Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in Nate Railsback's LiveJournal:

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Friday, September 9th, 2005
10:15 pm	Update Well, I finally secured (sort of) that post office job. Irritatingly enough, no one ever did anything like shake my hand and tell me "Welcome aboard!" And it wasn't from lack of prompting either. They just sort of told me to show up for training...which was supposed to be two days ago, and they were going to mail me something on when it would begin. When I still hadn't received the letter by the day before it would begin, I called in and found out they were going to call ME later that day to say that the training had been pushed back approximately a week because the qualified people hadn't arrived from Denver or somesuch. While this irritatingly pushes back when my first paycheck will be, I'm at least enjoying more vacation time, including a return to FFXI to beef up Gurdijef's White Mage and Black Mage skills. I got a surprisingly VERY warm reception when I came back-- apparently one person was even crying (according to other friends who could see her in real life). I didn't realize I'd been such an integral part of many people's lives on that game. But still, I'm trying to keep balanced in online Earthdawn sessions, playing Crystal Chronicles, and hopefully getting together with Adam and/or Josh sometime. Overall, I'm quite happy for right now, if not for the gnawing guilt about what's happening to some of the very people I was meeting during my time in Beaumont (I know I can't do much of anything for them, but you can't reason with white liberal guilt). (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Sunday, August 21st, 2005
10:10 am	Hurting Again Once again, I'm saddled with a hideously painful ear infection. While it's fortunately only in one ear (for now), it still drives me crazy, especially since I can't sleep through it like I could a cold or something. Because you see, my body has a characteristic where my metabolism singles out and erases all medications from my blood stream if I sleep for so much as 15 minutes. Therefore, everything I take to kill the pain goes and I'm awake within 1-3 hours, tired as hell but unable to resume sleep. Also, I'm out of Pepsi. @$*#@$%()*$@%$#*%) (Comment on this)
Friday, August 19th, 2005
9:24 pm	THUMP That was the sound of 8 tons of dirt hitting my driveway. Mom asked for my help with this reinforcing of our depleted garden a few days ago, but at the time she said it would be less than half a pick-up truck bed of soil. Turns out that she meant dump truck, and I still have my suspicions about whether that was a genuine error or not. Dad was definately in error, as he clearly ordered twice as much as we freaking needed for our purposes, although I guess some of the neighbors will be taking some extra off our hands. In any case, I'll be occupied with this or wiped out from it all weekend, which was already shaping up to be nice with an incoming ear infection. At least when this is over, I'll hopefully have at least one damn week without Mom bugging me about why I haven't gotten a job yet. Because, you know, my laziness compels the post office not to get back to me in the timeframe they said they would. I'm contagious like that. Current Mood: bitchy (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Wednesday, August 17th, 2005
3:52 pm	Awesome Shadowrun Dream Hey, if Coda gets to share his dreams all the time, I might as well. :p But this one was particularly awesome because I was basically living out a Shadowrun adventure fragment. I can't remember who my partner was, I think her name was Karen-- moderate build, frizzy brown/blond hair, about my age, human, and I guess she was a Decker with a little bit more combat enhancements than normal. In any case, we were on around the 35th floor of an Ares Tech corp building, going directly through the servers in one of their offices to get around the security that she'd have to deal with going in from the matrix. Unfortunately, there were a lot of glass walls, so having lots of lights on would give us away, so we had to be careful. I even helped out with a bit of real-world data-sleuthing (which I was primed for after having recently played Mario's Detective Agency 4 for the Nintendo EX). However, my main reason to be there was magic support, because I was a mage. It was awesome. Until I detected (via the Astral) a magically-active security guard coming in downstairs...who apparently had a toxic spirit in tow. Shit. It couldn't have just been a security guard, couldn't have just been a wagemage, it was somehow a wagemage TOXIC SHAMAN. I would have been interested in knowing the background on that. But that sort of investigation would have to come later, because now I was primarily interested in survival. After throwing up and then layering on an Astral Concealment spell (which apparently I knew in the dream, though it's not in a sourcebook that I know of), I warned Karen and hustled her through her remaining data extraction so we could TURN OFF THE FREAKING LIGHTS before they got to our floor. We managed to, and hid out in darkness waiting for our guy to go past...except that we stupidly turned the lights on once he was on the next floor. Because, you know, I guess we didn't expect the light to travel up the stairway for some damned reason. So then we had to run, me throwing up an astral shield to block the little bastard's Toxic Wave attack, which sort of annihalated/melted a glass wall in between us. And as we started to run down the square spiral staircase, realizing that we were going to have trouble outrunning them (especially as both the shaman and his spirit were chucking Acid spells at us), I opted for the Crazy route, grabbed her hand, told her to trust me, climbed over the side of the stairs and dropped into the 35-story freefall down the shaft to the bottom. However, I had an ace up my sleeve-- another (apparently new) spell I dubbed Linear Fall. Those with any background in physics might be interested to know its basis: removing the "squared" part from the mathematical formula of gravitation and falling speed, at least for me and anyone touching me. So instead of accelerating as we fell, we continued to fall at the exact same, steady speed as when I kicked on the spell near the beginning of the fall, resorting in a much safer decent to the ground. For some insane reason, I guess the shaman thought he could follow after us, and he ended up passing us on the way down much to my amusement. The spirit, though, was another problem. It came streaming in from above with some sort of toxic claw attack that I barely managed to block with another astral shield, but since it had physicall manifested (and I guess I thought it was weaker to physical attacks than magic at that point), I simply yelled at Karen "Light it up!" and she pulled out her Remington Roomsweeper and blew the crap out of it with a violent spray-fire while we continued to fall, then we both hit the ground and rolled out of the way as its husk hit the ground shortly after us, swiftly dissolving back to the Metaplanes. Then we ran. Unfortunately, it seems that the toxic shaman (who was NOT there when we got to the bottom, but I didn't think about that at first) had some sort of Agent Smith complex, because he was following us again as we ran from the building. I stopped, turned, and vented a Mana Bolt at him with both hands (which I called out RPGC-style and everything! "Mana BOLT!") that fried him, and we kept going, catching up to the rest of the group just as the fragging enemy pursuer caught up to us AGAIN (yeah, I thought I toasted him, but I was wrong), and tried very hard to convince me that I should come back with him, eyes glowing. I slammed a "Fire Darts!" spell into him at point-black range in response (which, technically, should have been a single, dagger-sized projectile instead of a Magic Missile or Swift-style spray-fire of smaller bits, but screw it, it was my dream, it animated how I wanted), then turned back to the group...which was apparently telling me to get the hell away from them. I was apparently no longer welcome with them, because "you've lost your soul" one of them said, and they all started mocking me and making fun of me. I was confused and bewildered for a moment, as the corp guy came up behind me and again stated that apparently, I didn't belong with them and I should come with him now. Then it clicked in my head that I was in some sort of mind-control illusion spell, turned, and lit up the guy with Fire Darts again while trying to break out of the spell.... ...and the dream sort of faded out and I woke up. DAMMIT! That was one of the coolest dreams I've had in awhile, and it had to disrupt at an important point...oh well. Maybe I'll get to go back to it some night... Current Mood: energetic (Comment on this)
Tuesday, August 9th, 2005
10:54 pm	Unbelieveably Frustrating The last bosses of Metroid Prime 2 are insanely difficult on Hard Mode. Seriously, I anyone who tells you that the game wasn't challenging enough never actually played it on hard mode (this applies to everyone who has written the hundreds of superfluous FAQs on the game that gloat over having beat it easily). The regular mode tricks for defeating the various forms of the Emperor Ing just don't apply, not just because of its boosted HP and attack power, but because it's SMARTER. It knows when to flail its weakspots around at just the right time to throw off your auto-tracking and make your Super Missiles miss. It knows when to change directions or intercept you with an disrupting attack just at the right moment to throw off your carefully-placed attack. It figures out your movement patterns and punishes you for being predictable even when you think you're moving about totally at random. And several of its attacks are impossible to dodge-- you just have to hope that it merely misses through luck. Most of all, its third form knows how to play the defense game so well that it can keep its weak points almost constantly covered in order to waste your ammo and chip away at your health until you can't go on. It's going to take me days to beat this thing, if I ever do, and I won't be able to totally relax and let go until I do. Current Mood: frustrated (5 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, July 17th, 2005
2:36 pm	Wanna See My Website? I thought I'd put a link to this here, in case anyone was interested in seeing what I've learned to do in HTML class so far. Mind you, this is before we've started working hardcore on Javascripts and the like. Also, I have no idea how long this web space will remain open to me (whether just until after the semester wraps up or for years to come), so I might as well throw it out there now. BTW, there's a survey there, which you may wish to look at but not fill out, as the version on that server mails the results to my instructor, and she probably doesn't want to get your junk. :p Current Mood: tired (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, July 10th, 2005
5:11 pm	If only I was qualified... A sample of one of the job openings I get notified of. If only I met the 1-3 years data collection and analysis prerequisite, I would take this job for the name of the company alone. Best. Company. Name. Ever. RESEARCH ASSISTANT MACRO INTERNATIONAL INC., AN OPINION RESEARCH CORPORATION COMPANY (ORC MACRO), is a professional services firm offering high quality research, management consulting and information technology services supporting business and government. ORC MACRO has an immediate opening for a RESEARCH ASSISTANT to support multiple survey projects relating to customer satisfaction and loyalty, employee satisfaction, media research, and other market research. Duties include: * Designing surveys and research guides. * Coordinating data collection efforts within functional divisions and with other ORC MACRO offices. * Performing survey tasks, such as mailing, tracking, and data entry. * Conducting statistical and qualitative analysis. * Writing analytic reports. Bachelor's degree in social science discipline required. Master's degree a plus. 1-3 years experience required conducting surveys and data analysis. Strong quantitative skills and coursework/experience in statistical analysis required. Experience with SAS or SPSS strongly preferred. Must have excellent writing skills and oral communication skills, and must be able to work successfully in a multi-disciplinary team environment. Must be proficient with MS Office (Word, Excel and Powerpoint). ORC MACRO offers an excellent compensation and benefits package including 401(k), profit sharing, tuition reimbursement, casual business dress, and free parking. ORC MACRO is conveniently located in suburban MD at the intersection of 495/95 adjacent to Route 29/Colesville Road. EOE/M/F/V/D. Send your cover letter and resume to 301-572-0991 or email to hrb@orcmacro.com. Visit our website at http://www.orcmacro.com/. ORC MACRO ATTN: RAPA/SB 11785 Beltsville Drive Calverton, MD 20705 Howard Bauleke Chief of Staff Rep. Dennis Moore [D-KS] 202-225-2865 202-225-2807 [fax] howard.bauleke@mail.house.gov Current Mood: silly (Comment on this)
Monday, July 4th, 2005
6:11 am	Dusting off the old Live Journal It's been awhile since I've actually used this thing, and it's kind of depressing. I'm not sure whether that's because so much or so little has happened since it my last significant post, but regardless, I think I'll try making more frequent entries here. After all, now I have a link to this on the basis for what will be my homepage I've been designing for my HTML class, so I might as well have stuff that's been put up in the last month if I want to justify calling it a "blog." Current Mood: productive (Comment on this)
Friday, February 18th, 2005
4:43 pm	Fun Quote If a man is offered a fact which goes against his instincts, he will scrutinize it closely, and unless the evidence is overwhelming, he will refuse to believe it. If, on the other hand, he is offered something which affords a reason for acting in accordance to his instincts, he will accept it even on the slightest evidence. Bertrand Russell, Roads to Freedom (Comment on this)
Monday, February 7th, 2005
5:44 am	Ditto Entry For the hell of it... find your element at mutedfaith.com. Maybe I'm spending too much time on FFXI....I'm starting to gravitate towards the personality of a White Mage, it seems. Although perhaps that's not such a bad thing. (Comment on this)
Tuesday, January 11th, 2005
12:54 pm	The Conyers Report I just thought I'd post this up here for anyone who's interested or still has major doubts about my claims of what happened in Ohio. This is a shortened version of the report, although the full text can be located here, among other places: http://truthout.org/Conyersreport.pdf Executive Summary Representative John Conyers, Jr., the Ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, asked the Democratic staff to conduct an investigation into irregularities reported in the Ohio presidential election and to prepare a Status Report concerning the same prior to the Joint Meeting of Congress scheduled for January 6, 2005, to receive and consider the votes of the electoral college for president. The following Report includes a brief chronology of the events; summarizes the relevant background law; provides detailed findings (including factual findings and legal analysis); and describes various recommendations for acting on this Report going forward. We have found numerous, serious election irregularities in the Ohio presidential election, which resulted in a significant disenfranchisement of voters. Cumulatively, these irregularities, which affected hundreds of thousand of votes and voters in Ohio, raise grave doubts regarding whether it can be said the Ohio electors selected on December 13, 2004, were chosen in a manner that conforms to Ohio law, let alone federal requirements and constitutional standards. This report, therefore, makes three recommendations: (1) consistent with the requirements of the United States Constitution concerning the counting of electoral votes by Congress and Federal law implementing these requirements, there are ample grounds for challenging the electors from the State of Ohio; (2) Congress should engage in further hearings into the widespread irregularities reported in Ohio; we believe the problems are serious enough to warrant the appointment of a joint select Committee of the House and Senate to investigate and report back to the Members; and (3) Congress needs to enact election reform to restore our people's trust in our democracy. These changes should include putting in place more specific federal protections for federal elections, particularly in the areas of audit capability for electronic voting machines and casting and counting of provisional ballots, as well as other needed changes to federal and state election laws. With regards to our factual finding, in brief, we find that there were massive and unprecedented voter irregularities and anomalies in Ohio. In many cases these irregularities were caused by intentional misconduct and illegal behavior, much of it involving Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell, the co-chair of the Bush-Cheney campaign in Ohio. First, in the run up to election day, the following actions by Mr. Blackwell, the Republican Party and election officials disenfranchised hundreds of thousands of Ohio citizens, predominantly minority and Democratic voters: The misallocation of voting machines led to unprecedented long lines that disenfranchised scores, if not hundreds of thousands, of predominantly minority and Democratic voters. This was illustrated by the fact that the Washington Post reported that in Franklin County, "27 of the 30 wards with the most machines per registered voter showed majorities for Bush. At the other end of the spectrum, six of the seven wards with the fewest machines delivered large margins for Kerry." (See Powell and Slevin, supra). Among other things, the conscious failure to provide sufficient voting machinery violates the Ohio Revised Code which requires the Boards of Elections to "provide adequate facilities at each polling place for conducting the election." Mr. Blackwell's decision to restrict provisional ballots resulted in the disenfranchisement of tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of voters, again predominantly minority and Democratic voters. Mr. Blackwell's decision departed from past Ohio law on provisional ballots, and there is no evidence that a broader construction would have led to any significant disruption at the polling places, and did not do so in other states. Mr. Blackwell's widely reviled decision to reject voter registration applications based on paper weight may have resulted in thousands of new voters not being registered in time for the 2004 election. The Ohio Republican Party's decision to engage in preelection "caging" tactics, selectively targeting 35,000 predominantly minority voters for intimidation had a negative impact on voter turnout. The Third Circuit found these activities to be illegal and in direct violation of consent decrees barring the Republican Party from targeting minority voters for poll challenges. The Ohio Republican Party's decision to utilize thousands of partisan challengers concentrated in minority and Democratic areas likely disenfranchised tens of thousands of legal voters, who were not only intimidated, but became discouraged by the long lines. Shockingly, these disruptions were publicly predicted and acknowledged by Republican officials: Mark Weaver, a lawyer for the Ohio Republican Party, admitted the challenges "can't help but create chaos, longer lines and frustration." Mr. Blackwell's decision to prevent voters who requested absentee ballots but did not receive them on a timely basis from being able to receive provisional ballots 6 likely disenfranchised thousands, if not tens of thousands, of voters, particularly seniors. A federal court found Mr. Blackwell's order to be illegal and in violation of HAVA. Second, on election day, there were numerous unexplained anomalies and irregularities involving hundreds of thousands of votes that have yet to be accounted for: There were widespread instances of intimidation and misinformation in violation of the Voting Rights Act, the Civil Rights Act of 1968, Equal Protection, Due Process and the Ohio right to vote. Mr. Blackwell's apparent failure to institute a single investigation into these many serious allegations represents a violation of his statutory duty under Ohio law to investigate election irregularities. We learned of improper purging and other registration errors by election officials that likely disenfranchised tens of thousands of voters statewide. The Greater Cleveland Voter Registration Coalition projects that in Cuyahoga County alone over 10,000 Ohio citizens lost their right to vote as a result of official registration errors. There were 93,000 spoiled ballots where no vote was cast for president, the vast majority of which have yet to be inspected. The problem was particularly acute in two precincts in Montgomery County which had an undervote rate of over 25% each - accounting for nearly 6,000 voters who stood in line to vote, but purportedly declined to vote for president. There were numerous, significant unexplained irregularities in other counties throughout the state: (i) in Mahoning county at least 25 electronic machines transferred an unknown number of Kerry votes to the Bush column; (ii) Warren County locked out public observers from vote counting citing an FBI warning about a potential terrorist threat, yet the FBI states that it issued no such warning; (iii) the voting records of Perry county show significantly more votes than voters in some precincts, significantly less ballots than voters in other precincts, and voters casting more than one ballot; (iv) in Butler county a down ballot and underfunded Democratic State Supreme Court candidate implausibly received more votes than the best funded Democratic Presidential candidate in history; (v) in Cuyahoga county, poll worker error may have led to little known thirdparty candidates receiving twenty times more votes than such candidates had ever received in otherwise reliably Democratic leaning areas; (vi) in Miami county, voter turnout was an improbable and highly suspect 98.55 percent, and after 100 percent of the precincts were reported, an additional 19,000 extra votes were recorded for President Bush. Third, in the post-election period we learned of numerous irregularities in tallying provisional ballots and conducting and completing the recount that disenfanchised thousands of voters and call the entire recount procedure into question (as of this date the recount is still not complete): Mr. Blackwell's failure to articulate clear and consistent standards for the counting of provisional ballots resulted in the loss of thousands of predominantly minority votes. In Cuyahoga County alone, the lack of guidance and the ultimate narrow and arbitrary review standards significantly contributed to the fact that 8,099 out of 24,472 provisional ballots were ruled invalid, the highest proportion in the state. Mr. Blackwell's failure to issue specific standards for the recount contributed to a lack of uniformity in violation of both the Due Process Clause and the Equal Protection Clauses. We found innumerable irregularities in the recount in violation of Ohio law, including (i) counties which did not randomly select the precinct samples; (ii) counties which did not conduct a full hand court after the 3% hand and machine counts did not match; (iii) counties which allowed for irregular marking of ballots and failed to secure and store ballots and machinery; and (iv) counties which prevented witnesses for candidates from observing the various aspects of the recount. The voting computer company Triad has essentially admitted that it engaged in a course of behavior during the recount in numerous counties to provide "cheat sheets" to those counting the ballots. The cheat sheets informed election officials how many votes they should find for each candidate, and how many over and under votes they should calculate to match the machine count. In that way, they could avoid doing a full county-wide hand recount mandated by state law. Current Mood: contemplative (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Saturday, December 25th, 2004
12:16 am	Merry Christmas! Hohoho! Sit on Santa Gurdi's lap and tell him what you want for Christmas this year! (Linked is a picture of my character from FFXI, Gurdijef, done up in his best holiday attire.) Current Mood: happy (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, December 16th, 2004
4:33 pm	2004 Selection That's it. I'm mad enough now. I thought that I'd be too apathetic to actually go into the 2004 Presidential election, that I'd just keep putting it off until it was old news. A lot of other liberals just find the whole thing too painful to go into, and so have begun avoiding any discussion of politics lately. But I'm not going into political issues, campaigns, not even grazing on Iraq here. I'm paying attention to Ohio, which may be the Last Stand of American Democracy. So many people are groaning and saying they don't want to hear about it. Nate Moss said the people raising a fuss about the voting irregularities there had "whiny bitch syndrome." It's always easier to shoot the messenger rather than listen to the message-- and take Moss's opinion with a big shaker of salt, considering that he's proven himself to be sociopathic compulsive liar who eventually betrays anyone who tries to stay his friend. But there's stuff here, folks. The Diebold system syndrome has been documented around the nation-- all precincts that have used Diebold-manufactured voting machines have swung towards Bush, to the extent that in many places the only variable between them and super-similar counties that went for Kerry were the presence of such machines. There are a variety of excuses given for this, but they're all pretty weak-- one claims that in Florida, for instance, the fact that in a given precinct the total votes for the Democratic and Republican candidates for President were the MIRROR OPPOSITE of voter registration in that district is dismissed by people saying "eh, they're just Dixiecrats who are still officially Democrats but vote Republican in every Presidential race." Except that among said districts would be the familiar-sounding (to anyone who paid attention in 2000) Broward and Miami-Dade counties, which are hardly "Dixiecrat" country. In case you've not heard of Diebold (Coda, I'm looking at you), it gained infamy in a 2003 fundraising letter for the Republican party wherein its CEO, a top member in the Ohio Republican Party, promised "to deliver Ohio's electoral votes to President Bush." This isn't some nutcase accusation, this is published, established fact, and while it's hardly proof that anything happened, it should certainly incline us to be a little more suspicious. The proof is still pending...but it seems to be bubbling up. Before Election Day, there was a lot of preparation for the disenfranchised Democrats: Voting machines were moved out of Democratic-leaning precincts and shifted to Republican-leaning ones rather blatantly, creating a situation where there was almost always open machines for Republicans and short lines, whereas the "less-favored" precincts would have lines that in some cases took 10 hours to get through-- if you discourage them from voting, you don't have to find ways to spoil their vote, after all. And as far as that goes, when punchcard machines were tested a week before the election, machines found to be defective but still basically workable were, guess what, shuffled into Democrats' precincts, resulting in about 80% of the spoiled votes (machines too eaten-up by the machine to count) just happening to be those cast by African-Americans, a 98% Democratic constituency. Now, you may grumble, "that's power politics for you, and besides, it wouldn't change the election. It's not like they actively defrauded successful votes." You would be wrong. In many cases on Election Night, ballots were left in unsecure locations (such as being unlocked and sitting in open view on a tabletop of a public place). In some cases, these were blatantly hypocritical-- the press was suddenly banished from one of the central tabulation buildings for electronic votes due to "FBI warnings of a code-red terrorist threat" (The FBI has since denied ever sending such a warning). However, the building was then left unsecured, including leaving the room with the central computer unlocked. That's no guarantee that something happened, but it's an awful lot of coincidental openings for something to have happened...with very little impartial oversight. You see, Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell was also the co-chair for Ohio's Bush-Cheney re-election campaign. When someone had raised the spectre of Florida's Katharine Harris, Blackwell seemed to actually be somewhat pleased with the comparison, noting that "obviously it couldn't have been bad for her career-- she's a congresswoman now." Blackwell has steadily stonewalled any investigation into the mess. Whenever investigators get a foothold in one of the precincts, a sudden order comes in that this precinct is now a restricted site, and they'll have to leave. Lawsuits claiming voter fraud have been pushed back again and again until Monday, when the electors could finally meet to cast Ohio's 20 electoral votes for Bush-- this despite the recount process that's going on. "Oh gawd, not a recount! I hate that word! Stupid stubborn Democrats!" Fun note: The Ohio Recount was not paid for by the Democratic Party-- John Kerry conceded, after all. The funds for the recount were raised by the Libertarian and Green parties, which certainly represent very different ideologies, because they both felt that something was genuinely amiss here. However, the recount, while being delayed as much as possible, is steadily being undermined. In Cuyahoga County, which contains one of the centers for the recount being held, people reported a suspicious individual from Triad Systems (which provides basically all the electronic voting machines that Diebold didn't) coming in to do "repairs" on their main computer, despite it functioning just fine and no one in the office sending in a maintainance request. He asked several suspicious questions during the repairs (but refused to answer a question on why his coat weighed more than 30 lbs.), including which counties would be the "test" counties for the recount (Under Ohio law, 3% of the votes, usually all from the same counties, are tallied and if there's a discrepency between them and previous official tally, a full hand recount takes place-- otherwise it's all electronic). When some idiot told him, he said "Okay" and made several more noisy adjustments. Interesting, eh? But you probably haven't heard much about this. A Congressional hearing on the matter has been opened led by Rep. John Conyers, but because he is in the minority party, he would require majority authorization for it to have legally-binding powers of subpeona...and of course they've denied it. The national GOP in D.C. as well as the state GOP in Ohio (working with Blackwell's offices) have continually denied any room for these hearings to take place, sometimes forcing them out onto the steps of the Capitol Building. They even forbade C-Span's cameras from filming the event-- networks interested in it had to smuggle their cameras past security. And the networks and newspapers aren't talking about it, for fear of more backlash from conservatives calling them liberally-biased (I'll go into this whole "liberal media bias" myth some other time). At every turn, the GOP has stonewalled using whatever legal and quasi-legal methods they can to keep investigations at bay, keep complaints out of the media, and keep everything quiet. The most generous reason I could give for this is that they honestly believe that the complaints are all absolute bunk and they want to protect the President's image during wartime. The more obvious, and likely, reason is that you don't work this hard to sweep things under the rug unless you actually have something to hide. If there was really nothing to these allegations, it would be best to aquiesce and let them beach themselves. However, the mistrust and suspicion being built up around this now is probably going to get out eventually-- I just wonder whether it will all turn out fine in the end, or whether it will be the flashpoint for a new Civil War. Current Mood: distressed (5 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, November 15th, 2004
4:35 pm	About the DiceServer Just letting everyone in on the update about getting the connectivity we need to resume Earthdawn et al: ICQ is still a no-go, but the good news is that DaFlipp was able to establish a permanent Dice Server at his home computer back in Boston. The bad news is that within a few days of this his parents had screwed up the computer all over again to where it stopped functioning. When he heads back home in another week or so, he'll probably review and correct the problems, or at least have it functioning until he heads back into the next semester. For more long-term solutions, I'm getting into a job that will probably pay very well, and if all goes as planned I may be able to move out within 6 months to my own place where I will no longer be behind this damned router and I will be able to host the DiceServer 24-7, and/or possibly use ICQ again. I look forward to this improbable and halcyon era, and hope that the rest of you will be there when it comes. Or at least be around for the next month. Current Mood: optimistic (3 Comments |Comment on this)
4:35 pm	Fun Weblink I thought that some people, especially DaFlipp and his friends, might get a kick out of this. And yes, the title is an indication of how much profanity permeates it, but it makes some hilarious points. Current Mood: amused (2 Comments |Comment on this)
4:35 pm	Why I Hate Tom DeLay The true title of this should be: Why I fucking hate Tom DeLay, but I felt I shouldn't include that in the official title. If you didn't read my just-posted section on my trip to Texas, you might want to in order to put this into perspective. Now then, perhaps some of you know what "gerrymandering" is-- getting legislative districts and precincts drawn up to specifically help your party, usually by making your own guys safe, but often also to endanger the other party's candidates. It's rarely a pretty sight, but it's a sadly common one, and is probably the key reason for why we have an average 95% incumbency rate (98% this year!). Instead of the voters choosing their representatives, the representatives choose their voters, ensuring that even in major shake-ups like 1990-1994, the vast majority of Congressmen retain their seats (oddly enough, this has actually turned the Senate into a MORE volatile body than the House). Redistricting is done every 10 years based on new census results, which determine which states gain population, and which ones lose it (actually or relatively). The redistricting is usually overseen by the state legislature, and yes, usually involves shifting things in favor of the party in power (which coincidentally finds itself there due to the last gerrymandering). So if this is so common, why am I so steamed about it? Well, for one thing, this Texas redistricting was done only TWO years after the last one rather than ten, because the courts decided the last one was drawn up in a too-partisan manner. Thus, the Republicans came back with an even WORSE set-up, engineered in no small part by the strong-arm interference of (national) Congressman Tom DeLay. His heavy involvement in this is one of numerous scandals that have landed him before various Ethics Commissions and Committees, so clearly it's not just Democrats who think that it's above and beyond the call of vicious. How nasty is it? At least six Democrats (possibly more that I don't know of) were specifically targeted for removal. Two of them were redrawn into the same district, forcing off at least one in the primary. Others had huge swaths of land taken away and were given hostile territory in return. For instance, Martin Frost of Dallas has always enjoyed solid Hispanic support and that of a good many Republicans due to his moderate views and high-ranking position (he's the longest-serving Southern Democrat in House), plus his Jewish faith has helped him with Dallas's bigger-than-you'd-think Jewish community. Large chunks of those were carved out and replaced with affluent upper-middle-class white neighborhoods, and just in case any Republicans were still thinking of voting for him, as well as to counter his warchest and incumbent status, they pitted four-term incumbent Pete Sessions against him to take him down. He went from winning with 55% of the vote to losing by around 43 to 56%. But hey, Frost had always been fairly aggressive in redistricting battles in the past, so perhaps you could say "Live by the sword, die by the sword." If only he were the only one. The worst case came with poor Nick Lampson who I spent most of my time working for. He usually won by 20-point margins in the town of Beaumont in Jefferson County, which has a 52% African-American population. He was a good man who drafted, sponsored, and got passed the Amber Alert system of laws after the local tragedy in his community, even though he had only been in office a few months at the time, and he became the chair of the new subcommittee set up on the issue even though he was in the minority party, because so many Republicans respected his work, too. But apparently not DeLay and the Texas House, because they chopped off a good section of Jefferson County, then connected it by a thin little noodle of land to much of Harris County, creating the appearance of barbells or the Gemini zodiac symbol. This new piece contained white suburbs off the east side of Houston, along with lots of rural white neighborhoods. The county as a whole is the site of the largest remaining KKK organization in the nation, and includes in its borders that town where a black man was caught in a noose and then drug to death from a pick-up truck a few years back. They don't take kindly to n*****-lovers out in Harris, and one of Lampson's fliers, which featured him with a group of black and white children, was actually used AGAINST him in some parts there. For Lampson's opponent, since they could hardly paint him "soft on crime" even as Amber Alerts were helping collar criminals up to election day and beyond, they transplanted Ted Poe into the district. Poe was a judge who gained national attention through his unorthodox "just punishments," such as forcing a thief to walk streets with a sandwich board on announcing his status as a convicted criminal. While the rhetorical value of these punishments may appeal to some, most were often weak copies of similar punishments handed out by other judges around him that Poe copied and got the credit for, due to his relentless self-promotion (It's worth noting that he got his Bachelor's not in Law but in Political Science, so clearly he intended to use the Bench as a stepping stone into a political career for quite some time). In the end, Lampson went from winning by 20-point margins to losing by a 30-point one despite not having had a single scandal in his tenure and being well-respected by both sides of the isle. Something is wrong here. Just in case the arena wasn't steeped enough against the Democrats, the GOP brought its bludgeoning tool of the year down here and used it to merciless full effect. "_______ supports homosexual marriage!" This was repeated at every oppurtunity in huge billboards no matter how grossly untrue it was. In a televized and radio-broadcast debate between Poe and Lampson, Lamspon even point-blank said that he did NOT support gay marriage and actively opposed it. But clearly he's lying-- anyone scurrilous enough to support gay marriage is capable of anything, after all. Coincidentally enough, Martin Frost also apparently supported it despite his protestations. Did you know that Stenholm of western Texas supports gay marriage? He sure as hell didn't. Here was the model of a conservative old-school Democrat, the one who lead other Democrats in the attempt to impeach President Clinton and one of that administration's most strident critics that conservatives loved to quote due to the D noted between his name and district. But in the end, that D was all that mattered, so out he went. Ironically enough, the only member of the targeted Texas Democratic delegation that DID survive was the Chet Edwards, the only one of them who actually DOES support the idea of gay civil unions (though not official "marriage"). In other words, people who think that the old corrupt politics are a thing of the past, that racism effectively no longer exists except as a card played by hypocritical liberals, should come down to the South for re-education. Consider that while they could have easily targeted and deleted a few other Congressmen, they specifically went after all the remaining white Texas Democrats. No black or hispanic ones were besieged. Because the southern arm of the GOP doesn't just seek to make the Democratic Party the minority party, they want them to be the party OF minorities. Anyone who doesn't fit that convenient mold must be done away with, because the color of one's skin remains a strong issue of many Southerners for their candidates. Those rare Hispanic and super-rare Black candidates that run within the GOP are rubbed out in primaries that reak of race-baiting, just to keep things color-coded on both ends. This helps in other ends such as challenging every single Hispanic that comes to the polls to present absolute proof that they are U.S. citizens no matter how thick of a Texas accent they may have, because as long as the parties are divided by color you don't have to worry as much about denying your own members the ability to vote. It particularly showed up in Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona (let us not forget that NM was a "swing-state" this year around) that thousands upon thousands of Hispanics could not prove their nationality to the full satisfaction of their challengers, and thus were consigned to "provisional ballots." Provisional ballots, of course, are only counted on the whim of those in charge, and are essentially useless. Fun note: The New Mexico Presidential vote margin by which Bush won by was less than half the number of provisional ballots cast, and more than three times the number of said ballots were handed out this year, most on no better basis than "Gonzalez" don't sound like a REAL 'merican's name. I'll do a third entry about the Presidential race stuff that I've only grazed the side of here, but I SHOULd say that not all the vote fraud in Dixie is race-based. I was schooled in several strategies I hadn't even heard of before, such as on our canvassing lists of new voters when we'd find a house where apparently seven people with all different last names live. And said house did not exist. I was told that it's a common practice, at least in Texas, for the rich to buy up various uninhabited or abandoned properties and then suit them up with batches of imaginary inhabitants, usually about 3 months before the deadline to register to vote. These newcomers are extraordinarily reliable voters, yet they always seem to disappear a few months after the election....This practice was highly common up until the 70's, when some of the Democrats who ruled the oversight boards began to be replaced with Republicans. It's made a resurgence in the last 10 years now that Republicans rule those boards....many of the older members having switched parties in the 20-year interim. Forgive my liberal bias, but this only confirms my previous opinion: I hate the South. Current Mood: infuriated (2 Comments |Comment on this)
4:35 pm	Unreasonably Huge Update / Rant I've been procrastinating on this for awhile, but I thought I'd finally sit down and type out in full my experiences of the past month where anyone who's vaguely interested in my life can see. As many of you know, after nearly 10 months of sitting around, sending out resumes and applications, buzzing contacts, and so forth trying to get a job, I am deluged all at once by people from the DCCC (Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee or D-Triple-C) wanting me to help out with GOTV (Get Out The Vote) efforts in Texas, Oklahoma, Colorado, and South Carolina. I went with Texas because A) They asked first, B) They had the seemingly nicest set-up offered, and C) I was already interested in the races I'd be working on down there. So exactly one month ago today, I drove down to Dallas to work for the DCCC and help Martin Frost, although we were technically separate from his campaign, with all the ups (different and less limited fundraising and expenditures) and downs (inability to coordinate with the "real" campaign in any effective way) that implies. The set-up seemed fairly nice on the outside, what with them paying for our upkeep at a Howard Johnson's chain of hotels (I can't seem to remember what this particular one was), as well as giving us a $380 stipend to enjoy the local food, not including the hotel's complimentary (but highly repetetive) breakfast. In exchange, we had to work our asses off (or more accurately, the skin off our feet) walking around doing canvassing (door-to-door housecalls and surveys) and visibility (holding up signs and cheerleading people into voting, especially early voting) for anywhere from 8-14 hours per day. This wouldn't be too bad in normal fall weather. However, Texas does not HAVE Fall weather. Instead of Autumn, Winter, Spring, and Summer, they have Summer, Summer Lite, Summer 2, and The Surface of the Planet Mercury. So the AVERAGE temperature while I was out and about down there was around 93 degrees Farenheit. At least they had gallons and gallons of bottled water for us, but it still royally sucked. Plus, I had come down there with an egregiously over-dressed wardrobe, full of business suits, nice shirts and pants, and had even taken my mom's foolish suggestion of bringing along my nice-looking flannel shirts. On the other hand, they had this tendency to ask us to wear our campaign T-shirts every possible day no matter how badly they reeked, so it didn't really matter that my wardrobe was somewhat limited. Then, after a week there, they needed to shift several people down to Beaumont, Texas to work on another campaign, and asked who might be willing to go. Since virtually everyone wanted to stay, and I was among those who said I would be fine with either staying or going, I was one of the first picked, which 1) Nixed the Friday vacation day that I was supposed to have (my team was the only one that didn't get one), and 2) Kept me from zipping back to Wichita to perhaps re-equip myself. Beaumont, it turns out, is almost as far away from Dallas as Wichita is, but in basically the other direction, heading right out near the Louisiana border too. So along with an injection of Louisiana culture (not unwelcome, mind you), I also got a chunk of 'isiana humidity to go with my Texas heat. It was given over to brief rain storms each day, not enough to cool things down usually, but enough to turn the outdoors into a virtual sauna for the next hour or so after it rained (it was difficult to BREATHE out there). And the mosquitos were evil enough to hospitalize one of my (new) teammates for a few hours. All of it seemed worth it, however. I was making lots of contacts with several people who were actually Legislative Assistants, Committee staffers, and lobbyists on Capitol Hill. Most of them were using up their official vacation times to come down here and suffer through this crap to try and get themselves back in the Majority. These were incredibly dedicated, good-hearted people that I was honored to work with. But of course, it was more of a symbolic last stand then a resurgence, sadly, because the stage was set overwhelmingly against us. More on that next installment. Current Mood: cynical (Comment on this)
Saturday, October 9th, 2004
3:02 am	Finally On the Trail Sorry to disappoint all those folks waiting for the return of my GM'ing, but it appears that my career has finally activated. On Friday (Oct. 15th) I will be down in Texas until the day after the Election to help with a massive GOTV (Get Out The Vote) program. All expenses paid, but I'll naturally be incommunicado until after it's over. Depending on whether they get back to me or not, I may be working in Oklahoma until then. If not, I'll be on until then. (Comment on this)
Friday, September 24th, 2004
11:19 pm	A Bridge Back I've decided, not entirely of my own volition, to suspend my FFXI account at the end of the month. I don't have any way to pay for it, and my parents have made it clear that they would distinctly prefer Josh not spot me for it. As long as I can revive the account within 3 months, my characters will still be waiting for me when I get back. In turn, this will free up a lot more time for me to attend to the rest of my life, including dusting off my Earthdawn books and getting back into those games. I've also concocted a plan for the future that will hopefully restore my FFXI account in time, but that lies in the future. A week from now, I'll be back on AOL much more, ready to resume people's ED campaigns. Go ahead and reply to this post with what times might be best for you. Current Mood: melancholy (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, September 22nd, 2004
7:23 pm	Serious Political Message I'm in a very serious mood after much thinking and writing, and I've sent this edited-down issue of my thoughts to the local upstanding paper, in hopes that it might get printed, and hell, maybe even get beyond Kansas. What follows is a very serious, down-to-earth, and honest plea. Political Correctness is back with a vengeance. Many people don’t see it, though, because they are on the supposedly "safe" side of it now, or else were before and don’t recognize its current incarnation. Because this is not the old P.C. of the Left, but a new one of the Right. Years ago, you could not argue with anything the Left proposed for fear of being labeled a Racist or a throw-back to a more primitive time. No nuance was allowed, no slight deviation from the course prescribed by the most ideological champions of that cause, or else you were no better than Orville Faubus or Hitler. Now, the Right, or at least key right-wingers in the current administration, has assumed that strategy. They put forth a decree that we shall, for instance, invade Iraq, and anyone, ANYONE who stands in their way, or does not jump on the bandwagon, or even agrees but thinks that the battle plan could use tweaking, is condemned as Commie Liberal Traitor. So many modern Republicans or just conservatives came to their current alignment through disgust with the blind adherence to the P.C. principles of the past, and so I ask them whether they would betray themselves by bowing down to this horrific abomination of thought in its new form. Perhaps some might say that it’s fine, if it pushes through certain ideals that the Right has long had denied them. I contend that ultimately this will snap back to harm the Right as much as the old P.C. view harmed the Left. Any "reforms" made under this wave of intellectual intolerance will be twisted parodies of what they could have been under a more pluralistic, thoughtful body politick. Because the P.C. thought process does not only cow its enemies, it poisons its allies. If you need further example, look at how Iraq stands today. No one can honestly say that its current state is what we were ideally shooting for, and optimistic talk about the future sounds more like a plea than prophecy. This was wrought, in large part, because the engineers of this war would not heed ANY criticism, not even constructive criticism, without turning on and vilifying their would-be helpers as minions of Saddam. To suggest that the Iraqi people would greet us with anything less than a parade of flowers, and to make corrections in the battle plan accordingly, was to condemn the U.S. to a mushroom cloud future when Hussein had his weapons ready. Even now, to suggest any slight deviation from our current course is considered traitorous, "giving aid and comfort to the enemy" and so forth. Is this the future we want? And even if you agree in principle with everything this Administration has done, don’t think it will last. The sad lesson from the Left’s P.C. years is that ultimately, no one is safe. The adherents to the Cause are challenged to more and more feats of ideological rigidity and hyperbole, until even the once-faithful are charged with treason once their common sense kicks in. The way to stop it is clear: we have to eject the current Administration much like amputating a gangrenous limb, before it spreads to the rest of the body. For many Republicans and conservatives, I understand how brutally painful that would be, but I promise you that you can recover, that it is not the doomsday end the P.C. monster preaches if your candidate loses this election. John Kerry is, after all, a man of moderate temper and politics, especially compared to the liberals of years past. He, like you may be, is a victim of the current climate-- he is accused of taking "both sides on every issue," as though there were ONLY two options in any given situation; such as proceeding the Bush way or surrendering, embracing Affirmative Action or returning to the slave-owning days, absolute government control or total anarchy. The language of dichotomy is the language of the Beast. For the future of the Republican Party and America as a whole, I plead for you to re-examine John Kerry. You may disagree with him on several issues, but at least you will never be called a traitor for doing so. (1 Comment |Comment on this)