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Blackboxvoting.org Raises Vote-Audit FOIA Request
aacool writes "Blackboxvoting.org has raised the largest Freedom of Information request in history. At 8:30 p.m. Election Night, Black Box Voting blanketed the U.S. with the first in a series of public records requests, to obtain internal computer logs and other documents from 3,000 individual counties and townships. Networks called the election before anyone bothered to perform even the most rudimentary audit. Among the first requests sent to counties (with all kinds of voting systems -- optical scan, touch-screen, and punch card) is a formal records request for internal audit logs, polling place results slips, modem transmission logs, and computer trouble slips."
Out of curiosity, can anyone expect to process and audit that data in a reasonable timeframe? Especially on a volunteer basis?
I'm glad someone's on this. The scariest thing about all these new voting technologies is the idea that if something were to go wrong, intentionally or otherwise, we wouldn't even find out about it.
they could find all the evidence they need of record tampering... of votes being miscast... of these machines being totally unfit for the democratic process....
and you would never see anything about it in the mainstream media....
"In America, first you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women..." -H. Simpson
The electors haven't voted yet, so there is nothing to be "undone".
I don't think it should be legal to concede. Screw checking out the voting machines, and have all the uncounted voters sue Kerry, Bush, and whomever else. By conceding the race and not counting those votes, it's effectively denying the right to vote for those individuals. This includes overseas (military and civilian), uncounted provisional votes, and absentee ballots. Every vote counts, so count every vote!
WTF. Sarcasm?? You're upset that someone is trying to independently validate the election?
What will your response be when their request is denied?
I just sent in my $100 donation. Put your money with your mouth is.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
I wish I had some mod points for you, but instead I'll just have to second you. The national results pretty well match the exit polling results, and the national polls for the past few days. Kerry lost largely on high voter turnout for those who opposed him on moral grounds, especially gay marriage.
I still wish that there were some way of doing a recount, even though it doesn't appear to be necessary in this case. It wouldn't entirely surprise me if there were shennanigans; I've heard of various ugly games played to influence voters. But here it seems that the Deibold machines did their jobs. I stil don't trust them but I'm not going to dispute the results.
Really, really poor taste? Yep. Probably a fucking stupid thing to say when you're CEO of a company that makes electronic voting machines?
I'd go farther than that. I'd say that having made such a comment should either make Diebold ineligible for the election, or should make him lose his job. That's the kind of thing you don't joke about when you're in a position of power.
It would be like the Supreme Court justices joking that they would make sure that Bush got elected before rendering their 2000 decision.
If America is the greatest country in the world, with it's freedoms and the right to vote, why can't they decide on a consistent form of voting? It seems to be, watching from the outside, there were so many different ways to vote, depending on where you were, whether it was electronic voting machines (and each of those were from different vendors)or paper ballots. In addition, the whole confusion and legal challenges to "provisional" and "absentee" ballots just muddied the waters even further. I also find it scary that something so important as voting can be done using hap-hazard machinery which is unauditable and unreliable. Hearing some of the stories coming from the different news agencies (CNN, CBS, NBC, ABC, etc.), it almost sounds like the voting system is a 3rd world style system.
What's needed is a voting system that's consistent across the country with checks and balances to ensure audit trails. I know that Americans take pride in the fact they vote for their government. Their system needs to be first class to ensure their vote doesn't become a circus. The American government need to ensure validity of the vote by ensuring voting is done in a consistent manner across the country, and if that is electronic voting, then they need to ensure the voting results are NOT subject to fraud or manipulation.
Please note this is not a "bashing America" rant, but the zaniness about electronic voting has to stop!
It is not our abilities that show what we truly are... it is our choices.
90% of what you fear never happens. The 10% that does isn't as bad as it was originally thought to be.
This is Carnegie and Peale formula. Don't sweat it. Chances are the way things are is the way they are going to remain. I highly doubt that the figures are that far off and that Bush didn't actually win either the popular or electoral vote. Anything could happen in a universe of endless possibilities, but life tells us, usually, this isn't the case....
"All great things are simple & expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope." --Churchill
My $50 won't help all that much toward such a huge task, but it'll still have more effect than that one measley vote I cast yesterday.
The exit polls are early results, and angry people (Kerry supporters) vote early. Content voters saunter into the polls whenever. So Kerry led for a long time in the exit polls, but fell behind at the end of the day. I know I was angry - I was there in line before the polls opened!
Stop the Slashdot Effect! Don't read the articles!
I stand corrected - what you say definitely makes more sense than 110+mil ballot count. However, it raises another interesting issue, that of objectivity and ethics.
If you're trying to reduce the number of ballots you have to count, what are the criteria? Are you trying to challenge the amount of votes Bush got, or get the exact vote counts? If you first eliminate the states with gross Bush or Kerry majority (and those are very few, I think?) you're still left with a large volume of ballots. Do you then just count Bush ballots, to prove that he didn't get 50+% votes in XY State? Or do you also count Kerry ballots, to see who came closer?
Note also that election results could be altered by checking ballots for things other than presidential elections - i.e. if ballots for Colorado's Amendment 36 have been misscounted, and Amendment actually passes, it means Bush gets only 5 of Colorado's votes, with Kerry getting remaining 4. That's 8 point ballance of power shift in EV count. But if you're challenging the count results, the proper thing to do is a full recount?
'...computers in the future may have only 1000 vacuum tubes and perhaps weigh 1.5 tons...' Popular Mechanics, 03/49'
There's a lot of people who are arguing that the election was 'stolen' by Diebold others who say that things are just fine...
The bottom line is -- until we look and until there's a paper trail we just don't know.
For all we know, Diebold could be sucking votes out of the system like a cancer sucking the life out of a body. Do we just turn our heads and not go to the doctor for a test? We do need to know what happened in an objective, non-partisan manner. Perhaps Bev Harris is the one to do that, maybe not, but it needs to be done.
Additionally, we need to fix the voting system. We need to form a true non-partisan grass roots effort to get accountability back into the system. I don't want people to ever question the results of an election. We need to have ballot initiatives lawsuits, whatever. I'm not an expert on how to force these changes on the voting system, but I'm willing to learn and it needs to be done.
Not disputing the results, sure, that's entirely reasonable...once standard auditing has been performed and suggests there is no reason to dispute the results.
The problem I have is that you have NO IDEA whether the Diebold machines did their job do you?
I have no interest in disputing the results, at this time, either. HOWEVER, I most certainly retain the right to dispute the results should an audit suggest anything was out of line.
I most deffinately want to see the results of the audits. Then, and only then, will I form a solid opinion on whether these machines 'did their jobs' or not.
No Comment.
Marginalizing those of us who have done our research on Diebold with your tinfoil hat references just serve to show how little you understand the risks posed by Diebold and their voting machines.
Let's list some facts about Diebold and their machines:
I've highlighted the really important bit. It's the giant pink elephant no media organization wanted to touch, and there's no logical explanation for it except to enable vote tampering.
People arguing for the use of voting machines seem to ignore all our warnings because they seem unable to grasp that any company/person would be capable of doing something like this. Once you get rid of that childish notion, you'll be buying your own roll of tinfoil mighty fast.
"The market alone cannot provide sufficient constraints on corporation's penchant to cause harm." -- Joel Bakan
"Can we at least agree (within obvious boundaries) to trust the process?"
/sent by the 'other' side/.
I'm surprised at all americans...Florida in 2000 has been proof that it is exactly the process which CAN'T be trusted. Striking thousands off the rolls based on having nothing more than the same last name as a criminal, or contesting your right to vote based solely on the fact that you didn't reply to a letter
Add to that the fact that the largest supplier of voting machines, which have been proved beyond any doubt to not be secure, has ties with the ruling party and has publically said that he will do anything to help said party...
How could anyone in their right mind not be suspicious of the process? Especially when it has demonstably been abused in the past.
-- Waht? Tehr's a preveiw buottn?
And where would this evidence come from?
How many audit's do you think have occurred at this point? Here's a clue: the number's big and round.
Come on now people, black box voting is trying to address the inherent, proven issues with the current state of electronic voting. This has NOTHING AT ALL to do with the results of the election. This has EVERYTHING to do with technology. And yet a flame like this is moderated insightful.
Really, wtf. No wonder Bush got voted in again.
Ah well, I should be happy. I'm Canadian and the loonies soaring quite well today thanks to the results.
No Comment.
(See my other post here)
So, are you, too, alleging that CNN falsified its exit polling numbers? Because that's what i get from your allegations.
Is it that hard to believe that polling might have indicated one thing in certain areas and another thing in others? The exit polling dipped and rose with the actual election returns, and there was always a ~+/-5% margin of error.
But the final, aggregated numbers more or less match the actual results. Are you saying that CNN has fudged these to match, i.e., lying about the numbers, meaning they are manufacturing artificial exit poll data? And if you are, what possible motivation would they have to do that?
If there was a big discrepancy, they'd (not to mention the $300 million Kerry campaign) want to be all the fuck over it...ESPECIALLY in the state that is deciding the election.
So I hate to break it to you, but Bush won, and there was nothing fishy to speak of going on.
(Disclaimer: I didn't vote for Bush.)
That's exactly why these FOIA requests are a good thing. The only way to remove the concerns of fraud and illegitimacy is to have a fully transparent process. My guess is that there wasn't any widespread fraud in this election, and the result is representative of Bush's ability to mobilize his base and sway enough of the middle. However, suppose we say there was no fraud this time so the electronic machines must be trustworthy. What happens in twelve years when there is massive fraud, and we have no way to detect it?
Let me put it this way. My company will save municipalities money by providing paper ballots and all associated equipment for all elections and performing all counting duties. No, you can't watch us do the counting. No, you can't have the ballots back when we're done with them, either. I'm sorry, we can't really even let you see the ballots. So, will your county hire us? Can we get a contract with your state?
If not, how can you possibly support electronic voting machines that aren't open for examination and public scrutiny?
(Note that "you" as used here is the general "people who think we didn't have a problem and don't see the need to worry", and not the parent poster.)
If only I had mod points. I think in some circles they would call a statement like that 'motive', and the position he was in 'means'.
-- Waht? Tehr's a preveiw buottn?
When I have one friend who was never sent his absentee ballot from Florida, despite their multiple claims of sending it... and when I have another friend who had her proper identification challenged by a Republican poll worker in Madison, WI, retrieved more proper identifications, and was challenged again by the same person, requiring a poll manager to allow her to vote... it's kind of hard to trust the process.
It's absolutely amazing to me that in this day and age that we can't even take a simple count.Hmm.. How about equal protection under the law? You know, the first of those so-called 'self-evident' truths..
As a non-American, that is what boggles the mind.
With everything going on, the election is decided on "moral issues"? Me no understand...although, you gotta hand it to Bush's campaign people for realizing near the end that it was the only type of campaign they could win.
Reason why there is hope for the future generation #364:
"I wish my grass was emo so it could cut itself."
I am absolutely thrilled that there is an organization devoted to ensuring that the electoral process is clean and that electronic voting systems are being used appropriately and without tampering. I am also glad that Kerry did the manly thing today and condeded when it became clear that the numbers couldn't add up to his victory in Ohio any way you sliced it.
Despite the fact that I accept the election results (though personally I don't like them), I still want to know that the election was carried out in a fair way, and to ensure that the much debated electronic voting systems aren't being tampered with and are being run in a secure manner, and thank God these people are trying to make sure that is the case.
Take a look at Miami-Dade ... IIRC, they are using touch-screens there.
... though Diebold made sure to design their equipment to be impossible to audit, a deliberate design decision in stark contrast to the ATMs they manufacture as their core business.
... again, as a deliberate design decision, in contrast with other banking equipment Diebold manufactures.
... abdicating fully their position as our democracies watchdog and a check and balance on the government.
Miami-Dade was supposed to be incredibly Democratic and they only got a 54-46 margin.
Very suspect.
I agree with your conclusion, but not with your reason.
The Diebold touchscreens are a bit of a red herring. Yes, they are a concern and should be audited (and auditable)
The Diebold tabulators are the real concern. Like the touchscreen machines, they produce no paper trail and are difficult or impossible to audit
The tabulators are the big computers that collect millions of votes and tallies them up. They are used to count votes from touch screens, as well as from other precincts using everything from op-scan sheets to punch cards. A two digit back door code will let you change voting totals, with absolutely no evidence that you've done so.
In every other country, when exit polls differ significantly from the official results, it is generally considered a pretty strong indicator of voter fraud. In the United States, CNN simply changes their polling data to match the official result
I have no idea if the elections in Ohio and Florida were rigged, or if Bush won legitimately. I truly hope it is the latter. I don't expect the US to emerge from four more years with much intact in the way of its economy and influence in the world, much less with many of the social gains of the last quarter century still intact, but it would be far worse for America if Bush stole this election than if he won it legitimately.
The problem is, with machines that are designed to be impossible to audit, and with tabulators that have a software feature designed to facilitate fraud, we can't know.
Ever.
And that is terribly disturbing.
To any critically thinking mind, the legitimacy of this entire election is serious doubt, and would have been irrespective of who won. Using unauditable equipment in an election undermines the entire process at its most fundamental level, and does more to destabilize the political climate in America than a thousand bin Ladens could possibly ever achieve.
Diebold and others who produce similarly shoddy election equipment need to be put out of business, immediately and perminently.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
I live in a union with 20 odd sovereign nations that has 100 million more people than the US. None of them fuck up so badly as even your better states. Come on, election is not rocket science, there is no need whatsoever to have people waiting in line for hours other than out of sheer malice. You do not need foreign mailed in votes (just open up the embassy and do the counting there). You do not need a completely separate registration process to vote. You definitively do not need provisional ballots with a simpler registration procedure. You do not need to vote for twenty things at the same time as the presidential election simply because you did so when people had to make a three day trip to vote. You can break with your tradition that was born in the 18th century, just use your brains.
Same thing here. Find and fix the problems now, when the race has been conceded, and the result isn't in doubt, so that, when we need to be able to count on the system to count every vote, we can.
And here's the problem with American politics - idiots treating it like it's a sporting event, rooting for "their team" instead of understanding issues.
Bev Harris and BlackboxVoting are certainly doing great work in exposing fraud and corruption among DRE voting machine makers (and other types, for that matter).
But the real solution to the problem, long term, past the current election, is to get electronic voting machines based on open source code, and that produce voter-verifiable paper ballots. It just so happens that there's an organization for that purpose that could really use some assistance (financial and otherwise) right now: the Open Voting Consortium.
Just to be extra-sexy, our reference system uses Linux and Python :-).
BTW. Some readers will think: "What's wrong with plain old paper and pencil?" Actually, there's not so much wrong with that. I just used a pencil to vote in Massachusetts yesterday, and it worked great. Paper ballot. Zero line at the polls. Perfectly transparent. Great security (just look at that padlock on the ballot box).
But electronic machines do have a few good things, as long as their source code is open and the print out paper ballots after selections are made: Multi-lingual; blind accessible (using audio interface) and special interfaces for motor-impaired voters; large fonts for vision impaired voters; prevent overvotes and unintentional undervotes.
Buy Text Processing in Python
Here's the thing -- for the first time, it's possible that a single, clever hacker slightly altered the returns across the state of Florida to convincingly shift the outcome by a percent or two. I agree with you that most likely it didn't happen -- but damn, there's just no way of knowing, is there? The statement "there is not wholesale or widespread fraud in the election" is one that not you, nor anyone else can support right now. The only way to do that is to sniff around, check all the logs and records and whatever, and see if anything interesting pops up.
A better way to phrase it would be, "we'll never know if there was wholesale or widespread fraud in the election, but since it looks like he won, and it's certainly credible that he did, why don't we just go with it?"
That sentiment makes a lot of sense -- but I'm still glad they're checking into it as best they can.
Naturally Diebold disputes it - I don't see that as noteworthy. I'm not very impressed with the auditing they undergo either, as the software which was leaked was software which had been deployed on voting machines, had passed audits, and was FULL of problems. So all things considered I'm going to dismiss that. There's a lot of problems with Diebold machines, and while I don't think that outright election fraud is one of them (at least not organized - maybe there's a rouge developer or three, but I emphsize that I have no proof of that) I think that they are real problems none the less. The "workarounds" for procedural issues (like printing "System Tests passed") should be familiar to anyone who's worked in government or even a lot of corporate software development. It's slapping stuff together to make it work and keep your users from looking too closely at it. I think that for something this important that sort of behavior shouldn't be tolerated.
Finally, I think that the Kerry campaign, even if they suspected election fraud, wouldn't do jack without hard-edged, totally irrefutable proof. It'd be a political nightmare and they're going to swallow it and try again in 4 years. The Democrats took an enormous hit over Gore pursuing the Florida thing, and that was with evidence of widespread abuse and inconsistencies in the voting record (including from Diebold machines). Did those abuses and incosistencies change the 2000 election? Maybe. Probably not, but they did exist.
Relying on someone else to validate a distrust of the system is pretty much always a bad idea. It's even worse when the person you're replying on is part of the system. It'd be like saying that CNN couldn't have edited it's poll results, because FOX would have reported on it. I kinda wish Kerry did push it, because there's a lot of problems with our election system (all that crap in Florida last time didn't only happen there, that's just what got the press cause it was the swing state), but on the other hand it'd be political suicide for him in 2008, it'd cause a lot of animosity, and even if they weren't actually partisan (fat chance) anything they brought up would be dismissed as partisan.
No. The president of Diebold promissed Bush the victory. It was reported that exit polls weren't matching reported votes.
I *don't* trust the process. I consider this election to be a fraud at the presidential level, and possibly from top to bottom. I'd be willing to be convinced otherwise (the evidence is, I will admit, quite shakey), but the needed evidence is not only hidden, it's in custody of the presumptive villians. So it's going to be quite difficult to come up with evidence that I will consider more reliable than what I already have (i.e., not very reliable).
The process was designed to be difficult to verify, so WHY should it be trusted?
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Well admittedly this is going to take a couple days to really sink in, I voted myself for Bush back in 2000, but he was pretty much an unknown quantity back then and I viewed Gore as just a continuation of the dishonesty and politics of convenience of the Clinton years.
What shocks me now and really disheartens me is that a majority of my countrymen preferred Bush, knowing exactly the kind of person he is and what his administration is capable of.
Honestly I'm just kind of treading water right now mentally, it's kind of like learning that a close family member did something truly horrifying, and you just can't believe that they actually did something that horrible.
I am genuinely terrified of what is going to come in the next 4 years now that Bush can drop all pretenses since he no longer has to worry about reelection.
Pride/Hubris: A presumption of infallibility and complete denial of ever making a mistake.
Sloth: He has taken more vacations than any man has a right to. How much brush does he have on that ranch anyway and can't he hire someone to clear it for him? Heck, put on boots and jeans and pose in the rose garden with that chainsaw.
Greed: Lots of good old boys are going to cash in for ANOTHER 4 years for elevating a "C's get degrees" party boy to the top.
Anger: Ass kicking, shoot from the hip, drunk cowboy decision making.
It makes we want to spit when a moral bankrupt gang of liars and thieves spread their brand of the gospel.
When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.
Giving the voter proof of who they voted for defeats the purpose of secret ballots: you can coerce somebody to vote in a certain way and to present you with the proof that they did. It generally is public information whether or not a person voted in a given election. They check you off in a great big book, and if you're a politician and haven't voted, they hassle you for it.
Damn. Did you just say that the only way for something to be independent was for it to be a federal agency? I think you're misunderstanding something.
Mississippi is 40% black, 60% white. Only Washington DC has a higher concentration of black folks (61%, no wonder they can't get representation in Congress). Nationally, Blacks voted for Kerry 10 to 1, whereas Whites voted for Bush 2 to 1. Black populations tend to be social conservatives who vote based on economic and civil rights issues. While most black churches tend to focus on economic and social justice issues, white churches focus on social issues like abortion and gay rights.
If you'd like to see how well this works out for the Republicans, check out these jokers.
It's a lot easier to be worried about white church issues when you don't have to worry about putting food on the table. Mississippi has a poverty rate approaching 20% whereas the national average is nearly half that for all races but 23% nationally for blacks. Quite frankly, it's also the reason I think hypocrite whenever I hear white folks getting all uppity about "values" when black communities are still stuck with the same statistical difference on lifespan, education, home ownership and business ownership, infant mortality that they've always had with white people.
This country has never properly compensated it's black population for 300+ years of racism and slavery and the statistical numbers show it. The GOP will never increase it's vote among the black population until it quits playing lip service to these issues and actually does something about it. Bill Clinton was America's "First Black President" for a reason.
Hell, you couldn't pay Republicans enough to walk the neighborhoods I have to get the vote out. The most poignant satirical illustration of this I've seen was the faux South Park cartoon in Bowling for Columbine. White America seems to pretty much be oblivious when it comes to how other people live and running scared because of ignorance. Racism in this country isn't dead, it's just gotten a hell of a lot more subtle.
Arrogance is Confidence which lacks integrity. -- me
They mocked our belief system, and hundreds of years of our religious and legal tradition, and for the most part they did this simply because it pissed religious people off.
Believe it or not people really don't give a fuck about oppressing you.
The fact is that marriage has existed far longer than your religion.
It isn't yours, and you have no right to deny it to anybody.
Nobody said your ignorant little hate mongering church has to perform the ceremonies because it doesn't have a damn thing to do with your church.
The encumbent President who
* lost the popular vote in 2000 (winning by a hair on the basis of some very sketchy events)
* started a War on false pretenses (WMDs?)
* sent over 1000 young Americans to their death.
* and many thousands more mamed and disabled.
* not to mention many thousands of dead innocent Iraqis.
* who's Vice President's (prior?) employer received gigantic government contracts on a silver platter.
* Putting the nation into the Largest Debt ever. (20% and 420 billion dollars over budget in 03!)
All the while...
* Millions of Illegal Aliens have flooded into the country --over 12 million now make up the general population.
* the nation's Economy lost more Jobs than it has in over 70 years. Hundreds of thousands!
* average Wages are down.
* the Stock Markets have stagnated.
* Education, Health Care and Energy costs have risen multiple times more than the normal inflation rate.
* and plenty of other nasties.
And now you're telling me that he honestly earned _more_ of the popular vote? Why?
* Because homosexuals want to get married?
* Becasue he gave you a few dollars back on your tax return --and a whole lot of YOUR dollars to _millionares_?
* Becuase scientists want to use unviable fertility clinic embryos (_not_ abortion embryos) in order to try to save lives like Chris Reeves?
* Because he'll protect us better? Funny I think two big buildings were blown up on _his_ watch.
Again, you're telling me this President got _more_ of the popular vote this time around?
In an election where
* _all_ the exit poles are 5-10% "wrong"?
* in which more of the youth voted --voters well known to lean to the left.
* a larger turn out translated into more Republican votes, which has _never_ happened in history.
* thousands of new unverifiable e-voting machines have been used in, guess what, mostly Democratic and Africa American strong holds. Huh, that's odd.
...
If you haven't realized by now that this election has been rigged again, even better than the last time, then you are a dope.
"The problem was that pre-election polling in states like Ohio made some people, like Zogby, pretty damned sure Ohio was a gimme for Kerry. But they were wrong. And the exit polling showed that."
Uh, no you are wrong. The early EXIT polling showed Kerry with a wide lead. They were leaking to the Internet, the Kerry camp was dancing in the aisles, the Bush camp was in the dumps and the networks had major problems calling early states like Virginia and North Carolina, because the exit polls showed them to close to call. When the actual poll numbers started rolling in they were so far in disagreement with the exit polls the network predictions were tied in a not.
In the middle of the evening the Fox team, Kristol in particular, was about to break out crying because, based on the exit polls, it was clear Bush was losing. Then they devolved in to hours worth of bashing the exit polls as completely wrong every five minutes, and Republican big wigs like Melman and Racicot were chiming in. Now after its over everyone says the exit polls exactly matched the results. Go figure.
So we have these options:
A. All the Bush voters voted late in the day so the early exit polls favored Kerry but in the end they swung to Bush
B. The polling models were bad early on and they were "fixed" later in the day. Question is were they right when they were showing Kerry winning or after they were fixed and showed Bush winning.
C. The election was rigged, the early exit polls were accurate while the returns were falsified. In order to cover up the discrepancy the networks fudged the exit polls late in the day so they matched the real(falsified) numbers. Of course if they did that there was no reason to do the exit poll in the first place.
@de_machina
"It's a lot easier to be worried about white church issues when you don't have to worry about putting food on the table. Mississippi has a poverty rate approaching 20% whereas the national average is nearly half that for all races but 23% nationally for blacks. Quite frankly, it's also the reason I think hypocrite whenever I hear white folks getting all uppity about "values" when black communities are still stuck with the same statistical difference on lifespan, education, home ownership and business ownership, infant mortality that they've always had with white people."
Dude, your above statement is a racist generalization. Lumping "White Folks" or "Blacks" together when making blanket statments is the definition of a stereotype. Next are you gonna say that white folks can't dance and black people love chicken?
_PEOPLE_ are concerned about things that are important to them - it doesn't matter what color they are.
The people who have to _distinguish_ the color are the ones with the problem. Every person is an individual. When the whole world starts to think like that, we won't have a need for the word "Racist".
Do all Black people want the same thing? That's what it sounds like when you say, "Only Washington DC has a higher concentration of black folks (61%, no wonder they can't get representation in Congress".
I didn't realize that Black people were a new Borg Collective! Support all people, rich, poor, from any background. Promote that.
Peace.
I remember looking at the TV images on the night of September 11, and saying "I hope this doesn't mean the end of democracy in America". (What's left of it, that is). Now, I feel prescient. This election is the last nail in the coffin of democracy.
The use of absolutely unauditable machines is unconscionable. I expected the Bushites to steal this election, just like last time, only more effectively. Now they have.
I am convinced that this election has been stolen. I do not accept Bush as a legitimate president. I never will. And those who support the use of these untraceable machines are supporting the antithesis of democracy.
Welcome to the USA, prime banana republic.
You had me until the compensation/reparation bit.
/sigh
"Compensation and Reparation" and the general backward-looking "but your great-great-great grandparents were bad to our great-great-great grandparents" thinking is what leads to things like "ethnic clensing" TWELVE HUNDRED YEARS after one ethnic group invaded another in the general area of the world we know today as Bosnia.
Remember it, Resent it, whatever, but every time you bring it up you lose market-share. Ask the IRA.
White people became world invaders because for century after century the different white countries were invading eachother and taking eachoters candy. It was all an accident of geography and erosion (great farmland right next to very-old mountains with easily accessible coper and tin).
Don't fish for reperations. The (us) white people wont buy it. If we generally subscribed to the doctrine of reperations we would spend so much time paying eachother for slights going back thousands of years that your three-hundred would barely make hay.
Ask the Scotts.
Ask the Irish.
Ask the Slavs (from which the word SLAVE is derrived for a reason which you can rather easily guess.)
Ask the Jews.
And it isn't that white people are evil, but with generation after generation of this struggle for the verdant lowlands of europe they were just *bound* to come up with "might makes right."
Let's face it, if Africa or India had such easy access to metals, and if their farmland was better, then their older cultures would have totally owned Eurpoe and Asia long before the Greeks decided that gravity was explained by "the fact" that apples contained little spirits that wanted to be closer to the earth.
Dont say "we deserve better treatment than we are getting because of the last 300 years" (etc) it makes you sound craven and helpless.
Say "we deserve better treatment than we are getting" and leave it at that.
This white culture that you blame is pretty tied up in "god helps those who help themselves" and "might makes right" and all sorts of things like that.
Exercise your power, demand fair pay for fair work (and then some 8-), speak to the future. Stop talking about what you deserve because of past events. Look to the future. Own today.
Any white person who thinks reparations would be a good idea, is thinking it (secretly at least) in a "give them a pat on the head and they'll go away" way. You don't _want_ a pat on the head... trust me.
Really, Ask a Scott, they were taking it from behind 700 years before Britton even knew there _was_ an Africa. They haven't forgotton, but they did figure out quite a while back that there never would be thirty acres and a mule.
Ask yourself why English is a pollyglot of French and German.
It would be nice to imagine that "Manifest Destiny" was the last gasp of that sort of thing, but it wasn't.
Every day you are doing, through your government, to Iraq and the middle east AND Isrial, the EXACT SAME THING over Oil, that Dibers did to Africa over diamonds and "peices of india."
It would take a little less than a glance through a good encyclopedia to make most of this stuff evident.
Innocent people shouldn't be forced to pay for inferior software development.
--"Code Complete" Microsoft Press
Clinton connected with black Americans in a way that gave them hope, he made them feel like the promises of the Civil Rights movement would come true if he had anything to do with it.
I won't disagree here, he did give them hope and I don't want to belittle that but what did he do for them other than appoint many black judges?
Like Bush I's cuts to Head Start or his assault on Affirmative Action.
Affirmative action is a band-aid for the underlying problem of racism. In the 60's it served its purpose well, shocking the racist masses into a reluctant realism that this segment of the society could actually perform as equals when given the opportunity. Unfortunately this has morphed to the notion of lowering standards for admission and employment to ensure a certain level of diversity. This does nothing to address the underlying problem... why are african-american children performing below the necessary standards? Why do we wait and allow these children to fall short of their potential for the first 18 years of their life, only to offer a college degree as reconciliation? Is racism part of the problem? Maybe a little bit, but there are plenty of socio-economic stones to turn over that have nothing to do with racism.
As for head-start... my wife was an elementry school teacher so I will have to defer to her experience in this. Head-start is nothing more than state-sponsored day-care... no more, no less. It is simply a crutch to force the black community into permanent submission by encouraging a cycle of single-parent, non-family-care-giver child-rearing. Do I want to see poor, unmarried women with no child-care options? Of course not,... but what ever happened to consequences for ones' own actions?
"It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance." - Thomas Sowell
This audit needs to be done. A significant fraction of the US population is losing confidence that elections are being run fairly. The next step in this thought process is to decide that change can only come from methods outside the democratic process. Then we have bigger problems. Everyone, regardless of their political beliefs should be behind this.
The entire board of Blackboxvoting and its officers have been declaired enemy combatants, arrested, and moved to a Navy brig.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Think I'm being sensational? The Iranian parliament just voted unanimously to resume uranium enrichment. Thanks to Bush and Co. going around the world like the Roman Empire threatening everyone, nuclear proliferation is now inevitable. The whole world is terrified of the U.S. and sees mutually assured destruction as their only ticket to security.
If in addition to the silly "Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve" shit, there was also rigging of the elections, maybe we all really deserve to be a-sploded with "nucular" weapons.
How ya like dat?