Posts from — November 2008

The people who keep talking about turn out are full of it.  They believe that a turn of less than 60% for a Presidential election is great.  I want to know what is wrong with the 40% of the country who couldn’t be bothered.

Florida turn out was much better than average, but not as good as 2004:

2004: 10,301,290 registered  7,640,319 voted 74.2%

2008: 11,247,634 registered 8,201,274 voted 72.9%

About half of the people who were added to the books didn’t show up at the polls.  That’s pathetic.

In my county we only added about 2,000 new voters between 2004 and 2008, but we had 5,000 more voters this time, raising our turn out to 73.5%.

I am personally bummed out by the vote on our “hate amendment”.  Showing Florida as a “blue state” is not truthful.  Nearly a million Florida voters who chose Obama, also chose hate.

We don’t know who the Senator will be in Georgia, Minnesota, Alaska, or Oregon.

The Atlanta Journal Constitution writes: Georgia Senate race heading for runoff

U.S. Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) and Democratic challenger Jim Martin both geared up for a runoff on Wednesday, even though an undetermined number of votes were still being tallied.

The two candidates held dueling press conferences to chat about their campaigns and lay the groundwork for a possible four-week battle to decide a winner in the acrimonious contest.

With 99 percent of precincts reporting early Wednesday afternoon, Chambliss had 1,841,449 votes, or 49.9 percent of the total, while Martin had 1,727,625 votes, or 47 percent. Libertarian Allen Buckley had 126,328 votes, or 3 percent.

Georgia law requires 50%+1 to be declared a winner.

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Position: 14.6 N 82.1 W [12 AM CST 0600 UTC].
Movement: Northwest [305°] near 5 mph.
Maximum sustained winds: 35 mph [55 kph].
Wind Gusts: 40 mph.
Minimum central pressure: 1004 mb.

It is 85 miles [135 km] East-Southeast of Cabo Gracias a Dios on the Nicaragua/Honduras border.

A tropical storm watch remains in effect from Puerto Cabezas Nicaragua northward to Limon Honduras. A tropical storm watch means that tropical storm conditions are possible within the watch area, in this case within 24 to 36 hours.

Here’s the link for NOAA’s latest satellite images.

[For the latest information click on the storm symbol, or go to the CATEGORIES drop-down box below the CALENDAR and select “Hurricanes” for all of the posts related to storms on this site.]

Andante at Collective Sigh is celebrating her fifth blogiversary™. She got me hooked on this madness.

Remember, remember the fifth of November
Gunpowder, treason and plot.
I see no reason why gunpowder, treason
Should ever be forgot.

The British are celebrating the anniversary of the thwarting of the Gunpowder Plot.

A group of English Catholic conspirators including an explosives expert, Guy Fawkes, stashed 36 barrels of gunpowder in the basement of the Parliament building with the intent of blowing up the members of Parliament and King James I during the official opening of Parliament on November 5^th, 1605.

Bonfire Night is celebrated with bonfires and fireworks. Effigies of Guy Fawkes, and occasionally the Pope, are traditionally thrown on the fires. Effigies of modern politicians have made their appearances at the celebration.

As Robert Cecil was involved, I doubt anyone will ever know the truth about the plot.

In Houston, a Woman wearing Alaska souvenir nearly denied a vote, but according to the Okaloosa Supervisor of Elections “Know the Facts” page, Floridians can dress as politically as they want, as long as they don’t talk about it [and they turn off their cells while in the polls].

States’ Rights is all well and good, but Federal elections really should be uniform throughout the US. We are too mobile for all of these different forms and standards in national elections.

Update: This is the official Florida site for election returns.

My ballot represented a 65% participation in my precinct with the after-work “crowd” to come. We had 90 people vote early and they increased the number of voting stations by 50% [from two to three] for today.

It took me a half hour, but that included walking over to my Mother’s house to drive her in her car to the town hall, vote, drive back, and walk home.

The real shame is that only about 20% of people voted in the August primary that selected most of the local and county offices.

I would personally appreciate it if the media and the Florida Secretary of State would remember that from the Apalachicola River west to the Perdido River is the Central Time Zone in the state of Florida.  The polls don’t close in West Florida until 7PM Central Standard Time, which is 8PM Eastern Standard Time.

In past years the Secretary of State has started to announce election results before our polls closed, and that is really tacky as well as slightly illegal.

Florida has 11,247,634 registered voters and 4,272,280 have already voted early or returned their absentee ballots. Hopefully this will reduce lines tomorrow, but there are no guarantees. There will be many more polling places open tomorrow, and the ballots don’t have to be printed, as in early voting, so things should be faster. If you are watching the returns, don’t make assumptions based on early results. The first results will be from early voting, and significantly more Democrats than Republicans used that option, so it will probably skew the early results.

I don’t care who you vote for, or who wins if you don’t vote, but you have a personal responsibility to millions of Americans who have been putting up with the two years of hell that has been the 2008 campaign to make the effort.

If you don’t vote, you can’t complain about what they do to you. Voting is a minor inconvenience compared to what a lot of people for a very long time have done to give you the right. At one time only white males with property were allowed to vote, and I think we all understand who benefits from their votes, and it probably isn’t you. Even if you don’t think your candidates or issues have a chance of winning, vote, because it forces the other side to vote or lose.  I realistically only expect to be on the winning side with about three of two dozen people and issues on my ballot, but they have to work for their wins.

Bob Somerby is just about the last rational big time blogger left.  People have lost their objectivity and honesty as this campaign continues.  The level of hate from both sides is staggering.  There are plenty of crimes and more than enough lying to be investigated without formerly sane and reasonable people succumbing to paranoid delusional states.

You do not hate your enemy. If you hate your enemy, you cannot understand your enemy, and s/he will beat you. After you win, you can afford hate, but not during the war. Hate clouds your thinking and you make mistakes.

Despite what it would appear from the media coverage, California’s Proposition 8 isn’t the only ballot initiative in the country in 2008, it’s just the one sucking up all the oxygen in the media’s circumambient atmosphere. There are similar measures on the ballots in Florida [Amendment 2] and in Arizona [Proposition 102]. The proponents keep telling you that they support “traditional marriage” but they never tell you whose tradition it is because the Bible is certainly rife with examples of polygamy, and it was decades before the “Pilgrim Fathers” allowed ministers to be the official witness at weddings in Massachusetts. These “traditions” seem to be the creations of fevered minds, not American history.

A particularly nasty piece of work on the Colorado ballot is the Colorado Equal Rights Amendment. This is an anti-choice amendment masquerading as equality. Lying comes easily to these people, and they call an amendment that takes away rights, an equal rights amendment, because they don’t think it would pass if people understood what it really meant. Actually, one of the rights that could easily fall victim to this amendment is the right to use contraceptives.

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Before there was Jean-Luc there was the amazing Piccard family.

Swiss Info reports on Jacques passing

Swiss oceanologist Jacques Piccard, one of the 20th century’s last great adventurers, has died at the age of 86 at his home on Lake Geneva.

Credited with designing submarines that could withstand the planet’s most uninhabitable environments and one of two men to reach the deepest point in any ocean, Piccard died on Saturday.

In 1960, along with United States Navy Lieutenant Don Walsh, Piccard descended 10,916 metres secured inside the submarine Trieste, to the bottom of the Mariana Trench off the South Pacific island of Guam.

Jacques’s father, Auguste, was the first person to reach the stratosphere in a balloon, and his son, Bertrand, was the commander of the first team to circumnavigate the world in a balloon. Bertrand will be attempting to circumnavigate the world in a solar powered aircraft in 2011.

Piccard’s deep sea efforts were used in the development of the US space program.

So another Halloween passes with not a child approaching the door.  They walked by on the street, going to the “Harvest Festival”, but not one stopped.  My neighbor’s kids apparently hit up their grandparents’ neighborhood, knowing full well that anything I have is theirs by default as I’m not going to eat this junk.

In the days of yore when you made caramel apples and popcorn balls, those suckers would be in ‘fridge.  But this mandated, individually wrapped, commercial garbage – bleah.

So it gets towards 3AM and there is a hell of racket coming from the kitchen.  I roll out to see what on earth is going on and discover a team effort to tear into the 20 pounds of kibble by the back door.  Apparently some time after 5PM when I last checked the boys’ kibble bowl, it was emptied and they were acting like half-starved savages attacking the bag to get some food to sustain them during the 4 hours before I got up and re-filled the bowl.

I filled the bowl.  They each ate a few pieces, and went off to sleep.  I had to locate some tape to cover the damage to the bag to avoid attracting bugs.  Cats!

Daylight Savings Time ends in the US Sunday morning, November 2^nd at 2AM.  It becomes 1AM and you get an extra hour of sleep, unless you work the “graveyard shift”.

Most devices make the change automatically, although many, like my clock radio, change under the old system and have to be ignored for a couple of weeks.

“Fall back – Spring ahead”