Supposedly the 'World's Thinnest Desktop'

Apple Unveils 'World's Thinnest Desktop'
Here's a much bigger picture

Notice to Law Enforcement Officers T-shirt

This seems like a great shirt for people at protests to wear.
NYC IMC: newswire/108173

Voting tabulator specifically made for election tampering?

Consumer Report Part 1: Look at this -- the Diebold GEMS central tabulator contains a stunning security hole | Black Box Voting: "By entering a 2-digit code in a hidden location, a second set of votes is created. This set of votes can be changed, so that it no longer matches the correct votes. The voting system will then read the totals from the bogus vote set. It takes only seconds to change the votes, and to date not a single location in the U.S. has implemented security measures to fully mitigate the risks.
...
These systems are used in over 30 states and each counts up to two million votes at once.
...
Findings: The GEMS central tabulator program is incorrectly designed and highly vulnerable to fraud. Election results can be changed in a matter of seconds. Part of the program we examined appears to be designed with election tampering in mind. We have also learned that election officials maintain inadequate controls over access to the central tabulator. We need to beef up procedures to mitigate risks.
...
On Aug. 18, 2004, Harris and Stephenson, together with computer security expert Dr. Hugh Thompson, and former King County Elections Supervisor Julie Anne Kempf, met with members of the California Voting Systems Panel and the California Secretary of State's office to demonstrate the double set of books. The officials declined to allow a camera crew from 60 Minutes to film or attend.

The Secretary of State's office halted the meeting, called in the general counsel for their office, and a defense attorney from the California Attorney General's office. They refused to allow Black Box Voting to videotape its own demonstration. They prohibited any audiotape and specified that no notes of the meeting could be requested in public records requests."

Further web surfing on the sleaze

Talking Points Memo: by Joshua Micah Marshall: August 29, 2004 - September 04, 2004 Archives: "Now Soros has written this letter to Hastert, asking him to put up or shut up, or, more specifically 'either substantiate these claims -- which you canont do because they are false -- or publicly apologize for attempting to defame my character and damage my reputation.'"

Just totally sleazy

New York Daily News - Politics - Lloyd Grove's Lowdown: GOP has dol-fun with Dems: "Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert - having already enraged some New Yorkers with his remarks about local office-holders' 'unseemly scramble' for federal money after 9/11 - yesterday opened a second front.

On 'Fox News Sunday,' the Illinois Republican insinuated that billionaire financier George Soros, who's funding an independent media campaign to dislodge President Bush, is getting his big bucks from shady sources.

'You know, I don't know where George Soros gets his money. I don't know where - if it comes overseas or from drug groups or where it comes from,' Hastert mused.

An astonished Chris Wallace asked: 'Excuse me?'

The Speaker went on: 'Well, that's what he's been for a number years - George Soros has been for legalizing drugs in this country. So, I mean, he's got a lot of ancillary interests out there.'

Wallace: 'You think he may be getting money from the drug cartel?'

Hastert: 'I'm saying I don't know where groups - could be people who support this type of thing. I'm saying we don't know.'"

New York Blade gay reporter kept from interviewing Olympic medalists: "At the end of it, I was the only person who was rejected for an interview. Sherman said it wasn’t because I was gay, but the writing is on the wall. I was rejected from the group interview because I was from the New York Blade – which every PR person in town knows is a gay paper.

"All I wanted to ask the Hamms were two questions.

"First: “Thanks to Terrell Owens, people are again talking about gays in sports. How would you feel about having a gay teammate?”

"Then: “Long before Athens, you had a strong gay following. What do you think about that?”

"If he’s reading this, Sherman is surely very glad that he kept me from asking the Hamms those questions.

Update to a previous post

I'm trying to figure out the best way to handle the passage of time and its effects on posts of the past. I think a part of my blog ethic here is that I don't want to make changes to a previous post without indicating those changes (beyond mere correcting of spelling, grammar, etc.). In other words, I want to admit the mistakes I make or the misperceptions I might have and not gloss over with some revisionist editing of my thoughts. In that light, if I make an update to a post, I'll add it to the end of a post and make a new post which references the update.

In regard to comments, however, I feel no obligation to keep anyone's comment I don't like or that seems inflammatory or I just plain don't agree with. It is my website, after all; start your own if posterity is important to you. However, if the comment seems reasonable, I'll probably keep it.

That being said, I've updated this post.

Sometimes, the saddest things make me laugh out loud

The New York Times > Washington > Reporter's Notebook: An Outpost's Defining Military Moment: "The dominant personality at the tribunals clearly has been Col. Peter S. Brownback III, the presiding officer of the panel....
Because the rules make him a juror as well as a judge, defense lawyers are entitled to question him about potential biases.

Colonel Brownback, who is not gifted with a poker face, did not seem to enjoy the process....Most of the time, however, he seemed as if he wanted to lunge across the tables that separated him from Commander Swift and grab him by the neck just above the defense lawyer's dress white uniform.

In the morning session, Colonel Brownback denied he had told a group of military lawyers on July 15 that he believed the detainees did not have any right to a speedy trial. A few hours later, Commander Swift brought up the matter again, asking permission to enter into evidence an audio recording of the meeting in which Colonel Brownback was supposed to have made the remarks.

Colonel Brownback said he did not know anyone was recording the meeting. He then put his head in his hands. Reporters who timed the incident said he sat that way for 90 seconds before he agreed to have the evidence included."

A Day in the Life of Joe Middle-Class Republican

Michael Moore.com : Mike's Message : Mike's Latest News: "Joe gets up at 6:00 AM to prepare his morning coffee. He fills his pot with good, clean drinking water because some liberal fought for minimum water quality standards. He takes his daily medication with his first swallow of coffee. His medications are safe to take because some liberal fought to insure their safety and that they work as advertised.

All but $10.00 of his medications are paid for by his employer's medical plan. Because some liberal union workers fought their employers for paid medical insurance, now Joe gets it too. He prepares his morning breakfast -- bacon and eggs this day. Joe's bacon is safe to eat because some liberal fought for laws to regulate the meat packing industry."

The Memory Hole > Justice Department Censors Supreme Court Quote

The Memory Hole > Justice Department Censors Supreme Court Quote: "The Justice Department tipped its hand in its ongoing legal war with the ACLU over the Patriot Act. Because the matter is so sensitive, the Justice Dept is allowed to black out those passages in the ACLU's court filings that it feels should not be publicly released.

Ostensibly, they would use their powers of censorship only to remove material that truly could jeopardize US operations. But in reality, what did they do? They blacked out a quotation from a Supreme Court decision:"

Nalgene Bottles

- From RMAD, http://www.rmad.org/nalgene.html - [WARNING: Unsettling photos, do not open without reading UPDATE 1, below]
Nicole wanted to know what animal cruelty issues I was speaking about in regard to Nalgene. I've gone back and forth about whether or not to talk about this through the years to my friends, since I know how much Nalgene is loved by them. And I hold no ill will toward them or any Nalgene bottle user, and would accept a free Google Nalgene bottle myself. But I can't escape this picture coming into my head every time I see a Nalgene bottle. As for corporate lobbying, I doubt that will have any effect on this laboratory product company since their belief in the need for animal research is a strong part of their corporate ethic.
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UPDATE 1: I removed the picture from my website as a result of conversations which have led me to believe that my judgement was suspect. My political beliefs are such that I believe certain realities should be in people's faces. That said, I tend to go overboard and not respect what people want to see or want to hear--essentially, taking that choice away from them, like a pro-life activist flashing posters of aborted fetuses on the street corner. I can cross that line sometimes, the classic example of which was when I wanted to tattoo the word "VEGAN" across my arm. Someone I know and respect thinks that the picture I showed crossed the line. I'm not certain of this, but I trust their judgement on this matter more than I trust my own. Suffice it to say that Nalgene is a lab equipment company and the picture shows a piece of their equipment in use. The picture is hard to shake once you see it, so don't look at it if that could bother you.

Three Years of Hell to Become the Devil: Wheat, Blogs, and Journalism

Recently, I've been severely interested in a particular human-interest story in which a sufferer of celiac disease was told she couldn't use a rice substitute for communion. As I got further and further into it, I realized that I wasn't interested in it at all because of its surface interest but because of how intimately it was allowing me to understand how blogs and news stories have become integrated on the internet. Having said that, I discovered another blogger who spoke specifically to what has interested me about that blog/news integration.

This is the initial blog - Three Years of Hell to Become the Devil: Wheat, Blogs, and Journalism

This is the lucid and reasoned commentary that has been generated by it - Tony Doesn't Like Me, I Guess

The thorns of this are that there is substantially so much more dross to this news/blog story out there on the internet, both on news sites and in blogs, to sift through to find these kinds of commentaries. Who has the time for every story they are interested in to research these nuances? Journalists certainly don't, as is proven out by the amazing number of minimally researched stories about this, and bloggers have to be scrutinized even deeper because of their tendencies not just to gloss over things but to outright lie and mislead. I guess this is why it's important to find fellow bloggers which you learn to respect whom you know want to research deeply into things that you don't really want to. And they can start depend upon you, perhaps, to research topics that they don't have the time or inclination to delve into.

heart
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beak
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on the bus
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nook
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chin to the ground
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Welcome to the Republican Party of Iowa

On one level, I do agree that there is no difference between the Republicans and Democrats. When I say that I usually refer to the protection and furtherance of corporations' power within government. After reading through the official platform of the Iowa Republican Party, I must admit there are sometimes some clear and distinct differences.
Welcome to the Republican Party of Iowa Website

"We support laws that restrict foreign ownership of land in Iowa.

We support an end to mandatory withholding of employee taxes, and instead recommend that each employee pay his or her tax withholding on a quarterly basis.

We believe that those who pay no income taxes should not be entitled to tax rebates.

We support a ‘tax me more’ option for individuals who elect to pay more taxes.

We oppose any requirement that parents become certified to teach their children at home.

We support the removal of the present multicultural curriculum in Iowa’s public schools and its replacement with a Western- Culture curriculum that teaches the values and basics of our nation’s founding and history.

We oppose the censorship of creationist resources and teachers in the public school.

We oppose the teaching of homosexual behavior as a normal or acceptable lifestyle in our government schools.

We oppose the distribution of condoms in school.

We encourage the teaching of abstinence in the public-school sex-education curriculum.

We support displaying the Ten Commandments and the American Flag along with the daily recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance in its entirety in Iowa schools and classrooms.

So as to empower parents and local school boards, we call for the abolition of the U.S. Department of Education and are opposed to a National Board of Education.

We believe Yucca Mountain needs to be a burial site for spent nuclear fuel.

We oppose statehood for the District of Columbia or Puerto Rico.

We believe the National Endowment of the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and the Legal Services Corporation should be privately funded.

We call for the privatization of the U. S. Postal Service.

We believe that AIDS should be classified as a communicable disease and treated as such under current law. We favor requiring reporting of AIDS carriers and felony prosecution of any carrier who willfully exposes another person.

We support elimination of the designation of AIDS as a disability.

We support American-English as the official language of the United States.

We oppose any law, ordinance, or policy that treats sexual orientation as a special class.

We ... oppose all forms of discrimination including affirmative action...

We oppose a federal or state-run childcare system. Government should not get more involved in childcare for our children.

We oppose adoption by same-sex couples.

We believe the market place and not the government should set the ‘minimum’ wage.

We oppose all efforts to require union labor for public projects.

We call for passage of a national Right-to-Work law.

We believe when an individual is sentenced to prison s/he loses his/her individual rights and should not be entitled to special treatment.

We believe hate-crime legislation should be abolished, as it only serves to further divide our citizens into special groups.

We believe America needs to protect its Constitution by not ceding its sovereignty through U.N. treaties, such as World Heritage Treaties.

We support the immediate and full withdrawal from the United Nations by the U.S. and oppose any funding of the United Nations.

We believe American military women should not be placed in combat positions.

The United States Congress should work to reinstate U.S. control of the Panama Canal.

We call for an amendment to the U.S. Constitution which would prevent the automatic granting of citizenship to children born in the United States whose parents are illegally in this country.

We support the reversal of Roe vs. Wade.

We support banning partial-birth abortions.

We support the collection, compilation, and statistical reporting of records on abortion just as is done with any other surgical procedure.

We support a ban on government funding of abortion both in the U.S. and abroad.

There should be a minimum three-day waiting period between the time information on abortion and other alternatives is provided, and the actual abortion, if that decision is made.

We oppose assisted suicides and killing of those who are unwanted under the euphemism of “death with dignity”.

We oppose governmental funding of Planned Parenthood.

We encourage the appointment of pro-life judges.

We believe our candidates should adhere to Ronald Reagan's 11th Commandment. [Thou shalt not speak ill of another Republican]"


And I guess these narrowly escaped the final version by 10 days...
News Release of Republican Platform on June 12, 2004


"We support a landlord’s right to refuse leasing property to cohabiting homosexuals based on moral grounds.

We support voluntary teacher or student led prayer in the schools and use of the Bible as a local option.

We believe that unwed mothers must declare the identity of the father of the child or be subject to denial of state and federal funding.

We believe in retaining the moral absolutes which our founding fathers derived from Holy Scriptures as the principal foundation of our laws.

We believe the government should not reimburse families for the loss of a loved one due to an act of God, natural disaster, or terrorist attacks."

Is there a theme?

I seem to go all over the place with this blog, posting pictures that I take, news articles I read, complaints and kudos about my life, and just random thoughts that wander through my head. I guess this blog represents me, and that's what I want it to be. I don't speak nearly as poetically as Nicolette, nor as intimately as Hennifer, nor with such a convivial gregariousness as Elle; and I can't approach the profundities of countless blogs that I frequent. But it is does represent me, and I'm beginning to like it.

The New York Times > Opinion > Economic Reality Bites

The New York Times > Opinion > Economic Reality Bites: "If anyone required further evidence that President Bush's fiscal policies have not worked the way he says they have, this week's report from the Census Bureau provided it. In brief, from 2001 through 2003, poverty increased, income stagnated and the ranks of the uninsured grew, while the United States spent some $400 billion on tax cuts, which mainly benefited wealthy families. The Bush administration seemed intent on minimizing the political impact of the report, releasing the data on Thursday, instead of the usual date in late September, to get it done before the convention. But the numbers spoke for themselves. Since Mr. Bush came to power, 4.3 million people have fallen below the poverty line, set at $18,660 for a family of four in 2003, bringing the total number of people living in poverty in 2003 to 35.9 million, or 12.5 percent of the American population."

What's This Battle About, Anyway? (washingtonpost.com)

What's This Battle About, Anyway? (washingtonpost.com): "In the current partisan climate, it is easy to forget that, when it began, Vietnam was a consensus war, prosecuted by presidents of both major parties, with broad, bipartisan congressional support. If Republicans and Democrats today tend to see the conflict differently, it has less to do with the actual historical record than with the different postures each party adopted in the aftermath of the conflict -- postures symbolized by two former presidents, Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan."

At the Google Store
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Google Nalgene Bottle

Okay, this probably marks me as some Uber-nerd or megageek, but even though I don't like Nalgene's animal cruelty issues, I wouldn't turn down a free Google Nalgene bottle.

Google Store

BBC NEWS | In pictures: The rat catchers

WARNING: The pictures in this link are possibly disturbing!

I was perversely fascinated by these pictures, both because of the subject itself and because of my new love of photography.

BBC NEWS | In pictures: The rat catchers: "In pictures: The rat catchers"

Noam Chomsky: Invading Cuba

I can just imagine the conversation between Kennedy and the Mexican Ambassador in the early 60's...

KENNEDY: Mr. Ambassador, I'd like to talk to you about the security threat posed to both of our nations by the Communist state of Cuba.
AMBASSADOR: ...I'm sorry, could you repeat that Mr. President?
KENNEDY: Cuba, Sir. I'd like President Mateos to support me in declaring Cuba a mutually shared national security threat to both of our nations.
AMBASSADOR: Mmmmmm... Well, Mr. President. I really believe it would be more of a national threat for us to tell our people that Cuba might attack us. I think that they would all die laughing, sir. Cuba is no threat to us.

Turning the Tide: Invading Cuba: "Cuba was officially regarded as a security threat to the US until 1998, and when the Pentagon decided that maybe the US could survive a Cuban assault, the Clinton administration insisted that the threat must be defined as 'negligible,' but still real.

Back 40 years ago when Kennedy tried to get Latin American governments to join the US in declaring Cuba a security threat to the hemisphere, the Mexican Ambassador refused, saying that if he told Mexicans that Cuba was a threat to their security they'd all die laughing. Fortunately we are much more cowardly here. So who knows, maybe somewhere hidden in a cave they are doing something that could harm us.
...
Kennedy didn't make a clear promise not to invade Cuba again, and immediately reinstituted the terrorist war against Cuba when the missile crisis was over, continuing until his assassination. The charge about bioweapons was made by the Bush administration at a time when they were riding high, before the Iraq debacle"

I'm red-faced, but at least I wasn't alone

I can't say that I found the column all that funny, but at least it was supposed to be.

Cheboygan Tribune: "On Wednesday I was spammed with e-mail from readers all over the world. They were writing to complain about columnist Bruce D. Callander's Editorial Page column of that day (You can blame NASA for the peculiar weather).

I wondered why all of the sudden people were reading the Tribune online in general, and Bruce's column in particular, on our Web site.

Well, it turns out that Google put his column under the science/technology section of the search engine's Web site. And then a Web site called www.fark.com picked up the column. Both ran it without a disclaimer stating that it was an editorial column written by a humor columnist."

Census Graph of Poverty Rate since 1959

pov03fig03.pdf (application/pdf Object)
Sometimes the power of a visual to describe history astounds me, especially when I remember the administrations in office.

Press Briefing Archives

Every time I read through the White House press briefings, I wonder why the headline on the paper every day isn't, "White House Press Secretary Successfully Evades All Important Questions."Press Briefing Archives

RNC's coming. Ready to protest?

The Noble History of the Free Speech Zone

The Onion's take on the Republican National Convention

The Onion | Infograph

Cheboygan Tribune

I just can't let go of this, it's too ridiculous. This guy, published in a local newspaper, wants to compare a sun spot and, I assume, the solar flares that actually do have an effect, to launches and landings. Let me remind everyone that a sun spot is often the size of 15 Earths.

Cheboygan Tribune: "The delicate balance of the solar system can be disrupted by any number of things. Look at the chaos cause by sun spots, for example. It is quite possible that landing foreign objects on other planets or even just flying in their vicinity could have catastrophic effects. "

This is by George Fischer, a solar astronomer at the University of California, and David S. P. Dearborn, an astrophysicist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, "Scientists today have discovered a lot about the way the sunspots affect the earth. According to Dearborn, "The sunspot itself, the dark region on the sun, doesn't by itself affect the earth. However, it is produced by a magnetic field, and that magnetic field doesn't just stop, it comes to the surface and expands out above the surface...."

"Hot material called plasma near a sunspot interacts with magnetic
fields, and the plasma can burst up and out from the sun, in what is called a solar flare. Energetic particles, x-rays and magnetic fields from these solar flares bombard the earth in what are called
geomagnetic storms. When these storms reach earth, they affect us in many ways."

Cheboygan Tribune - NASA's responsible for our bad weather

Okay. No offense meant to Cheboygan, Michigan in particular, but what the fuck are they smoking? This is worth reading just to be amused by the stupidity of it all. Oh, and for the use of the word "theory" to mean "unsubstantiated and ridiculous idea."

Cheboygan Tribune: "From watching space launches on television, you have seen how much force it takes to get even an unmanned space vehicle off the ground. It takes even more if there are five or six heavy people aboard in those space suits and bulky shoes. They have been using women more often lately, but even so, it takes a lot of power to overcome the earth's gravity.

If it takes that much power to raise a rocket, then according to Newton, the same amount of force is being exerted on the earth. Considering the earth's bulk, one lift-off may not have much effect, but think how many launches there are from Cape Kennedy every year and assume that each launch pushes the planet a few feet out of its normal orbit. In the course of a decade, that could amount to a major displacement, enough to have a major effect on the earth's climate."

Blogger Knowledge

Blogger Knowledge: "(A refusal to capitalize is just one grammar horror that can be spotted at first glance. I can also spot an overuse of the ellipsis at 50 paces. There are two reasons to use an ellipsis (and neither one is because you don't want to write a transition): Use an ellipsis to indicate words omitted from a direct quote or to trail off intriguingly. If neither of these are your intention, try a period. Dot. Full stop. Terminal punctuation can be your friend.)"

Okay, I've been fairly rebuked. Hello, my name is Solomon Davis, and I'm addicted to ellipses. I can see myself in what she just wrote, and will take into consideration whether a period would work instead of an ellipsis. Perhaps I just like to trail off intriguingly a lot.... That ellipsis is an example of how I like to use (and admittedly misuse) ellipses, as an indication that there is more I could say or more that is implied than the sentence says on its surface. In that example, I left off saying that perhaps I like trailing off intriguingly a lot because I think my thoughts are possibly more profound than they really are, which is for the reader to decide. So, Jennifer Garrett, I will take your thoughts into serious consideration.

this dog was in heaven
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how could I not take a picture of a pug eating an ice cream cone
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i like this guy's face
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i liked this family
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summoning the spirit of the wolf
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possibly my favorite picture of the day
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couple in the grass
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my focus was all wrong here
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I haven't decided whether to crop this down or not... kind of like it this way.
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i like the shape of this
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It took a long time standing there for him to finally relax
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peekaboo
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reader
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a branch that caught my eye
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That foreground pole kind of bugs me...
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Just reading the comics
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full tarzan squirrel
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closeup of tarzan squirrel
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I have a love of squirrels
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unsure about this...
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Okay, I admit, I stalked this guy for a while
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it's probably too small to see detail on the web this way
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This guy is so photogenic
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nice back shadows
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I like the bare feet
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photographer and friend
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photographers
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shadowed photographer
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I like this
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I've recropped this so many times now I'm now uncertain... I want to include the back leaf but it is the spiral that I'm most interested in.
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I kind of like the layers here
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shameless zoom
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curved lamp
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My first rainbow pic... enhanced a little
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This was fun to capture.
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An Open Letter from Ani DiFranco

This is from 1997, but I just ran across it... so there. Please visit the link and read the whole letter, it's worth the time.

An Open Letter from Ani DiFranco: "So I'm poring through the 25th anniversary issue of Ms. (on some
airplane going somewhere in the amorphous blur that amounts to my
life) and I'm finding it endlessly enlightening and stimulating as
always, when, whaddaya know, I come across a little picture of little
me. I was flattered to be included in that issue's "21 feminists for
the 21st century" thingybob. I think ya'll are runnin the most bold
and babe-olishious magazine around, after all.

"Problem is, I couldn't help but be a little weirded out by the
paragraph next to my head that summed up her me-ness and my
relationship to the feminist continuum. What got me was that it
largely detailed my financial successes and sales statistics.
...
"I have so much respect for Ms. magazine. If I couldn't pick it up at newsstands my brain probably would've atrophied by now on some trans-Atlantic flight and I would be lying limp and twitchy in a bed of constant travel, staring blankly into the abyss of the gossip magazines. Ms. is a structure of media wherein women are able to define themselves, and articulate for themselves those definitions. We wouldn't point to 21 of the feminists moving into the 21st century and define them in terms of 'Here's Becky Ballbuster from Iowa City, she's got a great ass and a cute little button nose...' No ma'am. We've gone beyond the limited perceptions of sexism and so we should move beyond the language and perspective of the corporate patriarchy. The Financial News Network may be ultimately impressed with me now that I've proven to them that there's a life beyond the auspices of papa Sony, but do I really have to prove this to _you_?"

This is the version after I played with it.
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This is a severely cropped piece that I tried to save.
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A rebuttal for "The Bad or The Terrible"

Those Who Insist Nader Supporters Should Vote Kerry are Holding Back US Democratization:
------------------------------------
"all these voices - indeed just
about everyone on the left - have been urging the voters in swing
states
to choose John Kerry.

Their argument, of course, is that Kerry is the only candidate who can
knock George Bush off his perch. He might be about as inspiring as a
parking lot on a wet Sunday in Detroit, but his vacuity is better than
the president's aggressive certainties.
...
And their argument has merit. Bush has already launched two unnecessary wars, threatened 40 or 50 nations with armed aggression, ripped up international treaties and domestic regulations, granted corporations a licence to cook the planet, waged a global war against civil liberties and sought to bury that old-fashioned notion that the state should tax the rich and help the poor. The world would certainly be a safer and a better place without him."
--------------------------------------

This article argues that people can't continually support the system which produces such terrible choices, that one should take a stand with one's vote and vote for who you really believe could create change.

The main problem I see with that argument is that it still holds this American dream ideal that voting is a way to change this system. It doesn't advocate actual protest and boycott of the vote, advocating demonstrations and protests and sit-ins at voting booths (that would be certain to get coverage on Election Day by networks)... refusing to vote because the very basis of our voting system, with its jerrymandering and legislative manipulations, is part of this corrupt system. If you accept the system enough that you actually vote, don't claim that your vote could make a difference in changing the system: It can't.

I will be voting in this election, and I'm in a city in which it makes no difference how I vote, this portion of Michigan's voting public will vote for Kerry. So do I think that my vote for Nader is going to somehow make a difference... or a difference for third parties? No. I voted for Nader in 2000 (safely, in NYC) because I wanted to support the Green Party, to make sure that they received enough votes to take part in "the system" on the next election cycle. Now Mr. Nader has disappointed me because he didn't support the Green Party by not running against them. I'm disappointed because he could have taken the step forward that would have allowed the Green Party to maintain its newfound position of financial security for the presidential election. He could have endorsed the Green Party candidate. Perhaps the Green Party could have endorsed Kerry, I don't know, but I doubt it. They probably would have run the campaign that they are running right now, not putting their candidate on ballots in "swing states." They could have possibly maintained their needed percentage of the popular vote this way. But Mr. Nader will now split those voters up. A voter for Nader would have been a voter for the Green Party if the Green Party was on that person's ballot... now Nader will take that vote. I kind of wish I hadn't voted for Nader last year... but then I remember: I wasn't voting for Nader last year, I was voting for the Green Party because I'm supporting this fucked-up system by not protesting this fake voting system in the first place.

flower3
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flower2
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Flower1
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I want to go back to this... take some more pictures
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Seva's deck umbrellas
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flowers, cars, and fire hydrant
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Can't resist a little cuteness
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