> unlike virtually every other nation in the recorded history of the nation-state, this
election fiasco has not resulted in men with guns running around on the streets
Amen. Regardless of the shady goings-on I'm seeing in Palm Beach - the second-guessing of the voters by Gore's lawyers - I see the Electoral College as serving a very useful purpose.
The electors of Florida are not bound by any law, and can cast their votes any way they please.
If they decide to abide by the results of the recount, the winner of the recount wins the Presidency.
If they decide to abide by the decision of a judge who awards 3400 valid Buchanan votes to Gore , Gore wins the Presidency.
If they decide to say "a pox on both your houses, we don't know who won, and we", we get a President selected by the House (Bush) and a Veep selected by the Senate (Lieberman). Given the split in popular vote, House, and Senate totals, a dual-party executive might be just what the Framers had in mind;-)
While I'm scared by the attempt to second-guess the voters of Palm Beach, I have faith that however Florida's electors carry out their duties, whatever happens will still be within the bounds of the Constitution.
Which is a long way to say "whoever wins the Electoral College" is the guy who deserves the Presidency.
The ballot's pretty fucking obvious. The number "3" beside Gore's name makes it pretty fucking clear that you punch the third hole for Gore.
Nobody protested the ballot design during the campaign, even though sample ballots were made widely-available.
If you still can't figure out the ballot, the time to ask is before you punch the hole, not after.
We have a secret ballot, and as such, you cannot second-guess it. For every Democrat willing to perjure him or herself on the stand and say "I punched the second hole even though Gore's arrow pointed to the third hole") there's a Republican equally willing to perjure by saying they "Oh yeah? Well I saw the big long underline below Bush's name pointing to the second hole, so I punched the second hole for Bush!".
I loathe Buchanan deeply, but the bottom line is that you can't second-guess the electorate. If there are 3400 votes with the Buchanan-hole (heh-heh, I said "Buchanan-hole"!) punched, those are valid Buchanan votes, and they should stand.
If Al Gore wins the recount, Florida's 25 electors should go to Gore, and Gore should become President.
If George Bush wins the recount, Florida's 25 electors should go to Bush, and Bush should become President.
What I'm seeing today - a bunch of Gore's lawyers looking to replace a bunch of unspoiled ballots validly marked for Buchanan because they believe those votes "should have been Gore's" - is terrifyingly close to a coup d'etat.
The Constitution does not give any party a "do over" because they don't like the results of an election.
I urge the electors of Florida to consider casting their votes according to the results of the mandatory recount, and to ignore the implications of any legal decision to throw out validly-marked ballots for any candidate.
(Note that spoiled ballots, such as those with two holes punched in them - are another matter entirely. I agree with the judge's decision to throw them out.)
> 32768 of those were from Georgia.Especially given some of the technical nature
of Browne's base, does that strike anyone else as one heck of a coincidence?
Shhhhhh! The guys at the FEC aren't supposed to notice that!
Nothin' in the Constitution for it, but based on what I saw in the vice-presidential debate, I wouldn't complain. Nor, would I expect, would most voters. But the Constitution doesn't provide for it, so 'nuff said.
Re: Florida remaining in Bush hands due to.mil votes.
Nobody knows. Military folks are likely to go Bush (unless the exit polls say otherwise). But rumors of 3500 ballots found in a church in a predominantly-black precinct, could swing it back to Gore. (Assume 3500 votes split 70/30 Gore/Bush, as seems to be the norm in poor counties - that's back to within a hair of the ~1200-vote margin of "victory").
Finally, a "faithless elector" or two could throw us into a constitutional crisis, which might be resolved with the House picking Bush for prez, and the Senate picking Lieberman for VP. (This would be truly unprecedented, but if the two campaigns didn't hate each other so much, it would be an act of political brilliance on the part of both sides if they were to negotiate such a deal amongst each other. Won't happen, though. OTOH, how many other "this can never happen" things did we see last night? One thing's for sure, it'd force some reform of the laws governing electors, and that'd be a Good Thing no matter who won.)
Bottom line - we have no idea who's gonna be Prez, and we probably won't know until Thursday (!), according to the Florida Department of State webiste (currently slashdotted, but if you reload a few times, you can get in).
But in terms of who really won (if you factor in the "ambiguous ballot theory" espoused by the Dems, and the very real possibility of ballot-stuffing by overzealous partisans on either side), we will probably never know.
Actually, my original post was intended with a bit of skepticism towards Bush. All I was saying is that if he wants to do his job successfully, he's gonna have to make good on that rhetoric.
And with the FL recount underway, and the margin of victory within the margin of error, all I can say in response to my original "Good luck" post is is that I like my crow served piping-hot and stuffed with breadcrumbs. With a little imagination, it tastes just like turkey!
At the moment - 0423 EST - we may not know for DAYS. Florida will be recounted with Bush leading by 1200 votes, and will determine the Presidency.
At a minimum, we won't have the recount in Florida done until Wednesday afternoon.
The allegations I've seen on the press are just weird - people claiming they voted for Buchanan "by accident", missing ballot boxes, and Lord only knows what else.
I really can't believe what I've seen tonight. But there it is. I'm stunned. And I'm calling it a night on the reasonable grounds that nobody's gonna know who will win the Presidency until sometime later today.
It's a bit past 0300 EST. Wisconsin has 95% of the precincts reporting, and the vote is within 1200 votes.
1200 votes out of 1.2 million.
Granted, the election's over with Bush taking FL. So this is all hypothetical. But given the closeness of the races, consider...
1200 votes. Six hundred people changing their minds in a two-party race, or one non-voter in a thousand getting off his or her ass and voting, could have changed WI's 11 electoral votes one way or the other.
In a parallel universe not too different from our own, the Presidency was won by WI's "scanning-tunnelling-electron-microscope-sharp" 600-voter margin, rather than FL's "merely razor-sharp" 50,000-voter margin.
Back to our universe, let that be a lesson to anyone who said "one vote doesn't count". (And for that matter, the guy who said "voter fraud shouldn't be a felony")
> That is a very scary idea! [... ] this could become one of those elections that
goes down in history as being validly contested as to it's outcome.
Naah, scary is the fact that some states' electors are allowed to "vote their conscience" - that is, while many electors are required by law to cast their votes for President depending on the popular vote in their state, other states permit their electors to vote against the will of their people.
It's the memory leak in the code of the US Constitution that everybody's ignored becase "oh, it'll never be a factor".
I don't for a moment believe the bug will manifest itself, particularly with Bush winning both the Electoral vote and the popular vote. But had the popular vote gone sharply in the other direction, the one-vote margin in the Electoral College just might have been an issue.
Read Jeff Greenfield's The People's Choice, a brilliant bit of political satire revolving about what might happen if members of the Electoral College decided they had legitimate reasons to "do what the people meant, not what they said".
Prediction: If third parties continue to grow in popularity with the electorate, expect to see Electoral College reform on the legislative agenda in the 2004 and 2008 elections... and expect to see it benefiting the third parties, entrenched interests notwithstanding.
> From where I sit it looks like the Browne total will be about half what it was in 1996.
And the Greens' total is much larger than it was in 1996.
Green voters could have voted held their nose and ended up with Gore as President.
But it appears that libertarians did hold their nose and got the candidate that prefers smaller government, lower taxes, and partial privatization of Social Security.
In comparison to Greens, I'd say Browne voters and sympathizers have nothing to complain about.
2004 won't be such a close race. (I mean, let's get real, how could it be any closer?;-)
And then, third parties on the right and the left will probably improve their numbers. Make no mistake, enough voters are interested in alternatives to the Demipublicans that both parties will have to take notice.
UNFUCKINGBELIEVABLE! I'm still on the edge of my seat here, and I've gone through a large pizza and six cans of Jolt cola - but that was the closest race I've ever seen, and arguably the closest the nation has ever seen.
Mad props to all candidates and voters for making this
the most entertaining, stimulating, and nerve-wracking election race
not just in my life, but arguably, in the past century.
But with Nevada firmly in the Bush camp, and
cnn.com reporting a Florida margin of 50K with 98%, it's over. (Shit, it ended "officially" while I hit "Preview" on this post and "Reload" on CNN, how's that for down-to-the-wire predictions?;-)
So now - the hard work:
Dubya - you preside over what is arguably the most divided America
in a generation. 50/50 splits to within epsilon in the popular vote,
the electoral vote, the Senate, and the House. Moreover, those "50/50 splits" mask serious racial, income, and geographical gaps among the various demographic and voting blocs. It appears that the campaign rhetoric that most matters tomorrow isn't gonna be about tax cuts, Social Security, Medicare, foreign policy. It's gonna be that fluffy stuff about "being a
uniter, not a divider", and it's about to be put to the ultimate test.
What's particularly interesting is that Congress has now stated (in the "it is the sense of Congress that" sense of the word, not with actual dollars) that no transaction with INS ought to take more than six months.
It's a start - a small start, but an important one - towards reforming the INS bureaucracy that's put countless lives on hold for years.
And as for the H-1B bill being about "cheap labor", IMHO that's FUD. If you can't find the skills locally, you go abroad. Although there are companies that abuse the H-1B programme, the vast majority of companies that take advantage of it give their employees a fair shake -- and the reality is that if you're an employee who wants to join the US and get your Green Card, an H-1B is a damn good way to get your foot in the door.
The only thing I question is this: Why is this on/. today? The law (originally bill S.2045) passed both houses weeks ago. Its provisions are hardly news.
> > Well, it is voting fraud. >
> is that really as serious as child pornography? Child abuse? Assault with a weapon?
Is illegally tampering with the system that creates all your laws as bad as breaking one of them?
You betcha.
The argument that voter fraud isn't that bad a thing is predicated on the assumption that "hey, one vote doesn't matter, so if you vote twice, you haven't really changed anything".
The problem is, if you can vote twice, you can vote three times. Or four. Or five... It's not "just one vote". Indeed, the whole point of voting fraud is to do away with "just one vote" and have undue influence.
In an election where the winner will likely be decided by a few thousand votes out of over 100 million, the only difference between "a few bad apples stuffing ballots" and a coup d'etat is that a coup occurs after the election, not during.
So yes, voting fraud is a felony, and IMHO for damn good reason.
And when MAPS refuses to RBL spam sources like uu.net (likely via msn.com dialups without port 25 filtering, but uu.net refuses to identify their rogue resellers), and dialsprint.net (Dialsprint took ~6 months before it finally cleaned up its act and blocked port 25), and att.net (who denied the existence of pink contracts right up until the news broke)?
RBL is a good start.
But the/. article is about how you deal with institutions that appear to be "too big" to RBL.
I say - block 'em yourself. If uu.net gets RBL'd (which will never happen), then they only have to twist one arm to get themselves unblocked. But if 1000 sysadmins independently drop uu.net traffic on the floor, they're well and truly fscked.
There are still AGIS netblocks from 1997 that remain on the DENY list. May uu.net suffer the same fate.
> get your sorry arse to the polls or SHUT THE FUCK UP!!!
Amen. If you support Bush or Gore, this is a close race, and your candidate needs your support. If you support Nader, he's within epsilon of his 5%, and he needs your support. If you support Browne, hey, you know why you're voting.
The bottom line - whatever your political affiliation - get out there and support your candidate.
And I don't just mean for President. There are a lot of other close races, and control of the Senate and House is probably up for grabs today too.
Given that the margin of victory is likely to be so slim, your vote has more influence today than at any time in the past 40 years.
If you haven't voted yet, and are eligible to vote, stop reading about voting and do it.
With all its faults, the best cure for the ills of democracy is more democracy.
(No partisan wisecracks - this isn't a day for me to tell you who I want to run the country - this is the day you tell me who you want to run the country.)
> I always liked the X-Get-A-Real-Newsreader: <BLINK>
OOooooh, that's sick. (awesome!)
As for what it does with defective clients, hey, who cares? After all... who's got time to make sure everything works on everyone's newsreaders... (and if they do have trouble reading news with it, hey, maybe they should just upgrade to tin, xnews, slrn, or trn!;-)
> An XML based User Interface language was created to allow for XP UI development. This just happens to
bring UI development into the same world as Web development, lowering the barrier to entry for many and
lowering the time to market on UI redesign and improvement.
This is a prime example of "scratching an itch" as the thing that typifies everything that's good and bad about open source design.
Consider that it's "good" in that developers get to work on interesting problems (extensible UI/skinnability), and that it's an elegant solution (XML as opposed to some proprietary binary file), but IMHO the team has forgotten that this feature - cool as it is - doesn't meet any customer's needs.
News flash: Last time I checked, most users of web browsers don't want to spend 5 hours futzing around with a skin to make Mozilla/Netscape window look totally rad, or to test new experiments in usability design. Users of web browsers typically use them to... browse the web.
If you can keep the user's goals in mind, even if it's not your idea of what constitutes coolness and elegance and fun-to-codeness, you may not have as much fun writing it, but odds are pretty good you'll come up with something far more useful in the end.
I'll know Mozilla's worth looking into when the release notes stop bragging about marketing tabs that take up real estate, inbuilt support for AOL's instant messaging, and cutesy stuff like skins... and when I start seeing more stuff about stability and standards-compliance.
> Composer is the one part of Mozilla that I don't think should be there. Then again, I'm one of the
increasingly small number of people who think that HTML in mail and news is obscene.
Agreed. HTML in mail and news is a bug, not a feature. I killfile USENET HTML posters and procmail HTML mail to/dev/null. FWIW, the following LART may be of interest. I saw it a few days back.
Won't save Mozilla, though. Sigh. Just gimme a fsckin' web browser that doesn't crash. All I'm gonna do is strip off the goddamn chrome (shopping, tabs, etc) in the first 5 minutes.
> > [... ] outcluded
> Is it the opposite of included? [... ] nothing subliminable about it!
Touche' - and guilty as charged! (Yeah, I meant outclued, but "Ah've bin known to mangle a syll-ahble or two";-)
As for the Flamebait mod, serves me right for combining the partisan snipe at Gore's condescension with the somewhat-useful comment that this election was ostensibly Gore's to lose. I probably should have split it into two posts.
(FWIW, I think the moderation has been pretty fair in the political threads over the past week. And much of my reading has been at Threshold=1.)
>The way I know Bush is going to win is by how hysterical his opposition is getting.
Agreed. The Gore campaign is pulling out all the stops, but to no avail. (Although i support Bush, that's not intended as a partisan remark - the effect is exactly like the frenzy the Republicans whipped themselves into during the Clinton impeachment scandal - it's a classic primate response to losing a battle for dominance; scream louder and jump up and down higher)
For what it's worth - given that the Nader-bashing is probably gonna start in 24 hours - I agree with the author's contention that the Democrats had this election in the bag, and blew it.
If Gore is losing ground, it is not because Nader is draining natural
support. It is because Gore himself has driven voters away in droves
with his patronizing drone. It is because he has failed to motivate
middle-class women or to portray his education plan as more than bricks
and mortar. It is because his years of feints to the right have left
key Democratic constituencies supporting him out of fear rather than
enthusiasm: a sure recipe for disaster, whether or not Ralph Nader
petitioned his way onto a single ballot line.
OK (1, Insightful) stuff done. Time for (-1, Partisan):
If I have to hear Al Goooore speeeeak sooo sloooowly to meeee about howwww heeee will fiiiight for meeee, as though I were two years old and needed to have my misguided politics corrected by my Daddy-figure, I'm gonna puke.
I mean really - close your eyes and listen to the man. Any speech he's made in the past 2-3 months. I'm not talking about his policies, I'm talking about his tone - whether you agree with his policies or not, the Number One Way to Lose An Election is to talk down to the voters as though they were somehow mentally-deficient for disagreeing with you.
The impression I get is that he's some how bewildered whenever he mentions any of his opponent's policies. I know it's an act - anything a politician does in a stump speech is written into the act - but what dumb fuck in the Democratic campaign office decided that he could win an election by insulting the voter?
Lieberman's like Gore, only worse, because he really is preaching!
Bush? Yeah, you got me there, he does come off as glib and without substance. But Cheney - listen to Cheney speak sometimes. Fast, clipped, and he actually tries to put some content into his sentences.
My hunch is that a Gore presidency would be just that - Al and Joe telling us what we have to think and do, because anyone who disagrees with them is obviously too stupid to be taken seriously. I mean, how could anyone come to any conclusion other than that which Al and Gore have Decided Is True?
A Bush presidency? Bush would be a figurehead - someone with the leadership/personal skills (a'la Clinton - whether you love Bill or hate him, you gotta admit he knows how to work a crowd) to make the policies fly, while delegating the real policy work (i.e. actually writing policy!) to his Cabinet. I believe Bush is not only smart enough to appoint people with more clue than himself to Cabinet, but that unlike Gore, he's also smart enough to realize not only when he's outcluded, but to listen to his Cabinet when he realizes he's outclued.
And I'll take that style of government over Gore/Lieberman pronouncements from upon high any day.
> The fact that I have
remained childless is my choice made on firm grounds
BTW, you may wish to consider the word "childfree" instead of "childless".
I'm not one for mamby-pamby PC-speak, but this one actually has merit, in that it actually describes something useful.
"Childless" connotes loss - as though children were something without one's life is somehow empty. For many people (e.g. the infertile, gays who wish to adopt), that's accurate - a child is something they need in their lives, and it's something they lack.
"Childfree" has no such negative connotation - one is free of the burden of having the thing, and one has made this choice freely.
Making the distinction may not prevent breeders from asking "so when are you gonna have kids", but it shuts down the even-more-patronizing "Oh, why can't you have kids?" real fast:-)
More importantly, it means that you can meaningfully tell your HR department that no, offering benefits for the childless (but not childfree), such as fertility treatments covered under a medical plan) is not an adequate substitute.
The childfree.net web site is a decent intro to the concept (though it takes itself a little too seriously at times). Suffice it to say you're not alone.
If you're in the mood for a rant, The Misanthropic Bitch has some damn fine ones: Her take on The Weaker Sex is the best rant on "Family-Friendly" offices I've ever read, and is IMHO a must-read for people on either side of this issue.
"If working mothers continue to garner more support and even more rights in the
workplace, women who are serious about a career are going to get fucked over. "
> If you do not have children you do not participate in the
daycare, just like if you already have health insurance you will not participate in the company's health
insurance program.
Your analogy is flawed.
If I already have health insurance, I'm free to cancel it and take advantage of the employer-subsidized one. An investment opportunity is by definition open to all; I don't even have to cancel my existing brokerage account in order to take advantage of a 401(k).
Consequently, the benefits you mention available to all employees regardless of lifestyle choice. This does not apply to day care. Employers should not be in the business of subsidizing lifestyle choices.
Let me put it another way: Forgive me for putting words in your mouth, but I'd bet that if your employer said "we're gonna give all the childfrees, singles, and gay employees a $5000/year bonus because they don't jack up our group health premiums with pregnancy expenses and they never take [m|p]aternity leave", you'd be screaming blue murder that it was blatant discrimination based on a lifestyle choice.
And you'd be absolutely right to do so. Any company that pulled a stunt like that would be guilty of discrimination, and would deserve more than protest, it would deserve lawsuits.
So why do you consider it OK to discriminate against people who choose not to have kids?
Understand that I'm not arguing against provision of day care per se. I'm arguing against a company that provides day care to its breeding employees, but nothing to its non-breeding employees.
Got a problem with me being "childfree"? OK, what about a couple who desperately wants kids, but is infertile? Same thing applies.
> daycare seems to work just fine for lots of kids, so why would it be different for techies?
Hey, throw a techie in front of a 21" monitor and give him a T1. If that ain't gonna get him gurgling with glee and keep him quiet and happy for the rest of the day, as well as give him an environment to learn something new, I don't know what will;-)
Or were we talking about daycare for kids of techies, as opposed to techies themselves? (I always figured a job was basically daycare for geeks anyways, 'cept we get paid to attend!)
As for me, I couldn't care less for day care - no kids, ain't gonna have 'em - so I have no use for it.
That said, I've got nothing against companies that provide it, so long as they provide something of similar value to those of us who won't be taking care of it. Give benefits to your breeders, but don't overlook your nonbreeders.
Thankfully, I work for a perceptive and conscientious employer, whose HR department goes to extraordinary lengths to keep things fair.
For instance, many breeders (quite justifiably) need "a day off every now and then to take Sprogulina to the doctor/dentist". The medical professions don't work to your company's schedule, after all.
But rather than say "If you have kids, you get one day off every month to take care of them", our HR department said "all employees get a day off every month for whatever they want". Let's see here:
If you're a breeder, you can take Sprogulina to the doc, or take a day off to take care of her when she's running a fever of 103.
If you have no kids, but your parents are running a fever of 103, you've got a day for elder care.
If you've got pets, you can take Fluffy to the vet. Ask any pet owner - Fluffy's worth a day off too.
Breeder or not, pets or not, if you don't need the day for anything, you can go rock-climbing, have a long weekend, stand in line at the DMV to get your license renewed, or whatever the hell you want.
The secret to successfully apportioning a limited benefits-budget among your staff is never to pit one class of employees against another.
My HR department understands this, and I'm thankful for their efforts every day I come to work. Even our recreational events typically have a good balance between "activities for the kiddies and their parents" versus "a space for the adults to be away with the kids". (And before you think a childfree person is running HR, think again - our HR manager has two young'uns herself.)
I have no doubt that if my employer offers daycare - a perk to breeders worth $300-500 per month - it would also offer a perk of similar value (or a cash bonus for non-participants in the daycare program) to the rest of its staff.
But if my employer were to offer its breeding employees $5000/year in after-tax benefits (about $8000/year pre-tax), and non-breeders didn't get a similar shake, I'd resign in protest. Nor will I work for a company that doesn't offer its childfrees the same deal it offers its breeders.
Retention is a two-edged sword, and fairness in benefits isn't just right from an ethical perspective, it makes good business sense too.
Slashdot Mirror
Amen. Regardless of the shady goings-on I'm seeing in Palm Beach - the second-guessing of the voters by Gore's lawyers - I see the Electoral College as serving a very useful purpose.
The electors of Florida are not bound by any law, and can cast their votes any way they please.
- If they decide to abide by the results of the recount, the winner of the recount wins the Presidency.
- If they decide to abide by the decision of a judge who awards 3400 valid Buchanan votes to Gore , Gore wins the Presidency.
- If they decide to say "a pox on both your houses, we don't know who won, and we", we get a President selected by the House (Bush) and a Veep selected by the Senate (Lieberman). Given the split in popular vote, House, and Senate totals, a dual-party executive might be just what the Framers had in mind
;-)
While I'm scared by the attempt to second-guess the voters of Palm Beach, I have faith that however Florida's electors carry out their duties, whatever happens will still be within the bounds of the Constitution.Which is a long way to say "whoever wins the Electoral College" is the guy who deserves the Presidency.
If Al Gore wins the recount, Florida's 25 electors should go to Gore, and Gore should become President.
If George Bush wins the recount, Florida's 25 electors should go to Bush, and Bush should become President.
What I'm seeing today - a bunch of Gore's lawyers looking to replace a bunch of unspoiled ballots validly marked for Buchanan because they believe those votes "should have been Gore's" - is terrifyingly close to a coup d'etat.
The Constitution does not give any party a "do over" because they don't like the results of an election.
I urge the electors of Florida to consider casting their votes according to the results of the mandatory recount, and to ignore the implications of any legal decision to throw out validly-marked ballots for any candidate.
(Note that spoiled ballots, such as those with two holes punched in them - are another matter entirely. I agree with the judge's decision to throw them out.)
Not if we want to keep the boxen locked ;-)
Shhhhhh! The guys at the FEC aren't supposed to notice that!
Nothin' in the Constitution for it, but based on what I saw in the vice-presidential debate, I wouldn't complain. Nor, would I expect, would most voters. But the Constitution doesn't provide for it, so 'nuff said.
Re: Florida remaining in Bush hands due to .mil votes.
Nobody knows. Military folks are likely to go Bush (unless the exit polls say otherwise). But rumors of 3500 ballots found in a church in a predominantly-black precinct, could swing it back to Gore. (Assume 3500 votes split 70/30 Gore/Bush, as seems to be the norm in poor counties - that's back to within a hair of the ~1200-vote margin of "victory").
Finally, a "faithless elector" or two could throw us into a constitutional crisis, which might be resolved with the House picking Bush for prez, and the Senate picking Lieberman for VP. (This would be truly unprecedented, but if the two campaigns didn't hate each other so much, it would be an act of political brilliance on the part of both sides if they were to negotiate such a deal amongst each other. Won't happen, though. OTOH, how many other "this can never happen" things did we see last night? One thing's for sure, it'd force some reform of the laws governing electors, and that'd be a Good Thing no matter who won.)
Bottom line - we have no idea who's gonna be Prez, and we probably won't know until Thursday (!), according to the Florida Department of State webiste (currently slashdotted, but if you reload a few times, you can get in).
But in terms of who really won (if you factor in the "ambiguous ballot theory" espoused by the Dems, and the very real possibility of ballot-stuffing by overzealous partisans on either side), we will probably never know.
And with the FL recount underway, and the margin of victory within the margin of error, all I can say in response to my original "Good luck" post is is that I like my crow served piping-hot and stuffed with breadcrumbs. With a little imagination, it tastes just like turkey!
At the moment - 0423 EST - we may not know for DAYS. Florida will be recounted with Bush leading by 1200 votes, and will determine the Presidency.
At a minimum, we won't have the recount in Florida done until Wednesday afternoon.
The allegations I've seen on the press are just weird - people claiming they voted for Buchanan "by accident", missing ballot boxes, and Lord only knows what else.
I really can't believe what I've seen tonight. But there it is. I'm stunned. And I'm calling it a night on the reasonable grounds that nobody's gonna know who will win the Presidency until sometime later today.
Unfuckingbelievable.
Florida by county
Broward County. 600,000 votes, 94% reported. That leaves 36,000 votes uncounted in Broward.
With Broward going 70% Gore and 30% Bush, that's a spread of 15000 votes.
That's within the margin of error for Florida as of 0351 EST.
I don't fuckin' believe it, this thing ain't over yet, recount in Florida or not.
UN - FUCKING - BELIEVABLE.
1200 votes out of 1.2 million.
Granted, the election's over with Bush taking FL. So this is all hypothetical. But given the closeness of the races, consider...
1200 votes. Six hundred people changing their minds in a two-party race, or one non-voter in a thousand getting off his or her ass and voting, could have changed WI's 11 electoral votes one way or the other.
In a parallel universe not too different from our own, the Presidency was won by WI's "scanning-tunnelling-electron-microscope-sharp" 600-voter margin, rather than FL's "merely razor-sharp" 50,000-voter margin.
Back to our universe, let that be a lesson to anyone who said "one vote doesn't count". (And for that matter, the guy who said "voter fraud shouldn't be a felony")
Naah, scary is the fact that some states' electors are allowed to "vote their conscience" - that is, while many electors are required by law to cast their votes for President depending on the popular vote in their state, other states permit their electors to vote against the will of their people.
It's the memory leak in the code of the US Constitution that everybody's ignored becase "oh, it'll never be a factor".
I don't for a moment believe the bug will manifest itself, particularly with Bush winning both the Electoral vote and the popular vote. But had the popular vote gone sharply in the other direction, the one-vote margin in the Electoral College just might have been an issue.
Read Jeff Greenfield's The People's Choice, a brilliant bit of political satire revolving about what might happen if members of the Electoral College decided they had legitimate reasons to "do what the people meant, not what they said".
Prediction: If third parties continue to grow in popularity with the electorate, expect to see Electoral College reform on the legislative agenda in the 2004 and 2008 elections... and expect to see it benefiting the third parties, entrenched interests notwithstanding.
And the Greens' total is much larger than it was in 1996.
Green voters could have voted held their nose and ended up with Gore as President. But it appears that libertarians did hold their nose and got the candidate that prefers smaller government, lower taxes, and partial privatization of Social Security.
In comparison to Greens, I'd say Browne voters and sympathizers have nothing to complain about.
2004 won't be such a close race. (I mean, let's get real, how could it be any closer? ;-)
And then, third parties on the right and the left will probably improve their numbers. Make no mistake, enough voters are interested in alternatives to the Demipublicans that both parties will have to take notice.
Mad props to all candidates and voters for making this the most entertaining, stimulating, and nerve-wracking election race not just in my life, but arguably, in the past century.
But with Nevada firmly in the Bush camp, and cnn.com reporting a Florida margin of 50K with 98%, it's over. (Shit, it ended "officially" while I hit "Preview" on this post and "Reload" on CNN, how's that for down-to-the-wire predictions? ;-)
So now - the hard work:
Dubya - you preside over what is arguably the most divided America in a generation. 50/50 splits to within epsilon in the popular vote, the electoral vote, the Senate, and the House. Moreover, those "50/50 splits" mask serious racial, income, and geographical gaps among the various demographic and voting blocs. It appears that the campaign rhetoric that most matters tomorrow isn't gonna be about tax cuts, Social Security, Medicare, foreign policy. It's gonna be that fluffy stuff about "being a uniter, not a divider", and it's about to be put to the ultimate test.
That said - good luck, sir, and congratulations.
It's a start - a small start, but an important one - towards reforming the INS bureaucracy that's put countless lives on hold for years.
And as for the H-1B bill being about "cheap labor", IMHO that's FUD. If you can't find the skills locally, you go abroad. Although there are companies that abuse the H-1B programme, the vast majority of companies that take advantage of it give their employees a fair shake -- and the reality is that if you're an employee who wants to join the US and get your Green Card, an H-1B is a damn good way to get your foot in the door.
The only thing I question is this: Why is this on /. today? The law (originally bill S.2045) passed both houses weeks ago. Its provisions are hardly news.
>
> is that really as serious as child pornography? Child abuse? Assault with a weapon?
Is illegally tampering with the system that creates all your laws as bad as breaking one of them?
You betcha.
The argument that voter fraud isn't that bad a thing is predicated on the assumption that "hey, one vote doesn't matter, so if you vote twice, you haven't really changed anything".
The problem is, if you can vote twice, you can vote three times. Or four. Or five... It's not "just one vote". Indeed, the whole point of voting fraud is to do away with "just one vote" and have undue influence.
In an election where the winner will likely be decided by a few thousand votes out of over 100 million, the only difference between "a few bad apples stuffing ballots" and a coup d'etat is that a coup occurs after the election, not during.
So yes, voting fraud is a felony, and IMHO for damn good reason.
And when MAPS refuses to RBL spam sources like uu.net (likely via msn.com dialups without port 25 filtering, but uu.net refuses to identify their rogue resellers), and dialsprint.net (Dialsprint took ~6 months before it finally cleaned up its act and blocked port 25), and att.net (who denied the existence of pink contracts right up until the news broke)?
RBL is a good start.
But the /. article is about how you deal with institutions that appear to be "too big" to RBL.
I say - block 'em yourself. If uu.net gets RBL'd (which will never happen), then they only have to twist one arm to get themselves unblocked. But if 1000 sysadmins independently drop uu.net traffic on the floor, they're well and truly fscked.
There are still AGIS netblocks from 1997 that remain on the DENY list. May uu.net suffer the same fate.
Amen. If you support Bush or Gore, this is a close race, and your candidate needs your support. If you support Nader, he's within epsilon of his 5%, and he needs your support. If you support Browne, hey, you know why you're voting.
The bottom line - whatever your political affiliation - get out there and support your candidate.
And I don't just mean for President. There are a lot of other close races, and control of the Senate and House is probably up for grabs today too.
Given that the margin of victory is likely to be so slim, your vote has more influence today than at any time in the past 40 years.
If you haven't voted yet, and are eligible to vote, stop reading about voting and do it.
With all its faults, the best cure for the ills of democracy is more democracy.
(No partisan wisecracks - this isn't a day for me to tell you who I want to run the country - this is the day you tell me who you want to run the country.)
OOooooh, that's sick. (awesome!)
As for what it does with defective clients, hey, who cares? After all... who's got time to make sure everything works on everyone's newsreaders... (and if they do have trouble reading news with it, hey, maybe they should just upgrade to tin, xnews, slrn, or trn! ;-)
This is a prime example of "scratching an itch" as the thing that typifies everything that's good and bad about open source design.
Consider that it's "good" in that developers get to work on interesting problems (extensible UI/skinnability), and that it's an elegant solution (XML as opposed to some proprietary binary file), but IMHO the team has forgotten that this feature - cool as it is - doesn't meet any customer's needs.
News flash: Last time I checked, most users of web browsers don't want to spend 5 hours futzing around with a skin to make Mozilla/Netscape window look totally rad, or to test new experiments in usability design. Users of web browsers typically use them to... browse the web.
If you can keep the user's goals in mind, even if it's not your idea of what constitutes coolness and elegance and fun-to-codeness, you may not have as much fun writing it, but odds are pretty good you'll come up with something far more useful in the end.
I'll know Mozilla's worth looking into when the release notes stop bragging about marketing tabs that take up real estate, inbuilt support for AOL's instant messaging, and cutesy stuff like skins... and when I start seeing more stuff about stability and standards-compliance.
Agreed. HTML in mail and news is a bug, not a feature. I killfile USENET HTML posters and procmail HTML mail to /dev/null. FWIW, the following LART may be of interest. I saw it a few days back.
Won't save Mozilla, though. Sigh. Just gimme a fsckin' web browser that doesn't crash. All I'm gonna do is strip off the goddamn chrome (shopping, tabs, etc) in the first 5 minutes.
> Is it the opposite of included? [
Touche' - and guilty as charged! (Yeah, I meant outclued, but "Ah've bin known to mangle a syll-ahble or two" ;-)
As for the Flamebait mod, serves me right for combining the partisan snipe at Gore's condescension with the somewhat-useful comment that this election was ostensibly Gore's to lose. I probably should have split it into two posts.
(FWIW, I think the moderation has been pretty fair in the political threads over the past week. And much of my reading has been at Threshold=1.)
Agreed. The Gore campaign is pulling out all the stops, but to no avail. (Although i support Bush, that's not intended as a partisan remark - the effect is exactly like the frenzy the Republicans whipped themselves into during the Clinton impeachment scandal - it's a classic primate response to losing a battle for dominance; scream louder and jump up and down higher)
For what it's worth - given that the Nader-bashing is probably gonna start in 24 hours - I agree with the author's contention that the Democrats had this election in the bag, and blew it.
From a Salon article: Don't Blame Ralph
OK (1, Insightful) stuff done. Time for (-1, Partisan):
If I have to hear Al Goooore speeeeak sooo sloooowly to meeee about howwww heeee will fiiiight for meeee, as though I were two years old and needed to have my misguided politics corrected by my Daddy-figure, I'm gonna puke.
I mean really - close your eyes and listen to the man. Any speech he's made in the past 2-3 months. I'm not talking about his policies, I'm talking about his tone - whether you agree with his policies or not, the Number One Way to Lose An Election is to talk down to the voters as though they were somehow mentally-deficient for disagreeing with you.
The impression I get is that he's some how bewildered whenever he mentions any of his opponent's policies. I know it's an act - anything a politician does in a stump speech is written into the act - but what dumb fuck in the Democratic campaign office decided that he could win an election by insulting the voter? Lieberman's like Gore, only worse, because he really is preaching!
Bush? Yeah, you got me there, he does come off as glib and without substance. But Cheney - listen to Cheney speak sometimes. Fast, clipped, and he actually tries to put some content into his sentences.
My hunch is that a Gore presidency would be just that - Al and Joe telling us what we have to think and do, because anyone who disagrees with them is obviously too stupid to be taken seriously. I mean, how could anyone come to any conclusion other than that which Al and Gore have Decided Is True?
A Bush presidency? Bush would be a figurehead - someone with the leadership/personal skills (a'la Clinton - whether you love Bill or hate him, you gotta admit he knows how to work a crowd) to make the policies fly, while delegating the real policy work (i.e. actually writing policy!) to his Cabinet. I believe Bush is not only smart enough to appoint people with more clue than himself to Cabinet, but that unlike Gore, he's also smart enough to realize not only when he's outcluded, but to listen to his Cabinet when he realizes he's outclued.
And I'll take that style of government over Gore/Lieberman pronouncements from upon high any day.
BTW, you may wish to consider the word "childfree" instead of "childless".
I'm not one for mamby-pamby PC-speak, but this one actually has merit, in that it actually describes something useful.
"Childless" connotes loss - as though children were something without one's life is somehow empty. For many people (e.g. the infertile, gays who wish to adopt), that's accurate - a child is something they need in their lives, and it's something they lack.
"Childfree" has no such negative connotation - one is free of the burden of having the thing, and one has made this choice freely.
Making the distinction may not prevent breeders from asking "so when are you gonna have kids", but it shuts down the even-more-patronizing "Oh, why can't you have kids?" real fast :-)
More importantly, it means that you can meaningfully tell your HR department that no, offering benefits for the childless (but not childfree), such as fertility treatments covered under a medical plan) is not an adequate substitute.
The childfree.net web site is a decent intro to the concept (though it takes itself a little too seriously at times). Suffice it to say you're not alone.
If you're in the mood for a rant, The Misanthropic Bitch has some damn fine ones: Her take on The Weaker Sex is the best rant on "Family-Friendly" offices I've ever read, and is IMHO a must-read for people on either side of this issue.
Your analogy is flawed.
If I already have health insurance, I'm free to cancel it and take advantage of the employer-subsidized one. An investment opportunity is by definition open to all; I don't even have to cancel my existing brokerage account in order to take advantage of a 401(k).
Consequently, the benefits you mention available to all employees regardless of lifestyle choice. This does not apply to day care. Employers should not be in the business of subsidizing lifestyle choices.
Let me put it another way: Forgive me for putting words in your mouth, but I'd bet that if your employer said "we're gonna give all the childfrees, singles, and gay employees a $5000/year bonus because they don't jack up our group health premiums with pregnancy expenses and they never take [m|p]aternity leave", you'd be screaming blue murder that it was blatant discrimination based on a lifestyle choice.
And you'd be absolutely right to do so. Any company that pulled a stunt like that would be guilty of discrimination, and would deserve more than protest, it would deserve lawsuits.
So why do you consider it OK to discriminate against people who choose not to have kids?
Understand that I'm not arguing against provision of day care per se. I'm arguing against a company that provides day care to its breeding employees, but nothing to its non-breeding employees.
Got a problem with me being "childfree"? OK, what about a couple who desperately wants kids, but is infertile? Same thing applies.
Hey, throw a techie in front of a 21" monitor and give him a T1. If that ain't gonna get him gurgling with glee and keep him quiet and happy for the rest of the day, as well as give him an environment to learn something new, I don't know what will ;-)
Or were we talking about daycare for kids of techies, as opposed to techies themselves? (I always figured a job was basically daycare for geeks anyways, 'cept we get paid to attend!)
That said, I've got nothing against companies that provide it, so long as they provide something of similar value to those of us who won't be taking care of it. Give benefits to your breeders, but don't overlook your nonbreeders.
Thankfully, I work for a perceptive and conscientious employer, whose HR department goes to extraordinary lengths to keep things fair.
For instance, many breeders (quite justifiably) need "a day off every now and then to take Sprogulina to the doctor/dentist". The medical professions don't work to your company's schedule, after all.
But rather than say "If you have kids, you get one day off every month to take care of them", our HR department said "all employees get a day off every month for whatever they want". Let's see here:
The secret to successfully apportioning a limited benefits-budget among your staff is never to pit one class of employees against another.
My HR department understands this, and I'm thankful for their efforts every day I come to work. Even our recreational events typically have a good balance between "activities for the kiddies and their parents" versus "a space for the adults to be away with the kids". (And before you think a childfree person is running HR, think again - our HR manager has two young'uns herself.)
I have no doubt that if my employer offers daycare - a perk to breeders worth $300-500 per month - it would also offer a perk of similar value (or a cash bonus for non-participants in the daycare program) to the rest of its staff.
But if my employer were to offer its breeding employees $5000/year in after-tax benefits (about $8000/year pre-tax), and non-breeders didn't get a similar shake, I'd resign in protest. Nor will I work for a company that doesn't offer its childfrees the same deal it offers its breeders.
Retention is a two-edged sword, and fairness in benefits isn't just right from an ethical perspective, it makes good business sense too.