It’s almost as if an epidemic has hit America. In 2000 and now in this year’s Presidential elections, neither candidate can seem to grasp an overwhelming majority of the votes. Kerry supporters will attribute this to the awful job that the President has been doing, but if that were really the case, wouldn’t people be tripping over themselves to vote Bush out of the White House? Bush supporters will argue that people shouldn’t be misled by Kerry’s flip-flopping…but just about 50% of the country seem ready to take him at face value. Who to believe?

The problem lies in the fact that the two parties are so comfortable in their stranglehold on America that they don’t have to worry about much. Sure, both of them will cry and wring their hands about how the country is going to crumble into dust should their candidate lose, but the reality is that as soon as the results are announced the clock resets and the next election’s planning begins. It’s only 4 years, right? The Republicans and the Democrats throw candidates that are barely serviceable in front of the public and hope for the best. But electing the President shouldn’t be a gamble, or a crapshoot - it should be a way for each person to voice what he or she believes in and be proud to cast that vote every 4 years. Unfortunately, even with record voter turnouts it looks like this will be a repeat of 2000 - neither candidate can muster up more than 50% of the vote. Once again, the courts will likely have to settle the issue. The irony is that the losing party will be the one to cry wolf in court, further weakening the democratic process they both claim to so fervently believe in. How can this country hope to preach democracy in places like Iraq and Afghanistan when we can barely muddle our way through the process ourselves?

A proposed state amendment in Colorado is looking to change the way the electoral votes are given to Presidential candidates (Christian Science Monitor, 18 Oct 2004). Instead of one person winning them all, the bill seeks to award a percentage of the votes based on the popular vote. Opponents of the bill says that this will only make national elections dangerously unreliable because the already narrow margins will become closer if one candidate were only to receive a portion of the electoral votes. It will make Colorado a “throwaway state” in terms of the voting picture. They also say that it opens the way for too many independent candidates to take the stage, much like Ross Perot did in 1992. The biggest opponents? Members of the Democrat and Republican parties, who see this as an erosion of their chokehold on American politics. A political newspaper columnist, Susan Barnes-Gelt was quoted as saying, “You want Ross Perot negotiating with whoever the President of the US is going to be with a place at the table?”. I’m sorry…I thought the whole point of free elections was that anyone could run and potentially win. If that offends your partisan sensibilities, there are plenty of countries where you can bypass the whole election thing and smile nervously at your dear leader. The amendment’s campaign director, a Ms. Brown puts it best: “They [the Republican and Democrat parties] are both looking to win nine electorals. And the people are looking to have their vote counted.”

Now I realize that this gets into the issue of the electoral college and all of the things that it entails, but when did democracy become voting for the lesser of two evils, and not voting about what you believe in? And when I say that I mean what you truly believe in, and not a compromise. I’ll end with this:

Kang: The politics of failure have failed. We need to make them work
again. Tomorrow, when you are sealed in the voting cubicle, vote
for me, Senator Ka… Bob Dole.

Kodos: I am looking forward to an orderly election tomorrow, which will
eliminate the need for a violent blood bath.
From the sky comes a scream, as Homer is crashing right into the
Capitol. A few footsteps later, he comes running down the stairs.

Homer: America, take a good look at your beloved candidates. They’re
nothing but hideous space reptiles. [unmasks them]
[audience gasps in terror]
Kodos: It’s true, we are aliens. But what are you going to do about
it? It’s a two-party system; you have to vote for one of us.
[murmurs]
Man1: He’s right, this is a two-party system.
Man2: Well, I believe I’ll vote for a third-party candidate.
Kang: Go ahead, throw your vote away.
[Kang and Kodos laugh out loud]
[Ross Perot smashes his "Perot 96" hat]

If the Simpsons make fun of it, you know it’s true. Don’t blame me, I voted for Kodos! I just hope that a candidate will come along who is strong enough to stick to his own ideals and can convince America that there is an alternative.

It seems that in our clamor to argue over missing explosives, the international legality of the war in Iraq and the number of civilian casualties, we forget just what Iraq was before the war. Varifrank explains that only looking at those sections of the war is like considering WWII without acknowledging the holocaust. To emphasize the point, photos of the mass graves and identification efforts are shown.

The US Media, the Democrat Party, The Kerry campaign, The EU and the UN will stop at nothing to tell you tales about how the evil Bush administration has screwed up Iraq, leaving you with a context of lies that Iraq was a quiet little third world paradise until we got there and messed it up for everyone.

They will never tell you the other part of the story, the story of the Iraqi holocaust. It’s like telling the story of World War II and just “forgetting” to tell the story of the Jewish holocaust because you don’t want to offend anyone’s sensibilities. You can’t understand one without the context of the other. To tell one story without the other is not only irresponsible, it is at its core racist. Those people who came back from the WWII experience and tried to excuse Hitler’s crimes as just accidents or wanted you to look elsewhere at other countries crimes were branded for what they were. Racists.

Germany in 1941 was not a grave threat to our country. They did not have weapons of mass destruction. They did not attack us; they were a mere distraction from the real war with Japan. Luckily this sort of talk did not prevent us from entering the war in Europe as well as Asia. Frankly I do not want to live in a world where, “The dictator in country X is systematically murdering, butchering and torturing civilians” is not a reasonable justification for invading said country and leaving the dictator to rot in a jail. The slippery slope argument has been used against the war in Iraq. “Well what next, there are dozens of evil regimes with weapons programs, what are we going to do, invade them all?” Seeing pictures of the mass graves, and knowing that our army has the power to crush anyone we see fit, my reaction is ‘yes, yes we should.’ We do not spend trillions of dollars on our military just to have them sit idle as dictators elsewhere to massacre and torture.

If you doubt the war in Iraq, then follow this link to the source of Varifrank’s photos.
http://massgraves.info

In a not-so-suprising move from China’s Culture Ministry, 1600 Internet cafes in China have been shut down.

The government of China has been coming down hard on Internet operators in a nationwide push to limit violence and pornography in the country.

There are other, more effective ways China can curb violence in their country, like perhaps not using it against their own citizens

I originally wanted to write “Kids today are pussies” but I decided to be a little generous. Maybe it’s just the kind of neighborhood I live in, but Halloween around here was pretty sorry last night.

Trick or Treat ran from 6-8, so about half of it was in the dark. Now, when I was of the age, the whole thing was usually in the dark. I lived in a town of about 7,500 people, and the whole goal was usually to cover as much of the town as possible to maximize the loot. As I got to around 5th or 6th grade, I could barely carry my bag the rest of the way home because it was stuffed and ripping open. I can understand having some of it during the daytime though, because it makes it safer for kids to be wandering in the streets (especially here, where the towns have something against streetlights), and it gives parents a chance to take younger kids out when it is light and warmer so they aren’t traumatized.

We had a nice Halloween scene set up in the front yard, with a graveyard that had a green, glowing light and a red light in the front light of our house. There were life-size alien and zombie statues set up flanking the door, two pumpkins, and a fog machine pumping smoke into the entryway so when we came to the door you couldn’t see anything until we opened it up. Amanda was dressed like Faith from Buffy and I had the brains seeping out from my forehead as a zombie, complete with dirty graveclothing and torn shirt and pants. The dog was just interested in licking everyone who knocked at the door. It could have been even better if it weren’t for the 3000+ mph winds that were destroying everything not bolted down earlier in the day. On the plus side, I don’t have to rake the front yard anymore (though someone will end up cleaning all those leaves up)!

For the first hour, I had mostly small kids with their parents show up, and once it got dark it was the older kids and their crappy costumes. I made a couple of little girls tremble just by being in my zombie make-up, and that was cool. For the whole night, I must have only given out candy to about 12 groups of people. That’s it. And I know that kids live all over the block, so I don’t know what happened to them. At least half of those groups were younger high school people in half-assed costumes. I should have done what Michele did and made them do something embarassing for those miniature Kit-Kats and Snickers bars. The two skater punks that came to the door at least seemed happy to see Amanda’s low-cut shirt she was wearing for her costume, though. Another couple of middle-school aged boys came up, and as Amanda was giving them candy I came flying out of the smoke and slammed my hands on the glass. True to form, one of them said, “Man, that scared me!” to which the other replied, “It didn’t scare me.” Only one kid got the whole “living dead” thing, which he said was cool, and told me that he didn’t have any brains for me to eat.

All in all, I expected more people to show up, and more people to be into Halloween. I was sadly mistaken. Hopefully next year will be better. I’ll post some pictures of the costumes and stuff when I get them developed.

On a side note, if you aren’t weak, go and see The Grudge. That movie was awesome, and creepy in the same vein as The Ring. Sam Raimi produced it, and Sarah Michelle Gellar stars. Those Japanese sure know how to make a horror movie!

Randomly walking around Washington tonight, I noticed something that concerned me greatly. I was heading down Constitution Avenue, which runs parallel to the National Mall, one block north, between the museums and federal office buildings. There are four buildings next to each other; the Department of Justice, the IRS, the EPA, and the Department of Commerce. The problem with these buildings is their size. Let me clarify that; the problem is their size relative to each other. The EPA has the largest building. How much power have we given to environmental groups that their office is now larger than the IRS, Department of Justice or Department of Commerce? To me this is a flagrant display of national priorities gone awry.

My second observation is not as troubling, but more ironic. The Department of Justice, led by Ashcroft, has been attempting a war on the “obscene”. One aspect of this that we are all aware of is their involvement with Janet Jackson’s “incident” at the Super Bowl. Apparently they need to fight against bare breasts in displayed in public. The irony is that I counted four different women, in stone relief, baring their chest on the side of the building; two of them guarding the main entrance way. How can you fight against bare chested women while working in a building decorated with bare chested women?

Well, it appears that my opinon that Osama was dead is in error. Judging by the tape he seems very much alive.

I do hate being wrong.

“Sic gorgiamus allos subjectatos nunc.”
– Addams’ family motto

UN held elections in Kosovo earlier this week, 5 years after a UN force took control over the region in an attempt to stabilize it. The election did not turn out as the UN had hoped:

Kosovo’s beleaguered Serb minority largely boycotted general elections Saturday, dealing a blow to international efforts to create multiethnic harmony in the province.

The Albanian majority, however, eagerly cast ballots it hoped would bring the former Yugoslav territory closer to independence, but the lopsided turnout could further delay talks on Kosovo’s future.

Do not trust anyone who says that brining the UN into Iraq will help stabilizer the country and help with the elections. FIVE YEARS into UN involvement in Kosovo they were able to set up their first elections. Afghanistan was 2 years. Iraq will be about 20 months. Kosovo’s elections failed, the minority leaders effectively held a boycott of the elections. An estimated 0.3% of the Serb population voted. Afghanistan had national turnout of all ethnic groups. Those who did not win the elections peacefully conceded defeat. In Kosovo the parties in the boycott said that the UN and NATO have failed to create an environment where Serbs can live free without fear

I haven’t seen Eminem’s new video yet, and frankly, have no desire to. I’m certainly not going to wade through the crap that Eminem spews just to find out he doesn’t like Bush. (Side note: Is Eminem really considered hardcore rap? I heard his stuff described as such the other day. Please–he’s about as hardcore as Rip Taylor.) However, like Michele, I do find the left’s embrace of him amusing.

And now, in a complete reversal of fortune, Eminem has become the poster boy for the left. The man who was once hailed as a racist, homophobic supporter of spousal abuse is now the king of the leftie world because he made an anti-Bush video. All is forgiven, Eminem! Bash those gays, make more videos about beating up women because you are golden, baby. As long as you come out against Bush, you could come out in favor of eating babies and no one would blink an eye.

What I personally love is that his new video is being described as “controversial.” Controversial? Please. Even the most cursory glance at MTV will let you know that re-electing Bush is far from their highest priority. By doing an anti-Bush video, Eminem guaranteed high airplay. If Eminem was really an artist of controversy, he’ve done an anti-voting video. Or a pro-Bush video. But Eminem’s “controversies” are carefully orchestrated to piss off parents and thereby make him attractive to teenagers. Don’t forget–this is the guy who was so concerned about his “image as a serious artist” that he wouldn’t let Weird Al make a parody video of one of his songs. Trust me–Eminem didn’t make this video to make a political statement. He made it because he wisely calculated that doing so would make him a lot of money. I’m honestly surprised more people don’t see through this guy–he’s as manufactured as Britney Spears and P. Diddy.

Okay, so now there’s another news crew saying that there were explosives at Al Qaqaa.

Or maybe there weren’t, because the Russians took ‘em before March 2003.

Or maybe the Russians couldn’t have taken ‘em, because the IAEA never saw them in January 2003 at all!

Or maybe that’s not right, because they were taken out the day after the IAEA left!

Or maybe that’s impossible, because they really were taken out after U.S. troops arrived.

Or maybe the real answer is: we don’t know what the hell happened to the high-grade explosives in al-Qaqaa at all. At the very least, I don’t have a clue.