Category: politics/law

Cleveland’s absentee ballot (actually for all of Cuyahoga County, which contains Cleveland) is winning awards for excellence in design. The box to punch for Bush/Cheney is #4. Yet the arrow next to their names points to #14. Kerry’s next to the correct box, and his box is even colored. The other two colored boxes result in a wasted vote. I’m suprised the Republicans aren’t having a conniption yet.

On October 8th, Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr of Illinois introduced into the House the Majority Vote Act of 2004, directing states to implement Instant Runoff Voting by 2008, and providing funds to assist with the acquisition of appropriate voting machines.

Here’s the official site.

Here’s the site where I learned of it. This one has a link where you can write to your Representative, as well as some other great information.

Lastly, here’s a great animated explanation of IRV.

Read this article. Realize that Instant Runoff Voting is key to effecting the change we want to see in America.

All over America, political commentators are scrambling to avoid answering the question of who won tonight’s debate. One CNN analyst said he wanted to wait 48 hours to see how the polls reacted before he made that judgement. While who won the debate is certainly a subjective question, the relationship between the media and the public is interesting — public opinion is affected by the media, but the media refuses to offer their opinion until after it hears from the public. While I understand the media’s desire to appear nonpartisan, it’s a little disconcerting to know that no one is willing to stand up and say “This is what I saw.”

That said, I’d have a hard time declaring the winner from tonight. Kerry certainly is a better debater; he maintained the composure and eloquence he displayed in the first two debates. Bush, though, appeared less defensive than he did previously, and while I thought he looked like a buffoon after the first debate, tonight he seemed more like someone with whom I just disagreed. The problem for me is that I don’t agree with Kerry, either.

A number of things I found interesting:

-Bush appeared to not remember every saying that he wasn’t worried about catching Osama bin Laden. According to CNN, Bush did say, “I truly am not that concerned about him.” However, the context was that because bin Laden’s network had been disrupted and the Taliban was no longer in power, he no longer posed the threat he once had. Still, some major back-peddling from the “Dead or Alive” rhetoric of only a few months earlier.

-Bush looked like he was foaming at the mouth early on in the debate — not politically noteworthy, but it was kind of gross.

-When responding to Bush’s remarks about outsourcing, Kerry started by noting that Bush had changed the subject, then he changed the subject back to the previous question. Again, not politically noteworthy, but hypocritical and annoying.

-Bush replaced his scowl with a very insincere half-smile. Somehow this was less effective than Kerry’s slightly supercilious — and I say that in the best way possible — chuckles in the first debate.

-Bush added an attack I hadn’t heard before, several times referring to Kerry’s oft mentioned plans as nothing more than a “litany of complaints”.

-Bush avoided directly answering whether or not he believes homosexuality is a choice and whether or not he supports overturning the Roe v. Wade decision. Kerry said that he believes it is a choice (although he doesn’t want to redefine marriage either) and he, of course, supports upholding Roe v. Wade.

-Kerry, in my favorite statement of the evening, spoke of his Catholicism and then said that he believes he cannot legislate an article of faith, or transfer that faith to someone else. I thought he seemed firm in his faith and his beliefs, but also firm in his belief that it is not up to him to impose that faith on anyone else. Conviction + humility + flexibility = a good thing in a president (hell, in a human being).

-When asked about raising the minimum wage, Bush immediately changed the subject to education and No Child Left Behind. The parallel, I suppose, was that if people are better educated, they’ll be better paid. He didn’t do a good job of illustrating this, though, and I was left wondering if this will result in a bunch of PhDs working at McDonald’s for $5.15/hour.

-Kerry changed the way he talked about the money spent on Iraq. He’s previously used the $200 billion number, allowing Bush to say, “No, it’s not that much”. Tonight he clarified that $120 billion has been spent already, and $80 billion has already been budgeted for the future.

Anyway, if you didn’t catch the debate tonight, read the transcript.

Then consider that even though going into Iraq was a mistake, getting rid of Saddam was not a bad thing.

The Badnarik campaign sent out an email last night talking about the lack of media coverage for third party candidates. Here’s an excerpt:

…the media blackout continues. Michael Badnarik has now participated in three presidential debates and Richard Campagna has participated in one vice presidential debate. The main stream media knew of these debates and refused to cover them.

Libertarians filed a complaint against Arizona State University and the Commission on Presidential Debates to stop the final Bush – Kerry debate. While a few cameras were present, this clearly did not receive the amount of national media attention it deserved. The main stream media knew, in advance, and refused to cover the story.

Friday, we attempted to serve an Order to Show Cause to the Commission on Presidential Debates at their D.C. headquarters. The CPD did everything within their power to avoid process service. Again, America’s major media outlets did not carry the story.

Later that evening, Michael Badnarik personally attempted to serve the papers to the CPD during the staged Bush – Kerry debate in St. Louis – AND WAS ARRESTED IN THE PROCESS. The mainstream press did know of this in advance, but refused to cover it.

I hadn’t heard anything about any of this, so I googled ‘badnarik arrested’ to see what kind of results appeared. Not many. However, an Arizona judge has ordered a hearing to review the legality of a debate that uses public funds but excludes candidates.

I also found this article about Libertarian spoilers, which backs up my theory that the Republicans have more to worry about from Badnarik than the Dems do from Nader. I keep hearing the argument, “A vote for anyone other than Kerry is a vote for Bush,” but one could just as easily say, “A vote for anyone other than Bush is a vote for Kerry.”

I’ll write more on this later, but the debate tonight was pretty good. Kerry continued to present himself as a strong, clear, and knowledgeable leader. Bush did better than he did last time, but still seemed out of touch, belligerant, and defensive.

Anyway, I want to devise a drinking game for the next debate. I’ve looked around the net a bit and while there are several already in existence, I wasn’t all that taken with any of them. I’ll be working on compiling one to have it up by the next debate, but if you have any ideas, email me, or leave a comment below.

During the vice-presidential debate on Tuesday night, Dick Cheney referred viewers to FactCheck.com for information about Halliburton’s record. When the curious attempted to visit FactCheck.com, though, they were redirected to George Soros’s blog — and Soros had no idea why. His website says he still doesn’t know what’s going on, but CNN does. Here’s the article:

http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/10/06/debate.website.ap/index.html

I tried to watch the debate last night but had to turn it off somewhere in the middle of the discussion of domestic policy. Both men seemed petty and somewhat unfocused and, at least during the part I watched, more interested in arguing over what was or was not true than they were about discussing anything. I’ve got an image (admittedly uninformed) of Cheney as a fairly evil man, but last night he did seem far less sinister than I’ve thought of him previously. He also seemed like an argumentative liar, but so did Edwards, and I began the evening expecting at least good things from *him*. I guess that’s par for the course — while the presidential candidates have to keep it at least relatively clean, the veeps can come out swinging.