Ukraine: where stealing an election leads to demonstrations

(unlike some other places I could name...)


For more on what's happening in Ukraine, check out Neeka's Backlog by Ukrainian journalist Veronica Khokhlova. Here is a photo from Neeka's Backlog, apparently taken by Ms. Khokhlova:
"Two Ukrainians with differing views having a conversation across the street from the Cabinet of Ministers building; the guy on the left is pro-Yanukovych, the one on the right is pro-Yushchenko."  

And here's a link to the piece Ms. Khokhlova wrote for the New York Times.

I wonder how different colors come to stand for different political parties...Anyway, orange is my favorite color, so it's no surprise which side I favor here--the democrats!

Father, let me dedicate All this year to you
In whatever earthly state You will have me be
Not from sorrow, pain, or care Freedom dare I claim;
This alone shall be my prayer: Glorify Your name.
--from New Year's Hymn by Lawrence Tuttiett, 1864 (alt.)

Happy Thanksgiving

I am thankful to receive real snail-mail. Check out these neat postmarks:

Mailed by mule at | the bottom | of the | Grand Canyon | Phantom Ranch 
Mailed by mule at | the bottom | of the | Grand Canyon | Phantom Ranch [postcard] Read more about mule mail at this US Postal Service web-page.

Father, let me dedicate All this year to you
In whatever earthly state You will have me be
Not from sorrow, pain, or care Freedom dare I claim;
This alone shall be my prayer: Glorify Your name.
--from New Year's Hymn by Lawrence Tuttiett, 1864 (alt.)

Iris Chang 1968-2004

From the New York Times obituary (no permanent link available):

Iris Chang, a journalist whose best-selling book, "The Rape of Nanking," a chronicle of the atrocities committed in that city by occupying Japanese forces, helped break a six-decade-long international silence on the subject, committed suicide on Tuesday near Los Gatos, Calif.

"I wanted to show the people that the Japanese soldiers were inculcated to commit violence. This is not a story that was an isolated incident." --Iris Chang on the Rape of Nanking.

Here is a link to the transcript of CSPAN's Booknotes interview with Iris Chang (January 11, 1998) about The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II:

What I learned was that the Japanese soldier really had to see the Chinese as subhuman before they could kill them. I mean, he--he depicted the--the Chinese in his diary as--you know, as like animals or as insects.

More links here:

• Iris Chang's website (currently a black screen with the legend "In Memory of Iris Chang /1968-2004")
• Google's cache of her website on November 11, 2004.
• BBC News report on death
• Interview with Robert Birnbaum at identitytheory.com

Apparently the Japanese would rather not know about their own history: the planned Japanese edition of The Rape of Nanking was never published due to 'conservative' pressure. Go here for an example of Japanese revisionism. According to Timothy M. Kelly, Ms. Chang was a sloppy historian [remember that she was not a historian, but a journalist by training--that may explain some of her errors].

Father, let me dedicate All this year to you
In whatever earthly state You will have me be
Not from sorrow, pain, or care Freedom dare I claim;
This alone shall be my prayer: Glorify Your name.
--from New Year's Hymn by Lawrence Tuttiett, 1864 (alt.)

The Unexplained Exit Poll Discrepancy

Go to Buzzflash for a link to a new research paper by Steven F. Freeman (University of Pennsylvania) on the discrepancies between predicted and actual vote counts in Ohio, Florida, and Pennsylvania.

Father, let me dedicate All this year to you
In whatever earthly state You will have me be
Not from sorrow, pain, or care Freedom dare I claim;
This alone shall be my prayer: Glorify Your name.
--from New Year's Hymn by Lawrence Tuttiett, 1864 (alt.)

What wasn't running in this election

--a progressive and prophetic vision of faith and politics.

Read Progressive faith did not lose this election by Jim Wallis (Sojourners). Here is an excerpt:

So in this election, one side talked about the number of unborn lives lost each year, while the other pointed to the 100,000 civilian casualties in Iraq. But both are life issues - according to the Pope, for example, who opposes both John Kerry's views on abortion and George Bush's war policy. Some church leaders challenged both candidates on whether just killing terrorists would really end terrorism and called for a deeper approach. And 200 theologians, many from leading evangelical institutions, warned that a "theology of war emanating from the highest circles of government is also seeping into our churches."

[snip]

It is now key to remember that our vision - a progressive and prophetic vision of faith and politics - was not running in this election. John Kerry was, and he lost. Kerry did not strongly champion the poor as a religious issue and "moral value," or make the war in Iraq a clearly religious matter. In his debates with George Bush, Kerry should have challenged the war in Iraq as an unjust war, as many religious leaders did - including Evangelicals and Catholics. And John Kerry certainly did not advocate a consistent ethic of human life as we do - opposing all the ways that life is threatened in our violent world.

Father, let me dedicate All this year to you
In whatever earthly state You will have me be
Not from sorrow, pain, or care Freedom dare I claim;
This alone shall be my prayer: Glorify Your name.
--from New Year's Hymn by Lawrence Tuttiett, 1864 (alt.)

US Postal Service vs. Postal Service

Postal Service Tale: Indie Rock, Snail Mail and Trademark Law By BEN SISARIO [NYT]

About two and a half years ago, Jimmy Tamborello and Ben Gibbard began to make music together despite the distance between them. Mr. Tamborello, who makes electronica with a group called Dntel, lived in Los Angeles, while Mr. Gibbard, who sings in the emo band Death Cab for Cutie, lived in Seattle. They sent each other music through the mail, completing songs bit by bit, and after about five months, they had finished an album.

In honor of their working method they called themselves the Postal Service. Their album, "Give Up," was released by the Seattle-based Sub Pop Records in early 2003 and became an indie-rock hit, eventually selling almost 400,000 copies, the label's second biggest seller ever, after Nirvana's "Bleach."

Then they heard from the real Postal Service, in the form of a cease-and-desist letter.

Fast forward to the happy ending:

The outcome was as unusual as the band itself: this week the United States Postal Service - the real one, as in stamps and letters - signed an agreement with Sub Pop granting a free license to use the name in exchange for working to promote using the mail. Future copies of the album and the group's follow-up work will have a notice about the trademark, while the federal Postal Service will sell the band's CD's on its Web site, potentially earning a profit. The band may do some television commercials for the post office.

The group also agreed to perform at the postmaster general's annual National Executive Conference in Washington on Nov. 17. The attendees might not realize what a rare treat they are in for since the Postal Service does not play many gigs....

I like what I've heard of the Postal Service's music. And they like to use snail-mail!

Father, let me dedicate All this year to you
In whatever earthly state You will have me be
Not from sorrow, pain, or care Freedom dare I claim;
This alone shall be my prayer: Glorify Your name.
--from New Year's Hymn by Lawrence Tuttiett, 1864 (alt.)

What about 'spoiled' votes?

Journalist Greg Palast claims that Kerry Won if all the votes had been counted:

I know you don't want to hear it. You can't face one more hung chad. But I don't have a choice. As a journalist examining that messy sausage called American democracy, it's my job to tell you who got the most votes in the deciding states. Tuesday, in Ohio and New Mexico, it was John Kerry.

Most voters in Ohio thought they were voting for Kerry. CNN's exit poll showed Kerry beating Bush among Ohio women by 53 percent to 47 percent. Kerry also defeated Bush among Ohio's male voters 51 percent to 49 percent. Unless a third gender voted in Ohio, Kerry took the state.

So what's going on here? Answer: the exit polls are accurate. Pollsters ask, "Who did you vote for?" Unfortunately, they don't ask the crucial, question, "Was your vote counted?" The voters don't know.

Particularily if they are voting with black boxes in Ohio [Machine Error Gives Bush Thousands of Extra Ohio Votes] More on Ohio's problems here.

According to Mr. Palast, on average about 3% of ballots in American elections are not counted due to 'spoilage'. Most of the 'spoiled' ballots just happen to be from areas with higher numbers of Democrats. How convenient for the Republican Party. In New Mexico, it appears that much of the pro-Kerry Hispanic vote was diverted into uncounted 'provisional ballots':

Already, the election-bending effects of spoilage are popping up in the election stats, exactly where we'd expect them: in heavily Hispanic areas controlled by Republican elections officials. Chaves County, in the "Little Texas" area of New Mexico, has a 44 percent Hispanic population, plus African Americans and Native Americans, yet George Bush "won" there 68 percent to 31 percent.

I spoke with Chaves' Republican county clerk before the election, and he told me that this huge spoilage rate among Hispanics simply indicated that such people simply can't make up their minds on the choice of candidate for president. Oddly, these brown people drive across the desert to register their indecision in a voting booth.

Now, let's add in the effect on the New Mexico tally of provisional ballots.

"They were handing them out like candy," Albuquerque journalist Renee Blake reported of provisional ballots. About 20,000 were given out. Who got them?

Santiago Juarez who ran the "Faithful Citizenship" program for the Catholic Archdiocese in New Mexico, told me that "his" voters, poor Hispanics, whom he identified as solid Kerry supporters, were handed the iffy provisional ballots. Hispanics were given provisional ballots, rather than the countable kind "almost religiously," he said, at polling stations when there was the least question about a voter's identification. Some voters, Santiago said, were simply turned away.

Of course, it would be difficult for the leaders of the Democratic Party to demand that all votes be counted before conceding. That would be too confrontational. They'd rather surrender; how typical.

Of course, if the Democrats had gone to the courts they would have been crucified by the SCLM and the Republican Party. We can only win if we have an overwhelming advantage in both the popular vote and the electoral college. Let's adapt the populist politics of William Jennings Bryan: economic populism with a healthy dose of respect for conservative Christian values. (Not a phony marketing campaign to simulate 'values' but an expansion of the discussion of ethics and morality to all aspects of politics and public policy.) If we don't change we will become a permanently out-of-power coalition of minorities (ethnic and social), and the Republican party will dominate American politics as its libertarian and theocratic wings battle each other for ultimate control.

Father, let me dedicate All this year to you
In whatever earthly state You will have me be
Not from sorrow, pain, or care Freedom dare I claim;
This alone shall be my prayer: Glorify Your name.
--from New Year's Hymn by Lawrence Tuttiett, 1864 (alt.)

Annihilationist Rhetoric, George W. Bush Re-election Style

Adam Yoshida translates George W. Bush's victory speech--To make this nation stronger and better, I will need your support and I will work to earn it. I will do all I can do to deserve your trust.:

They [people that voted for John Kerry] mean nothing. They are worth nothing. There's no point in trying to reach out to them because they won't be reached out to. We've got their teeth clutching the sidewalk and our boot above their head. Now's the time to curb-stomp the bastards.

We may have seen the first black box stolen election

Grounds for further research--noticed on electoral-vote.com today [link.]

Various people sent me mail saying that it is awfully fishy that the exit polls and final results were substantially different in some places. I hope someone will follow this up and actually do a careful analysis. Does anyone know of a Website containing all the exit poll data? If we go to computerized voting without a paper trail and the machines can be set up to cheat, that is the end of our democracy. Switching 5 votes per machine is probably all it would take to throw an election and nobody would ever see it unless someone compares the computer totals and exit polls. I am still very concerned about the remark of Walden O'Dell a Republican fund raiser and CEO of Diebold, which makes voting machines saying he would deliver Ohio for President Bush. Someone (not me) should look into this carefully. The major newspapers actually recounted all the votes in Florida last time. Maybe this year's project should be looking at the exit polls. If there are descrepancies between the exit polls and the final results in touch-screen counties but not in paper-ballot counties, that would be a signal. At the very least it could be a good masters thesis for a political science student. The Open voting consortium is a group addressing the subject of verifiable voting.

Until proven otherwise, I have to assume that the election results do reflect the views of the American people. It does us no good to assume that the majority are with us when it is obvious that they are not. We may style ourselves the 'reality-based' community, but that means we really have to face the fact that we have a lot of work to do.

I am going to read over the Republican Party 2004 platform and see what a majority of Americans apparently want. I want to see how Republicans frame issues morally (if indeed they do.) I do not think that we Democrats will win by being imitation or pseudo-Republicans; but we certainly won't win be merely being anti-Republicans.

Father, let me dedicate All this year to you
In whatever earthly state You will have me be
Not from sorrow, pain, or care Freedom dare I claim;
This alone shall be my prayer: Glorify Your name.
--from New Year's Hymn by Lawrence Tuttiett, 1864 (alt.)

Today, the national Democratic Party really IS the minority party

A fellow Oklahoma blogger [Martin Jensen] has this analysis of where we liberal Democrats need to go from here:

"It's morality, stupid"- Citizens from both ends of the economic spectrum voted against their economic interest on 112.

- Democrats need to define their positions based on clearly stated principles*, rather than a grab bag of issues. These principles should be defined in moral terms more than in logical terms. Everybody has principles they think are worth fighting and even dying for, and people want to know what ours are. Until we can explain them, they will never trust us. Until we can prove to them that they share those principles, they will not vote for us.

Here is Mr. Jensen's proposed list of principles for Democrats:

* Principles (A List to be Modified)- Equal opportunity precedes equality of condition

- Fairness to all

- Free markets must be governed by fair competition

- Investing in success is smarter than spending on failure

- Focus on the best we have to offer

- We can be wise -- get the big picture before you start painting yourself into a corner

- Leverage applied in the right place is more effective than opposition applied just about anywhere else

- Programs that benefit society as a whole should be supported in proportion to an individual's benefit from that society

- Protection of individual liberties is the right and proper role of the judiciary

- The separation of church and state benefits religion more than removing those separations would benefit the state. (Evidence: check out the low rates of church attendance in all those European countries with state-sanctioned and -supported religions.)

- Corporations can survive without welfare programs from the government

And…any principle we don't think we can get a significant majority of the electorate to agree with should be revised -- or stricken from this list.

Mr. Jensen concludes his piece with this reminder that we have to work at winning the hearts and minds of our fellow Americans:

And how much easier would it be to "convert" others to our point of view if we emphasized our shared principles and helped them to see those issues from that perspective? Telling them they're wrong, they're stupid, they're bigoted and they're delusional clearly has not been effective so far.

I said recently that the (Oklahoma) Democratic Party was a majority party that acted like a minority party. Today, the national Democratic Party really IS the minority party. We have to quit trying to defeat them and start trying to win their hearts and minds. We're not going to change the world without changing those voters' consciousness. As well as our own.

For me, a problem with so many left-leaning blogs is the constant name-calling and a childish potty-mouth mentality. Let's leave that to the right wingers (freepers, Little Green Footballs, etc.). We aren't going to win over a majority of Americans by behaving like spiteful children.

Father, let me dedicate All this year to you
In whatever earthly state You will have me be
Not from sorrow, pain, or care Freedom dare I claim;
This alone shall be my prayer: Glorify Your name.
--from New Year's Hymn by Lawrence Tuttiett, 1864 (alt.)

Living Poor, Voting Rich

This time Nicholas Kristof has it right: Living Poor, Voting Rich (NYT)

In the aftermath of this civil war that our nation has just fought, one result is clear: the Democratic Party's first priority should be to reconnect with the American heartland.

I'm writing this on tenterhooks on Tuesday, without knowing the election results. But whether John Kerry's supporters are now celebrating or seeking asylum abroad, they should be feeling wretched about the millions of farmers, factory workers and waitresses who ended up voting - utterly against their own interests - for Republican candidates.

One of the Republican Party's major successes over the last few decades has been to persuade many of the working poor to vote for tax breaks for billionaires. Democrats are still effective on bread-and-butter issues like health care, but they come across in much of America as arrogant and out of touch the moment the discussion shifts to values.

What we need to understand is that most Americans are not going to vote on pocketbook issues--even in self-interest. We cannot run campaigns knowing we're going to lose the entire South, Mountain West, and the Plains States. The majority of voters in these states perceive that the Democratic Party disdains their values and their faith.

Sometimes I think it would be enough for Democrats to expose the Republican Party's clay-feet regarding faith: the hypocritical acceptance of pro-death policys while claiming to be pro-life. Republicans mostly support the death penalty and have been consistently pro-war: not as a last resort but as the first choice in international relations. But criticizing these Republican policies does no good if Democrats are promoting the 'inviolable' right to abortion in almost all circumstances. No one believes politicians really value human life if they think abortion is acceptable.

The other issue that kills Democrats' chances: gay rights. At my sons' schools (I'm talking elementary and middle school-age kids here) President Bush was the overwhelming favorite. The common perception is that Senator Kerry supports gay marriage and might even be gay himself. It doesn't matter that this isn't true: if the perception is that widespread, we will lose every time. The question that needs to be asked: how does this perception get that widespread? The so-called liberal media aren't spreading lies about Kerry's sexuality; dastardly Republican party flyers are not circulating hinting that Kerry is 'light in his loafers'--so where does the perception come from? I leave it to you, dear reader, to jump to the only proper conclusion.

So some advice for the Democratic Party: in 2008, don't give us a Hilary or a Dean or a Kucinich. Give us someone consistently pro-life, an active church member that can openly talk about his or her faith--not just the 'do good works' stuff, but how Jesus changes lives, or be prepared to lose again.

And just think, I was planning on getting my American flag out and flying it on Inauguration Day...

Father, let me dedicate All this year to you
In whatever earthly state You will have me be
Not from sorrow, pain, or care Freedom dare I claim;
This alone shall be my prayer: Glorify Your name.
--from New Year's Hymn by Lawrence Tuttiett, 1864 (alt.)

I Voted for Kerry

and my son Tim helped me.

A song for today: Democracy by Leonard Cohen

Sail on, sail on
O mighty Ship of State!
To the Shores of Need
Past the Reefs of Greed
Through the Squalls of Hate
Sail on, sail on, sail on, sail on.

It's coming to America first,
the cradle of the best and of the worst.
It's here they got the range
and the machinery for change
and it's here they got the spiritual thirst.
It's here the family's broken
and it's here the lonely say
that the heart has got to open
in a fundamental way:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.

Father, let me dedicate All this year to you
In whatever earthly state You will have me be
Not from sorrow, pain, or care Freedom dare I claim;
This alone shall be my prayer: Glorify Your name.
--from New Year's Hymn by Lawrence Tuttiett, 1864 (alt.)

Some advice to Democrats this Election Day

Nicholas von Hoffman discusses the history of election shenanigans and the American tendency to wink at cheating. As he notes, "if baseball is our national pastime, then isn't it interesting how large a part cheating plays in the game?" He concludes his post at the Liberty and Power group blog with this advice for Democrats: Dump the polite wimpy charges of 'unfairness.' Do not let the So-called Liberal Media tell you to 'get over it' when the Republicans attempt to steal the election this time:

In recent times the standard Republican tactic has not been to bring in illegal voters but to try to knock out legal Democratic ones, usually by kicking them off the registration lists or, later, challenging them at the polls, a ploy which holds up lines, makes people wait and forces many, especially those who have to go to work or look after children, to give up the idea of casting a ballot. For such maneuvers the modern Democrats seem to have few answers except bringing in the lawyers, but you can't win the lawyer game against Republicans. With their money and connections they can outlawyer the D's two to one. If that doesn’t work, they can fix the judge. If today were like earlier eras, Democratic campaign workers would buy a bunch of disposable, non-traceable cell phones and distribute them to carefully selected partisans who would call in bomb scares and false fire alarms to disrupt the voting in heavily Republican precincts. You stop our vote, we stop yours.

The modern Democrat doesn't do things like that. He or she is more inclined to find a microphone and complain it is "unfair." Unfair is the most used word in the Democratic political lexicon, even though it simply irritates most people to hear it. Let us hope that on Tuesday and beyond Democrats will not react to Republican shenanigans by shouting "Unfair!" If Democrats want to protect their votes and their rights, they should hit the streets in very large numbers to demonstrate near the polling places and election commission offices where the Republicans do their mischief. The crowds should chant, shout, scream, generally misbehave and absolutely refuse to go away. Intimidation must be met with counter-intimidation, threat with threat, force with force. One of the things that has happened to the Democrats these past years as they have become the sissy soft party of empathy is that the Republicans no longer fear them. In politics, where there is no fear, there is no respect.

So to the barricades, ladies and gentlemen, and don't mind your manners.

Remember the 'Republican riot' to stop the vote counting in Florida? We will not let them get away with it this time!

Father, let me dedicate All this year to you
In whatever earthly state You will have me be
Not from sorrow, pain, or care Freedom dare I claim;
This alone shall be my prayer: Glorify Your name.
--from New Year's Hymn by Lawrence Tuttiett, 1864 (alt.)

Pundit Blogger. Indeed.

I answered seven questions, and found out that I am a pundit blogger:

You Are a Pundit Blogger!

Your blog is smart, insightful, and always a quality read. Truly appreciated by many, surpassed by only a few.

What kind of blogger are you?

I wouldn't say I'm appreciated by many; I really only do this for my own amusement. But I was tickled to find a mini-review of Ghost Town Orange by green boy at needlenose.

Here are some more reviews of this usually humble site:

Ghost Town Orange is a perfect beauty, and good as beautiful.--Moralist.

Ghost Town Orange is a most suitable companion for our walks and meditations.--Casuist.

Ghost Town Orange--its wisdom and learning are equally remarkable.--College Club.

Ghost Town Orange--read it, try to parse it, and then set it to music and sing it.--Yankee Teacher.

Ghost Town Orange--the thing we dreamed of, longed for, sighed for, and paid for.--Public at Large.

Actually, I climbed into my time machine and stole these reviews from the first American issue of Punchinello.

Father, let me dedicate All this year to you
In whatever earthly state You will have me be
Not from sorrow, pain, or care Freedom dare I claim;
This alone shall be my prayer: Glorify Your name.
--from New Year's Hymn by Lawrence Tuttiett, 1864 (alt.)