a half after the polls close), but we’ll be able to see our democracy in action and we get to vote absentee this year (I still don’t trust the programming of the audit-less electronic machines).
If you are not willing nor able to give up an entire day, consider working some of the day as a poll watcher or precinct runner for your political party of choice. The hours are less lengthy, and you’ll be actively helping to get the news of turnout and then results out to your party, and watchers help keep the whole thing fair. It’s fun, and it sure beats hovering at your favorite political website and clicking the refresh button for results. If you can, help with getting people to vote.
Be involved. Take action. Work the system. Become a partial owner of the process. You’ll feel better. Tom in Reston says it better than I do, so read his post about getting involved on RestoringDemocracy.
FYI – Prince William County will be using Sequoia’s AVC Edge® machines, pretty much exclusively this election. STILL no audit trails, I am so angry with the state legislature for dragging it’s feet on this year after year. Audit trails and verified voting benefits everyone, that is all parties benefit from having transparent and verified voting processes. We need them NOW!
The short drive down Virginia route 28 from Reston to Manassas literally took two full hours. We desparately need an elevated train covering that same route. I’d slit my wrists sooner than drive that horrible commute every day.
Devin writes about how voting sucks, and he has a point. Many aspects of our democracy cry for massive improvement.
I get that people are pissed off with their so-called leaders in government.
I agree that the currect collection of buffoons needs to be replaced.
So how do we create change if we care? I am unwilling to wait. Waiting only re-inforces the current process that puts buffoons in power. What we have now is effectively “Government by the Lobbyists, for the Corporations†– because you are correct, once elected, no politician has any time to actually write bills or research the votes he/she will make in congress. They are too busy stealing as much power and money as they can for the next election. They end up introducing bills written by lobbyists and researched by other lobbyists and special interest groups. This stopped being about people before I was born.
So how do we change that?
Yeah, sure we could stage an armed rebellion… sounds kind of dramatic, and I am certainly angry enough at the current system to do that; but there are costs to rebellion that I don’t like. Deaths, human misery, and the strong (and not-necessarily the smart nor the most willing to serve others) end up doing far better in any armed conflict than the rest of us would like.
So if we are unwilling to wait, and unwilling to revolt – that leaves us with trying to change the system from within itself. I’ll admit it’s a longshot. The odds are stacked against us. All the money, all the corruption, and the apathy of many people make change difficult. On the other hand we have excellent tools, and some crappy tools to work with; and we get people riled up enough and change can happen. Fat-happy incumbents don’t always win.
We protest, we organize public demonstrations of the truth, we expose the lies of big media in satire (Go Jon Stewart and Stephan Colbert!!!), we begin to use alternative media for news, and we get involved with campaigns. You are correct, it is not good enough to simply vote any more – it should be, but our votes will be stolen if we don’t actively fight to protect them too. We need to get involved in and spy on the campaigns in our own districts. If the campaigners are willing to listen to us, they speak your mind! If not, then you know you need to try a different campaigner, right?
If you have no choice on the ballot, write in: “none of the above†– if and consider running for that office yourself next time. Don’t just sit on your ass and complain, do something about it. Research your choices well ahead of time, and publish and share your research with every one months before an election so people do actually have time to carefully research their choices. Frankly, in this age of internet information, anyone who is undecided with only two weeks left is a lazy excuse for a citizen. The information is out there.
Not sure where you live, but if you are in Northern Virginia this non-partisan info might help:
www.scottnolan.org/elections_2006.html
Go out and start a revolution, but a peaceful one. Take the country back by getting involved in it.
Last night I was released early from work to sleep for this morning’s big install at work (that went well, BTW). Instead of resting, I went over to Judy Feder‘s campaign HQ and spent four hours stuffing, sealing, and stamping envelopes; then sorting contribution sheets and doing research online. It was fun, and I can sleep after the election.
It is amazing how much a U.S. Congressional campaign differs from a Virginia State Delegate campaign. In many ways the fundamentals are the same (stuffing envelopes, writing letters, researching both sides, canvassing, phone banking, getting out core voters), but the sheer scale difference is astounding. Having a pool of ~555,000 voters versus a pool of ~71,000 voters makes enormous differences. While the congressional race may appear busier at a glance, they need to have 7-8 times as many people working the campaign to reach the same percentage of voters. Running a statewide campaign is even more staggering. Please volunteer; your efforts are needed, even if there is a confusing bustle of activity when you first walk in the door.
Please get involved in the campaign of your choice sometime; you will be part of our great, if less than perfect, democracy. American democracy is meant to be participated in; it’s the only way the experiment will work. Every campaign is perennially short of staff. If nothing else, volunteer to be an impartial election official on election day; the state is always drastically short of election workers, and you get to vote absentee when you do this much needed civic duty!
Bruce has published a gem of a short story in the life of a sign put up by his church, it is well worth reading and thinking on. No matter how you feel about the first ballot question in Virginia this year, stealing a sign is inappropriate.
Stephen O’Regan’s “They’re Made out of Meat” film of Terry Bisson’s short story (same name) won Grand Prize at the Science Fiction Museum’s SF Short Film Festival in Seattle this year. It can be viewed for free on Atom Films or YouTube.
Perspective is everything.
This clip is so good and so sharp that I doubt the usual campaigns are behind it.
Simply awesome! Hat tip to Todd Smyth for the link.
I had a politics-free weekend with Erci to honor our 13th Wedding Anniversary. We had lunch at Maestro with the Smithsonian Association where chef Fabio Trabocchi prepared amazing meal of sausage terrine and pork chops on risotto. Yum! Then we drove out to see beautiful leaves and taste wine at Stillhouse Vineyards and Three Foxes Vineyards; two cases of wine later we headed back home to dress up for Kevin and Jen’s dance party in their lovely home in Ashburn. It was good to see a lot of dancers and friends and we were inspired to plan our own dance party sometime around Thanksgiving…
Howard is a very good friend of mine and he is going through some challenges establishing his Massage Therapy business in Manassas. Turns out bigotry has reared it’s ugly head in old town Manassas. He made the the news, first in the Manassas City Journal, and now the Washington Post. Sadly the Post’s article (Monday, Oct 16; Page B01), while sympathetic to Howard’s plight, is not clear enough on several points.
“The city’s response and the community opposition have blindsided Daniel and his supporters, one of whom had an anti-gay message written on his car.”
This sentence is less than perfect, it leaves doubt about who wrote the anti-gay message on Howard’s neighbor’s car. It was not Howard’s neighbor who wrote the message – some vandal did it, and the message included obscenity; it would be a petty act of vandalism except that it is also a hate crime.
Howard’s neighbors all love having Howard and Richard around; they keep an immaculate house and garden, participate in all their communities’ activities and actively help their neighbors and others in the area whenever they can.
The article goes on to imply that council member Harrover is concerned about traffic in the neighborhood, yet Howard’s application and supporting documentation clearly detail his expected customer traffic rates, and they are tiny. Much tinier than existing massage therapy businesses in old town Manassas.
This is only political because the bigots have made it so. It should be a purely business decision; but the town council is nervous about elections and their racist constituents opinion of them should they approve a new business by an openly bi-racial, gay, and Buddhist couple. I wonder which hot-buttons this sets off for those members of All Saints Catholic Church. Oh wait, maybe it’s not racial, religious, gay-bashing… perhaps they just don’t want a veteran to run a business in old town; for Howard is also a former Marine reservist, and we all know how rough those former Marines can be.
On a serious note; Howard and Richard are glad this has happened because it is calling attention to a problem people try to hide from in Manassas. The is finally openly discussing these issues and people are learning from this and similar inappropriate actions; we all hope Manassas will learn from this issue, and grow individually and as a community.
Shout out to Greg, who beat me to the punch posting about this.
Update: WRC-TV (NBC) News story and Rick Sincere posted about it too.
I’ve been reading Rena’s excellent blog for some time now, and her most recent posting is an awesome personal experience about canvassing, complete with photos and lots of details. Read it and find out why, if you care about any candidates, you should be out canvassing too. It really is a lot of fun.
