This is the website of Abulsme Noibatno Itramne (also known as Sam Minter).
Posts here are rare these days. For current stuff, follow me on Mastodon
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Catching up on email here at work while having C-Span on in the background. Wasn’t going to make any more comments for the moment, but…
They showed what looked like an ANSWER related protester group chanting over and over again:
Hey Bush, we know you… your daddy was a killer too!
Hey Bush, we know you… your daddy was a killer too!
Hey Bush, we know you… your daddy was a killer too!
Hey Bush, we know you… your daddy was a killer too!
Hey Bush, we know you… your daddy was a killer too!
OK, just a message to these type of guys. It is folks like you that caused the re-election of W. (Or at least helped it.)
You have every right to protest. You have every right to protest in rude and distasteful ways. I think it is wrong that they have been doing this “designated free speech zones” thing to restrict protesters to certain areas. But what you are doing with such hateful chants is counter-productive, and only makes YOU look bad, not W or the Republicans.
There are many ways to show your displeasure with the choices W made, your dissapointment with the election results, and probably even your lack of respect for the man. But there are ways that are civil and constructive, and there are ways that do nothing but make you look like radical baffoons. If you actually have any desire to “win hearts and minds” and get more people to move closer to your viewpoints, rather than just getting yourselves on TV and making fools of yourselves, you might try some other tactics.
Ad hominim attacks, not just on the man, but on his father (who I at least think was a much better president) just seems desperate and petty and will turn away more people than they convince. As it is you are chanting only to those who already agree with you. What signs or chants should you have used instead? I don’t know, I’m not a chant writer. But surely you could have come up with something that makes you look better than that.
Maybe the folks at the “Counter-Inaugural” did better and had some rational speeches and expressed their discontent in productive and convincing ways. I don’t know, I didn’t watch it. Perhaps I will watch some of it off C-Span’s website later. I hope it was. Cause the folks that C-Span showed just then during the motorcade were just sad. Of course, the folks who usually make TV are usually the most outrageous ones. The protesters who are indeed reasonable rarely get covered. Which is of course part of the reason people are outrageous. It does get them on TV. But it does not help their cause.
 The picture is the metro ticket from Inauguration Day 1993. I have the metro tickets from inauguration days 1997 and 2001 as well, but they are in a box somewhere and I apperantly never scanned them. I hope I can find them as I unpack.
Anyway, this is the first Inauguration I have missed since I have been able to vote. And well, since I missed one I doubt I will try again in 4 years, or 8, or whatnot. That tradition is done. I am kind of sad about it. It was a fun thing to do for a news junkie. Doesn’t matter who won or lost or anything like that, it was just good to be a witness, in person, to those historical moments.
Having said that, I of course had a better and much more comfortable view and could hear better sitting in my family room watching it projected on the wall than I ever would have had at the event itself. I watched on C-Span so as to get just the events themselves, not people endlessly talking and commenting on them. It was fun to watch the people come out and see how many I could recognize and to watch the interactions between them.
Thoughts:
Renquist managed, but definately did not look good. Did anyone else hear the mechanical rasping as he spoke? Kudos to him to coming out and doing it anyway. I know he is trying to finish out at least this Supreme Court term, but looks like W is definatly going to get to appoint a Chief Justice.
Bush’s speech did its thing I guess, but was not really memorable in any way. It has only been about an hour, and I already forgot everything he said.
Anyway, I can’t think of many things I think W did right in his first term, but I wish him luck on the second. Regardless of if he was my choice or if I agree with him, lots of things are in his hands for the next four years. May he make better choices than he did last time.
Oh well. I have to get back to work now. I had more fun medical related tests to follow up from those kidney stones this morning, and I extended that by a little to watch the inauguration, but I’ve been gone long enough.
I figured for completeness and all, I should post about the final certification of the electoral college results.
Congress Certifies Bush’s Win After Protest
(Joanne Kenen, Reuters via Yahoo! News)
The rare objection to vote certification, the first filed in decades, forced the House and Senate to halt their joint session, usually a routine and ceremonial affair. Each chamber then debated the objection, and rejected it, the Senate by a 74-1 vote, the House 267-31. The state-by-state certification was completed a few hours later.
Bush got 286 electoral votes, Massachusetts Democrat John Kerry 251 and North Carolina Democrat John Edwards, Kerry’s running mate, got one electoral vote for president.
(via DrudgeReport)
I was happy to see the challenge, not because I saw any values in the merits, Bush clearly won Ohio, but just because it shows some of the arcane details of the process, and that is always fun. Too bad it wasn’t able to be a bit more disruptive.
If we had the exact same results in the electoral college, but the Democrats actually were in the majority in both houses of congress, would they have the guts to use a challenge like this to change the results of the election? I think they would not. Even if the leadership was in favor, I think there would be enough defections to prevent it. But imagine the hullaballoo that would cause if it did happen! It may not ever happen, but the fact that it is completely possible by the procedures in place is very interesting and fun.
If any party that had the majority in both houses was unified enough and didn’t give a damn about precident and the popular will, they could always refuse to ratify the results whenever the other party won the presidency, thus throwing the election into the House of Representatives where they could pick their own guy. (Or under certain situations, someone else entirely.) Fun stuff. Fun stuff.
I must also say though that I am dissapointed that John L. Kerry did not get 31 electoral votes. He certainly deserved them. John F Kerry robbed him!
Good for John Edwards with his 3rd place showing though! Perhaps he will try for 2nd place next time around!
Looks like there was a mistake in New York. Not only did one elector vote for the wrong guy, they ALL did. Here is a link to the Federal archives with New York’s official Certificate of Vote. (Found via LGF.) The New York electors accidentally voted for John L. Kerry instead of John F. Kerry.
Don’t know who John L. Kerry is, but if John F. Kerry had actually been in the lead at this point (as opposed to 2nd like he really is, so it doesn’t really matter), he would have just lost the election because of this, with the results thrown into the congress because after this neither candidate would have had a majority of the electoral votes! (Although, the votes have to be accepted by the new congress in early January, and they would probably fix it by then…. drat!) So this leaves the full electoral count for the presidential election like this at the moment:
George W Bush: 286
John F Kerry: 221
John L Kerry: 31
John Edwards: 1
Like I said though, it will probably get fixed before Congress officially certifies the results in a few weeks. Drat!!
I love the electoral college!!
Minnesota elector breaks ranks, votes for Edwards
(Associated Press on Star Tribune)
One of Minnesota’s 10 presidential electors broke from the pack and cast a vote Monday for John Edwards, the Democratic vice presidential running mate for John Kerry.
The other nine Minnesota members of the Electoral College voted for Kerry, who won the state’s popular vote in November.
After the state’s Electoral College ceremony concluded, no one stepped foward as the Edwards voter. Most electors chalked the vote up as a mistake rather than a purposeful political statement.
“I’m sure somebody made a mistake,” said elector Michael Meuers of Bemidji. “I’m certainly glad that the Electoral College is not separated by one vote.”
Republican George W. Bush is due to receive 286 electoral votes; Kerry was slated to get 252, but the Minnesota vote will reduce that total. It takes 270 votes to win the presidency.
(via Blogs for Bush)
The article above has an annoying registration that didn’t kick in the first time I looked at it for whatever reason, so here is the same article on another site that is registration free:
Minnesota elector gives Edwards a vote
(Associated Press on Minnesota Public Radio)
The best part is they didn’t even do it on purpose as a protest like has happened other years. They apperantly did it BY MISTAKE. Because they screwed up filling out the ballot! But it doesn’t matter, guess what, IT COUNTS! Ha Ha Ha!
I love this stuff.
Wouldn’t it have been awesome if the election HAD hung on one electoral vote with an elector for the person who was ahead accidentally doing this? Surprise! The other guy wins!
I guess that West Virginia Bush elector didn’t follow through on not voting for Bush. At least if he did, I haven’t heard about it yet. A little dissapointing. Oh well!
I notice it has been a long while since I last posted anything on news or politics or anything like that. The last time was November 3rd, right after the election. It has been a month. Wow. The main reason I guess was that I was just newsed out. The election was exciting. It was over. It has for the most part been a slow news season since then (with a few exceptions). And I had other things to think about and talk about on the personal front. All that is still true.
But while I don’t have time right now to comment much on them, I found a couple of interesting articles I thought I’d at least post links to. They center on how Democrats are responding to the current “War on Terror” as compared to previous Democratic responses to Germany and France in World War II and the Soviet Union in the Cold War.
An Argument for a New Liberalism: A Fighting Faith
(Peter Beinart, The New Republic)
and a response to it (which I actually saw first):
Liberals and Terrorism
(Kevin Drum, Washington Monthly)
Both are good reads and bring up good points. And you can see some responses from folks that disagree with both of them in the comments after the second article. As usual for comments threads, some are just flames, but a few are well thought out as well and have good counter arguments to the first two.
It is an interesting and thought provoking debate and definately worth the read (including the comments).
I know I’d basically decided to switch off commentary on elections and politics and such for now cause I kind of overdosed in the weeks leading up to the election, but this is about MAPS. And I love MAPS!
I’d seen most of these in other places in the last week, but this page nicely puts them all in one place:
Election result maps
(via Andrew Sullivan)
This starts with the tradtional red/blue state by state map and shows the county by county one too. But then also shows the cartograms for each (with the states distorted so their sizes represent population instead of land area). And then it ends up with the “purple maps” that show various color shades between red and blue to show the how the percentage vote really broke down rather than just straight red or blue depending on the winner.
The red and blue ones make one wonder if another civil war is something we should worry about since the differences seem so stark and to align so neatly with geographic divisions. But looking at the purple map you see that most places are indeed a healthy mix ideologically, with some places leaning a bit more one direction or another, but basically most places being basically “purple”.
Well, OK, if you look at the last map he gives, where anything over 70% in one direction is solid red or blue, it looks bleaker and more divided again, but lets concentrate on the purple map in the middle!
Also, I note he has left out both Alaska and Hawaii, as many people often do. Perhaps we should just shove both of them back out of the nest and let them go their own ways. :-)
But hey, funky cartograms!
OK. I voted for Kerry. I think Kerry would have been a better choice. I think Bush has made wrong decision after wrong decision and has generally made things worse. I think if things play out as expected and he gets his 270 electoral votes, those trends will continue for the next few years.
However… it is not the end of the world. He will do his thing for 4 years, and then there will be someone else. He will do upsetting things. He will do stupid things. But it isn’t going to bring the end of civilization as we know it. The fact that he won is not a huge miscarriage of justice. The people who voted for him are NOT stupid or evil. They just have different opinions of the right way to approach the issues of the day.
The whining is already starting. Hey, people, if Bush wins, he wins. Get over it. He will have won fair and square. The process will have done its job and a president will have been selected, and he will do his job for the next few years.
I think Kerry would have been better than Bush. But the truth is that in the end Presidents come and go. They do have a huge effect on the direction of the country, but there are a lot of other things that effect what happens as well, and there are instituional constraints on just how far a president can take things. Sure, damage can be done, but in the grand scheme of things, not THAT much.
Anyway, if Bush wins and you were a Kerry person… just move on and start worring about next time. And please, try to remember… he’s not insane, he’s not evil, he just disagrees with you (and me) and has a different approach to things. Thinking that way is completely counter productive… and annoying.
Both sides just need to start learning again how to respect and understand the other side instead of villifing them. The deep divides in the country are unhealthy. And the “hate” that is seen on both sides toward the other is a big part of the problem. Come on, just be rational and calm and move on.
One network just called Ohio for Bush. This should be over now.
Don’t worry Kerry folks, it will suck a little bit, but it won’t be THAT bad. :-)
Well, looks like another thing that I think is important probably won’t happen this time around, which is divided government… A democrat in the white house and a republican congress is OK. A republican in the white house and a democratic congress is OK. But have the same party in charge of both branches… no matter which party it is, and you have bad news. Basically because the government can actually DO something. When government is divided, government can be deadlocked, and it raises the bar for action from things that have a slight majority of support, to things that have a LARGE majority of support… much better. The less government can actually get done the better.
But, while it isn’t all over yet, looks like we’ll be all red again…
The networks are being SO timid. I understand why given how they screwed up in 2000… but back in 2000 they would have already called Florida for Bush and would be thinking about calling Ohio… and the election… for Bush. The margins are thin, but are there. It is possible they will change, but getting increasingly unlikely by the hour. We shall see.
But come on news networks. I know you want to be conservative, but this is a little too wussy. Go out on a limb a little!
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