Thoughts provoked by an old house in need of renovation, its garden, a marriage lived within its walls, and of a retired Thoroughbred race horse named Fibs and Flannel.
Update 2: I have realized that Lou Dobbs was involved in the Obama waffles business. I am not going to place Dobbs in full context for this, but take this segment on face value. I am also very tired. I will consider it further.
Lou "I feel very good about this vote today" Dobbs on CNN, with Columbia University Henry H. Kaufman Professor of Financial Institutions and co-director of the American Enterprise Institute's project of financial deregulation, Charles "tax-payers in a 'first loss' position" Calomiris, University of Maryland Robert H. Smith School of Business economist and professor Peter "the gravy train is over... they're gonna' have to pay for it" Morici, and David "this was a great day for democratic government" Cay Johnston, author of No Free Lunch:
"We are watching the concentration of commercial banking in America. This is un-American." -- Lou Dobbs, CNN, September 30, 2008
So, I don't feel like such an idiot as some who accused me of not understanding that the fact that credit would run dry, along with the ATM machines of America was the most important thing. No, getting the right bail-out package, that gives the American tax-payers an "equity investment" is. Like Calomiris says, this package started at the wrong place.
"That's the arrogance, certainly, of the Bush administration, but that's something we're used to whether it be with this administration or the other, but the ignorance of the leadership of this congress not to demand those hearings, I cannot even begin to understand." -- Lou Dobbs
Labs swim, right? Not this one, nor her mother. Defective labs.
Joachim came today to meet about the house (remember him? Goes back awhile, I know). He had his dog, Bandit, with him. Bandit's a 9-month-old Griffon Boulet, and reminded me of all the reasons I am so glad Baccarat is 2. He was out in the car, waiting, so I told him to feel free to bring him with him to the house.
All dogs welcome.
Ce fut de la folie! They raced in circles around and around le basin de poissons, jumped, frollicked and made merry with Rapide, who loves nothing more than to have canine visitors to the house, while Joachim and I reviewed the state of the renovations and discussed political philisophy (he's worse than I am). Sitting here in my ruin of a house, the ironing board loaded down with folded laundry, dust from the work covering the windows, papers all around me, and the vacuum cleaner, waiting expectantly over in the living room, looking at my drawings and the pictures I took last week of the house in Les Loges, near Etretat -- if you zoom in, it's on the D940, heading to Bordeaux St. Clare, on the south side of the road, just before la rue du Jardinet; you can't really see it, though, because they have put a nice thick yellow line along the road, right on top of the roofs --, Bandit zooms through the door.
"Mais qu'est ce qui s'est passé? Bandit est tout mouillé!" [trans: But what's happened? Bandit's soaking wet!]
That was the understatement of the day. Bandit was not only soaking wet, all of his poils laineux splastered to his thin frame, he was covered in smelly muck from the bottom of the fish basin, and he knew he had done a bad thing.
Merde.
Joachim grabbed the hose, while I tried to move him forward by the collar. He wasn't having anything to do with the hose-shower idea.
"Attendez, je vais chercher une laisse."
"Une laisse, bonne idée," he muttered sort of helplessly as I darted back into the living room and returned to attach it. Joachim had the collar, rather inexplicably in his hand, while Bandit lay at his feet, doing his best submissive dog act.
I took over. Bandit got a shower. It was like he had come out of The Bog of Eternal Stench, the bog monster. Green-brown slimy smelly muck ran from his fur, coating the grass at his feet, while he looked at me pathetically. Smells baaaaad!
"Oui, Bandit, tu dois avoir une douche! Joachim, voulez-vous que je cherche le shampoin?" he stammered something about shampoo, and I sent him (what is it with men in a crisis, anyway?) around to the side of the house by the petite maison to grab the pool towel I had left there, sitting in a planting pot. Never mind. I don't put much where it belongs.
The reeds in the basin were lying every which way, a clear path of trompled ones lying flat against the water and the edges of the basin where Bandit had flailed across the entire thing. The fish looked stunned. They had probably just started to get over the days when Baccarat did the same thing. Bandit was not much dryer, and didn't smell a whole lot better. He looked better, though.
Feeling not terribly reassured this wasn't going to repeat itself, we headed back inside to finish the meeting. The dogs romped, ran in and out, pestered the cats, got batted back with hisses and paws, and on we talked, about windows, insulation, ideas and the bank failures and failure of the spirit of man as responsible overlord until it was really time to do something more productive with our afternoons. Joachim called Bandit, and I walked them to the car without it ever once occuring to me that Baccarat was nowhere to be seen.
....
Où est Baccarat?
It wasn't even when I walked back in the house that it struck me that there was something wrong with the picture. It took a moment before the peace struck me as... odd. There were only the cats, milling around.
I stuck my head out the door. Nothing.
I listened. Nothing.
"Rapide, Baccarat?" Nothing. "Rapide? Baccarat?" Not a sound. Just the leaves rustling overhead in the twin linden trees. I moved closer to the stair to the bottom of the garden, feeling almost scared. What had happened? They should be there. They should come bounding from wherever they were.
I looked toward the stair, "Rap --", there she was. Lumbering up the stairs, alone. I looked behind me, no Baccarat. Where was she? I hadn't seen her go out the gate.
"Baccarat? Baccarat!" There was a tiny noise, a whimpering coming from below me. It was like the time I dared not look down the cellar stairs when I couldn't find my six-month-old brother.
"Baccarat! Où es tu? Baccarat!" The whimpering continued. I was almost at the bottom. Had Bandit bitten her? I hadn't heard anything. Had she fallen? The pool --
I hurried through the shurbbery, and there, on the far side of the pool, there was her black head, sticking up between the edge of the pool cover and the side of the pool, her body completely lost below the cover under water.
"Baccarat! J'arrive, j'arrive, j'arrive." She tried to turn her head to look at me, but if she did, her paws slipped from the crown of the pool. "Ma Baccarat, mais qu'est-ce qu'il t'arrive?" Afraid to see her fall even as I hurried around the pool to her, I grabbed her by the elbows, my arms along her front legs, trying to support her body's weight with my hands and arms as I pulled her out. She looked at me as if to say, "You're not going to pull my arms out of their sockets, are you?"
She couldn't even help me. She was standing on tip-toe, her feet having found the wall of the pool where it slopes down to meet the pool bottom, her front paws pressed to the pool deck to stay upright. When I got her out, she nearly collapsed. She was exhausted. She was cold.
How long had she been there? A half hour? An hour? It was beyond me to understand why she hadn't barked, unless she figured I'd just yell down to her to be quiet.
Actually, I think she did, now that I write this and remember back. I had shouted for her de se taire [trans: be quiet] once. She had been there a long time. Why hadn't Rapide come to find me, aggitated, unless she was afraid to leave Baccarat?
What I knew was that this afternoon, I nearly lost my Baccarat. She nearly drowned because she couldn't swim under the pool cover to find the stairs out. If she had gotten too tired. If she had slipped and been too tired.
Ma Baccarat. Ca va maintenant. Elle va bien. Je ne sais pas si elle n'ira plus jamais près de la piscine. ....
It's a chill fall day, wind blowing through moments of rain spit onto the paving stones and dry lawn. No redeeming atmospheric quality. It's probably the same over Wall Street right now.
There's a nasty debate taking place, with Obama supporters -- ones we don't hear all that much from on the boards, by the way, some of the less pleasant and cheery voices --, choosing their sides for battle. Those who say, "I remind you that Markets are falling -- NOW. This is not fantasy," to which I say, "Thank you, I was thinking I might have been sleeping and having a bad dream these last few days," except that anyone with a functioning neuron knew where les libéraux, in the wonderful European sense of the term, "free market capitalists", were taking our economy. And, those who think this bail-out plan was wrong-minded and stunk. Like Kaptor and Kucinich.
I can hear the howls. The gnashing of teeth, ready to rip into me. How dare I not let my government rush in to save Wall Street? My thought: I think they have the collective wealth invested in tax-free shelters to make a fair-sized dent in the $700 billion they need to pick up their fallen castles of cards. Maybe they can pass a hat around among present and retired CEO's and the Wall Street managing directors, then they can protect the mortgages that never should have been sold, reregulate themselves, and then maybe come asking for a little tax-payer help.
How come they only want us to play when their chips are down? I lived close to these guys. I know how their reptilian minds work. I know what gets them going, and I know what they think of me, when they do. I also know that the regular guy isn't uniformly a saint, nor the rich all pigs (I have managed to insult repiltes and pigs one tiny paragraph). I just know there aren't any saints pulling down the big bonuses on Wall Street, or in any investment banking firm attached to it.
These guys don't even have to pretend anything other than their disdain. They're proud of it.
I'll tell this story one more time. In 1992, my son was 1 year old, and there was no work in architecture. Friends in the financial sector helped me to find a job in an investment management firm in Fairfield County, Connecticut, in their back office, working out the margin calls on the phone with Bear Sterns, their bank, on the hedge and asset-backed securities funds. Those are the ones where your mortgage is used as collateral for the security. The reasoning was that there is nothing more secure than a person's home mortgage. That was the thinking back in the early 1990's.
The owner of the firm was a raving lunatic Republican. Not a nice Republican you can respect, no. He lived on cans of Diet Coke, which I had to buy, filling the cart with six-packs to fill the refrigerator, and then the closet for over-stock. The office overlooked the Long Island Sound, on Stamford pier, and as I put the cans in the fridge, I cut the plastic rings that hold the six-pack together. Everyone knew that they harm the creatures of the sound. One day he walked in for a can and saw me with the scissors halfway through the rings.
"What are you doing?" he asked, that light coming into his eyes and his brow pulsing a deeper shade of crimson.
"Cutting the plastic rings, Jon." You hold your ground with your own disgust.
"So, now you're an animal-loving, lesbian Democrat!" he hooted, raising an eyebrow and the corner of his lip in a snide laugh, looking right into my eyes to make sure I saw exactly what he thought of me, before shaking his head and cackling all the way back to his office.
I went to Barnard. That explains the lesbian part.
One morning, a few weeks later at tax time, he called me back into his office as I was leaving, having placed his mail right where he likes. I took pleasure in doing things exactly the way he liked. It drove him nuts. I thought he was going to show me the latest morning fax from Bear, with the latest Hillary joke (Why is Chelsea Clinton so ugly? Because her mother's Hillary Clinton and her father's Janet Reno).
"I'm a patriot," he announced. I settled on my feet and hips. It wasn't going to end there, so I might as well be comfortable to withstand the shock of the next idiotic, insensitive thing that would issue forth from him. I nodded, hoping still I might be wrong. I might be released. He waited for the question he wanted. When it didn't come, he asked it himself. It wasn't rhetorical.
"Do you know why I am a good American?" I couldn't get away without a reply this time.
"No." But I'm sure you're about to tell me, I thought. That was the whole point of having me there.
"Ha-ha! I'm a good American because," I could hear him wishing for a drum roll, building up his voice to replace it, "I don't pay any taxes, but you do!" He was beside himself with delight.
"How stupid of me, Jon." I should be a better American. Mental note.
"I am a patriotic American because I am a tax attorney, and I read every letter of the US tax code, and I know every loophole put there for me to use." He watched me to see the effect of his declaration, before adding soncoup de grâce, "Do you know what a tax shelter is?"
He wished I were a perfect idiot. It made him crazy that I wasn't. If I hadn't known, he never would have called me in for this exhibition of his Republican credentials. This was because my presence made him ill at ease. My Democratic presence in his office. Add to that that I was a single mother and an out-of-work architect, at least as well-educated as he was, and the only way left for him to cope with his anxiety was to crow like a rooster.
"Of course." He told me anyway, adding that that is precisely where all his money goes, "and now I am going to call my tax accountant!"
I know. This is just one guy, a jerk alright, but just one really big jerk. They're not all like that.
No, there are worse, but I shouldn't use my stories up all at once. One of the worse still was at AIG Investment Management, later, when I had returned to architecture and they were our client. Hm. Didn't AIG fail recently, too?
So, now we are supposed to trust them to fix what they have broken, in their attempt to get as much as they possibly could out of the financial system. They went too far. We could see it, but they couldn't?
Suppose your wilful young child, having a crise, breaks all the toys in his room in a fury. How do you teach him to take care of what is important to him? Do you go out and treat him to an afternoon at Toys 'R Us to replace everything he destroyed on your run-up Visa card at 14.99% interest (damn, that's 19.99% -- when the hell did that happen?), or do you ask him to clean up his room and then sit in it for awhile, request an apology and remorse, let him learn the true meaning of boredom, and then work out a plan to replace his objects of amusement, learning they have value?
This is a telling issue. It gets even the Obama supporters using the f-word. Money. Touchy, touchy.
It's easier for me, perhaps. I have less to lose, and I know the world is far older than I am. The sky won't fall, but our little lives might change under it, where nothing is new on earth, nor in heaven, but I am going to let Michael Moore say it, for he did it so well today.
....
Cogratulations, Corporate Crime Fighters, Coup Averted for Three Days!
Michael Moore's letterto us on the failure of the Bail-out bill in the House
Friends,
Everyone said the bill would pass. The masters of the universe were already making celebratory dinner reservations at Manhattan's finest restaurants. Personal shoppers in Dallas and Atlanta were dispatched to do the early Christmas gifting. Mad Men of Chicago and Miami were popping corks and toasting each other long before the morning latte run.
But what they didn't know was that hundreds of thousands of Americans woke up yesterday morning and decided it was time for revolt. The politicians never saw it coming. Millions of phone calls and emails hit Congress so hard it was as if Marshall Dillon, Elliot Ness and Dog the Bounty Hunter had descended on D.C. to stop the looting and arrest the thieves.
The Corporate Crime of the Century was halted by a vote of 228 to 205. It was rare and historic; no one could remember a time when a bill suppor ted by the president and the leadership of both parties went down in defeat. That just never happens.
A lot of people are wondering why the right wing of the Republican Party joined with the left wing of the Democratic Party in voting down the thievery. Forty percent of Democrats and two-thirds of Republicans voted against the bill.
Here's what happened:
The presidential race may still be close in the polls, but the Congressional races are pointing toward a landslide for the Democrats. Few dispute the prediction that the Republicans are in for a whoopin' on November 4th. Up to 30 Republican House seats could be lost in what would be a stunning repudiation of their agenda.
The Republican reps are so scared of losing their seats, when this "financial crisis" reared its head two weeks ago, they realized they had just been handed their one and only chance to separate themselves from Bush before the election, while doing something that would make them look like they were on the side of "the people."
Watching C-Span yesterday morning was one of the best comedy shows I'd seen in ages. There they were, one Republican after another who had backed the war and sunk the country into record debt, who had voted to kill every regulation that would have kept Wall Street in check -- there they were, now crying foul and standing up for the little guy! One after another, they stood at the microphone on the House floor and threw Bush under the bus, under the train (even though they had voted to kill off our nation's trains, too), heck, they would've thrown him under the rising waters of the Lower Ninth Ward if they could've conjured up another hurricane. You know how your dog acts when sprayed by a skunk? He howls and runs around trying to shake it off, rubbing and rolling himself on every piece of your carpet, trying to get rid of the stench. That's what it looked like on the Republican side of the aisle yesterday, and it was a sight to behold.
The 95 brave Dems who broke with Barney Frank and Chris Dodd were the real heroes, just like those few who stood up and voted against the war in October of 2002. Watch the remarks from yesterday of Reps. Marcy Kaptur, Sheila Jackson Lee, and Dennis Kucinich. They spoke the truth.
The Dems who voted for the giveaway did so mostly because they were scared by the threats of Wall Street, that if the rich didn't get their handout, the market would go nuts and then it's bye-bye stock-based pension and retirement funds.
And guess what? That's exactly what Wall Street did! The largest, single-day drop in the Dow in the history of the New York Stock exchange. The news anchors last night screamed it out: Americans just lost 1.2 trillion dollars in the stock market!! It's a financial Pearl Harbor! The sky is falling! Bird flu! Killer Bees!
Of course, sane people know that nobody "lost" anything yesterday, that stocks go up and down and this too shall pass because the rich will now buy low, hold, then sell off, then buy low again.
But for now, Wall Street and its propaganda arm (the networks and media it owns) will continue to try and scare the bejesus out of you. It will be harder to get a loan. Some people will lose their jobs. A weak nation of wimps won't last long under this torture. Or will we? Is this our line in the sand?
Here's my guess: The Democratic leadership in the House secretly hoped all along that this lousy bill would go down. With Bush's proposals shredded, the Dems knew they could then write their own bill that favors the average American, not the upper 10% who were hoping for another kegger of gold.
So the ball is in the Democrats' hands. The gun from Wall Street remains at their head. Before they mak e their next move, let me tell you what the media kept silent about while this bill was being debated:
1. The bailout bill had NO enforcement provisions for the so-called oversight group that was going to monitor Wall Street's spending of the $700 billion;
2. It had NO penalties, fines or imprisonment for any executive who might steal any of the people's money;
3. It did NOTHING to force banks and lenders to rewrite people's mortgages to avoid foreclosures -- this bill would not have stopped ONE foreclosure!;
4. It had NO teeth anywhere in the entire piece of legislation, using words like "suggested" when referring to the government being paid back for the bailout;
5. Over 200 economists wrote to Congress and said this bill might actually WORSEN the "financial crisis" and cause even MORE of a meltdown.
Put a fork in this slab of pork. I t's over. Now it is time for our side to state very clearly the laws WE want passed. I will send you my proposals later today. We've bought ourselves less than 72 hours.
Or, as someone else put it, what's the point of using a tea-cup to bail out the boat when the water is up to the gunwhales?
That $700 billion? It's debt we're throwing to debt to keep a very sick system functioning in fantasy land.
Her suggestion?
... while all the negotiations were going on yesterday, there were many investment lobbyists who wanted to profit from this bailout. That is not what we should be doing. We need to set up any relief package so that taxpayers become investors and get every penny back once the markets recover. That seems to be the only logical thing to do.
In other words, let us be our bankers' bankers and let it work for us. ....
They were so nice, all the OC's! That, for the newly initiated, means Original CHAOS. CHAOS means "Citizens hanging around the Obama sign." We -- I like to count myself among them now -- call ourselves the Sidewalk People.
The speed of chat was frenetic! There, they had enjoyed their nice quiet groups of people hanging out to keep an eye on Preston and his mother's ("Teach") sign, and suddenly, thanks to Christopher Rhoads, there were scores of people new to the chat room. It was my first time in a chat room, too. I was flabbergasted. The person who volunteered to moderate asked for a few "moment of silence"'s. I didn't get it the first time, but I did see all the "Shhh"'s, and figured something was up.
I tried to ask politely. It's nice to learn the etiquette of a new place you are visiting, and its people. I was very graciously told that the moderator volunteer had asked for a "moment of silence" to give everyone a break, to go to the toilet, rest their fingers, drink something ("coffee only this morning!" one person typed).
The moderator also provided warnings for rude language, smears of any type, political, racial or religious, and hunted trolls.
Suddenly, a new chat window opened, and (mercifully) only one person was there. BelgianChaos. She is a translator and teaches university in Paris, although she lives in Belgium and is from somewhere totally different. We were in the middle of an exchange, and poof! There she was, with everyone else gone. "She" I said, but I am not sure "she" said anything to tell me "she" wasn't "he".
"How did that happen?" I typed.
"You double click on the name of the person with whom you'd like to chat and the window opens," came the reply. "To return to the chat, you hit the button on the top left. #-obama-sign-CCTV-1."
Right now there are 206 people chatting, and nearly 290 people watching. Germany, USA, France, Finland. Earlier, there was a roll call of the people chatting who were all in Texas.
I double-clicked on a name. The volunteer moderator. The law student from the WSJ piece.
Fleur_de_Paris : Do you take turns doing what you are doing? 07:11 CrazyFinn : yes, it is 07:11 CrazyFinn : not really 07:11 CrazyFinn : everyone just chimes in 07:12 Fleur_de_Paris : Moderating? 07:12 CrazyFinn : oh that. i guess it goes according to who's here 07:12 Fleur_de_Paris : Are you able to read EVERYthing everyone writes? 07:12 CrazyFinn : not at all 07:12 Fleur_de_Paris : chuckling 07:12 CrazyFinn : only few lines 07:13 Fleur_de_Paris : I saw you threaten a few with banishment, and I wondered how you caught everything that was said 07:13 CrazyFinn : i was just looking at the numbers 07:13 CrazyFinn : but i missed the conversations completely 07:13 CrazyFinn : i was hunting trolls
There was Hen, Sarjo, OWL, Suzy, PTP2, POTS, Polder, Skein, Jen, Pax, STL, and so many others. They'd probably appreciate it if you all didn't rush to join and chat, since today was a little overwhelming, but you can be sure they'll all say hi if you do, and welcome you. The banner over the chat screen read, "Welcome, readers of the Wall Street Journal".
They even say "bye", one by one, as you leave, if you tell them you are.
Hen asked for triple cream brie, St. Honoré, from the grocery store. PTP2 prefers rice milk to regular cow's milk (she -- there I go again with the "she" -- says you get used to it, and it's easier on the tummy), and Suzy sent me her recipe for French Onion Soup (see bottom of post).
I had a great time on the sidewalk. I think I'll drop in again tomorrow.
This recipe is from allrecipes.com.....they have many versions, but this is the one I use......bon apetite!!
4 tablespoons butter
1 teaspoon salt
2 large red onions, thinly sliced
2 large sweet onions, thinly sliced
1 (48 fluid ounce) can beef broth
1 (14 ounce) can beef consume
1/2 cup red wine
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
2 sprigs fresh parsley
1 sprig fresh thyme leaves
1 bay leaf
1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar
salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
4 thick slices French or Italian bread
8 slices Gruyere or Swiss cheese slices, room temperature
1/2 cup shredded Asiago or mozzarella cheese, room temperature
4 pinches paprika
Directions:
Melt butter in a large pot over medium-high heat. Stir in salt, red onions and sweet onions. Cook 35 minutes, stirring frequently, until onions are caramelized and almost syrupy.
Mix chicken broth, beef broth, red wine and Worcestershire sauce into pot. Bundle the parsley, thyme, and bay leaf with twine and place in pot. Simmer over medium heat for 20 minutes, stirring occassionally. Remove and discard the herbs. Reduce the heat to low, mix in vinegar and season with salt and pepper. Cover and keep over low heat to stay hot while you prepare the bread.
Preheat oven broiler. Arrange bread slices on a baking sheet and broil 3 minutes, turning once, until well toasted on both sides. Remove from heat; do not turn off broiler.
Arrange 4 large oven safe bowlsor crocks on a rimmed baking sheet. Fill each bowl 2/3 full with hot soup. Top each bowl with 1 slice toasted bread, 2 slices Gruyère cheeseand 1/4 of the Asiago or mozzarella cheese. Sprinkle a little bit of paprika over the top of each one.
Broil 5 minutes, or until bubbly and golden brown. As it sofetns, the cheese will cascade over the sides of the crock and form a beautifully melted crusty seal. Serve immediately.
It's our 6th wedding anniversary. Je pense que je chercherai du champagne aussi.
But, I've only got wasabe peas.
"Cheers!" says Audouin.
"Cheers? Tu n'as rien de plus romantique à me dire?"
"Je t'aime. Je te l'ai dit là, tout à l'heure." Then he reminded me of the story of a great-Uncle of a friend, one of his two best men at our wedding (they really wanted this one to stick).
"It was a long time ago, back when women married while they were still virgins," he added -- ever the doctor and comedian. "On their wedding night, before bedding his bride for the first time, he said to her, 'Je t'aime. I tell you that now once for our whole marriage. I will not say it again.'" Yah, that should do it.
Update: I just couldn't stop myself from adding the link (scroll down) to her BFF from North Carolina, Miss North Carolina. Insight into Palin as runner up for Miss Alaska?
Oh, what do I do? Update the post of the interview, or just make a new one giving this the very, very special place it deserves?
Can I phone a friend?
Comedy is so much better and smarter than reality, and it just doesn't get better than this, or Palin just doesn't get better than when Fey does her. Remember when everyone was worried the election was about to get unfunny because Obama just isn't comedy material? Want Obama in a Punch Line? First, Find a Joke That was back on July 15, before anyone but McCain's camp and GOP visionaries knew who Sarah Palin is.
Well, saved by Sarah! Or Tina. Or, Tina as Sarah.
Tina Fey as Sarah Palin, SNL September 27
On Alaska's relationship to Russia:
FEY AS PALIN: "Every morning, when Alaskans wake up, one of the first things they do is look outside to see if there's any Russians hanging around, if there are y'gotta' go up to them and ask, 'What are y' doin' here?' and if they can't give y'a good reason then, if they can't then it's our responsiblity to say, y'know, 'Shoo! Get back over there.'"
And on the Wall Street bank bail-out:
FEY AS PALIN: "Like every American I'm speaking with, we're ill about this. We're saying, 'Hey, why bail out Fanny and Freddie and not me?' But ultimately what the bailout does is, help those that are concerned about the healthcare reform that is needed to help shore up our economy to help...uh...it's gotta be all about job creation, too. Also, too, shoring up our economy and putting Fannie and Freddy back on the right track and so healthcare reform and reducing taxes and reigning in spending...'cause Barack Obama, y'know...has got to accompany tax reductions and tax relief for Americans, also, having a dollar value meal at restaurants. That's gonna help. But one in five jobs being created today under the umbrella of job creation. That, you know...Also..."
I think I gave the same answer at my interview for Yale with the alumna who seemed to think I was better prepared to be governor of Alaska than attend her alma mater. Thank God Barnard didn't ask.
Wait, how did George get past those interviewers? Oh! Right, his legacy.
And on all those foreigners working at the UN in NYC:
FEY AS PALIN: "And when John McCain and I are elected, we're going to get those jobs back in American hands!"
Pewm! Pewm! Pewm!
....
What Palin might have been like as Miss Alaska
Or is.
....
Caviar gauche, or pâté de campagne droite
OK, I'm not beaming about Maureen Dowd's latest sniper shot at Barry in her take on the first debate in her latest target practice, "Sound, but no Fury" -- does she or doesn't she? (support him) -- or, she leaves me feeling like a love-sick campaigner. A little embarrassed for my enthusiasm.
(How does she maintain her razor-sharp edge and infatuation-free distance from him?)
DOWD AS DOWD: "It was quite a memorable moment in history for the M.B.A. president and the nominee of the party of business. Who would have dreamed that when socialism finally came to the U.S.A. it would be brought not by Bolsheviks in blue jeans but Wall Street bankers in Gucci loafers?"
What a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, a jewel of a moment to happen to be in Paris, at dinner with friends in their rez-de-chaussée appartment in the 16ème avec notre ami de la gauche en cashmere. On this occasion, we joined forces in idealism, rising to respond to a retired French insurer-banker director for a French bank (I feel compelled to leave the best details out), who admits to feeling a tingling in his soul for US Republicans, Wall Street bankers and the making of money, who argued that if Sarah Palin had made it to this level, "Elle doit avoir quelque chose." [trans: She must have something.] They wouldn't just give the VP job to anyone.
Ah! The sweet naïveté of the priviledged! Always ready to see the best in one's fellow over-priviledged comrades (Whoops! Did I say that?), I mean fellow priviledged men and women.
Oh, but they would, if it suited their purposes. He looked unconvinced. In the mind of Europe's most elderly, most conservative, the Republicans just wouldn't stoop so low, drop so far, he assured me.
Oh, but they would. You musn't, I told him, make the mistake of thinking that today's Republicans in any way bear a resemblance to the ones you knew in your youth.
It's really very endearing, in a sort of terribly out-dated way. I think the elderly should have their voting cards taken away at, say, retirement. They're just way too out of step with where society is going. Leave it to those who will actually have to live with the consequences of their and their leaders' decisions, if they survive them.
....
"I'd like to pay for everyone's dry cleaning tonight," Barack told stalwart listeners in Virginia. "But I can't, because we need the money for the campaign. Consider it a modest contribution."
That's who "the Sherriff" reminds me of, especially during the "I didn't exactly win Miss Congeniality in the senate" part.
The first debate, in its entirety:
So, who did you think carried the debate?
Amazing. 80-90% of Democrats found Obama most convincing on the major issues covered, and 80-90% of the Republicans found McCain the most convincing on the same issues.
Thank goodness for the Independents, among whom there was generally a 60-40% Obama-McCain split.
Women also preferred Obama.
I knew I liked women, and that we could count on us.
And I'll tell you something else, McCain didn't need to use the earmarks process he detests and polices so ferociously; he -- and other US senators and congressmen -- has other ways of getting money to their state or district. As the second-ranking Republican member of the Senate Armed Services Committee in 2006, McCain was able to direct more than $9 billion for the fiscal year 2007 to the state of Arizona directly through the federal budget.
As soon as a friend of mine gets his earmarks OpEd published, I'll be delighted to share it with you.
What amazes me is that Obama co-sponsored -- with The Sherriff -- the very bill, the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act of 2006, requiring all federal contracts to be listed on the official government website www.USASpending.gov, that allows us to get the information we need to know that earmarks aren't actually necessary to our represenatives to get the money they want for their states and districts, but he doesn't call McCain out on this detail. He nearly does, but he stops short.
That grizzly bear in Montana study he always brings up? Well, that particular study let us know that they are nearly able to be taken off the endangered species list, and that at a total cost of $4.6 million, or only $0.06 to each American family over the same 5-year period that a total of $48.6 billion was spent in Arizona on military contracts.
Put that in your pipe and smoke it.
....
The spirit of Hope, and the Electronic Republic
A friend wrote the following to me, as the sun was breaking where he lives in the United States this morning, explaining, "Sorry, the day is breaking here and I am always most hopeful when the sun peaks above the horizon."
So while that spirit - lets call it the spirit of Hope - can be tamped down and trodden upon, it cannot be silenced forever. And when a society imbues itself within that spirit of Hope, then no challenge is too great, no task to burdensome and no goal unreachable.
I believe that.
Of course, it is necessary to believe that when the task before us are as daunting as they are. I also believe that there are enough people out there - people like you, people whom I would have never met, even if just but electronically - who also have that same spirit within them. And that those of us walking together with this spirit will triumph not just on Election Day, but on all of the subsequent days necessary to wrest power from the hands of those who seek naught but their own enrichment and deliver it unto those who seek to enrich our world, indeed to save our world.
I believe that, too.
These are the kind of people I have met through the Obama campaign and this political season.
I am grateful to Barack Obama and his campaign staff for understanding what our generation of Americans -- and we are from not yet 18 to nearly 70, sometimes past -- would do with the opportunity to meet one another electronically and talk, exchange, debate, plan, listen, and get to know one another. Many thousands of us, according to our interests and our affinities.
It has done what Lawrence Grossman thought would be possible and about which he wrote in his 1995 book Electronic Republic: Reshaping American Democracy for the Information Age. I bought the hard cover version when it first came out and read it long before I had a computer, before I was anywhere near being wholly and completely dependent on the Internet. This is Amazon's selection for an excerpt, "... the necessary healthy and vigorous deliberative 'public life of a democracy.' But is that actually the way electronicdemocracy will operate, or needs to operate in the future? ..."
He was writing at the very beginning. The Obama campaign and the rise of the blogosphere, left and right, independent media like The Huffington Post and TownHall.com, listservs and email, Twitter and Reddit and Digg have answered his question of how an electronic democracy would operate in the future.
I would be interested to see what he would say now and how he would characterize present political life. Everything in which he believed has been shown to work. Information technology has been able to make a community of us, given us a place to meet in which to engage in a "healthy and vigorous deliberative public life".
I am personally very, very grateful for the people I have met here, and I know that many of them will be friends and correspondents for a long time. I know that when I go to San Francisco or Chicago or Miami or Martinsville, VA, I will have friends to call, and to meet for the first time in person.
I also look forward to the development of this tool, to use a very basic word, to do the work of participating in governing in a manner more interactive than MoveOn, which has had its place and will certainly evolve, too.
I am with you, my friend, and all the rest of you on mybarackobama.com, in that spirit of hope. We are the only ones who can protect our freedom and our democracy from the perfectly plausible fears of Naomi Wolf and Philip Roth, and so many of us who have watched, as though in a bad dream, our government these last 8 years, and longer. It requires, as Lawrence Grossman says, a healthy and vigorous deliberative public life. The public of "public life" is the we, of We, the people.
We aren't about to sit down and be quiet for a long time. ....
My husband left for a dinner, a going away dinner for one of the doctors on their staff. Turns out that he did his studies in Tunisia because his family lived there when he was young, so even though he is French and has been practicing here, he cannot anymore. They tried everything short of getting the media involved, but no go. Before he left, I warned him that I'd be getting up in the middle of the night?
"It's on? I thought there wasn't going to be any debate." He said this in French, since he is French. He knows this from me, but he'd know even if I were not American. Everyone over here knows. They all support Barack, too.
"Yup," I said, "It's back on, and McCain's going to suffer."
"But, I thought --", he looked confused, but no more than he has about a million times since the beginning of this election cycle.
"He took a hit for proving his campaign is tactical and not ideological, and it's back on. Damage is done, though. Besides, Obama was going to do it anyway," I explained. "He pointed out quite presidentially that major shit happens when you're president, and you can't call a time out from all the other major stuff to handle a crisis. You've got to be able to do more than one thing at once, and delegate."
He nodded. Emboldened, I continued, "Obama was going to fly to Mississippi and do it anyway, questions from the audience presented by the --"
"Moderator?" he finished helpfully, nodding.
"Right."
So, are we ready to Barack the debate? Yes we are!
....
A candidate riddle
Q: Which presidential candidate has nuts in his cheeks?
A: McSquirrel... and his friend Sarah Nutkin.
I can't wait for my friend to get her OpEd published to explain that, but I give her full credit for a brilliant idea already! You'll see.
And to this day, if you meet Nutkin up a tree and ask him a riddle, he will throw sticks at you, and stamp his feet and scold, and shout--
"Cuck-cuck-cuck-cur-r-r-cuck-k!"
Poor Katie Couric, she'd better stay away from that tree!
....
Palin interview with CBS's Katie Couric
Ooh, maybe she should have stayed away from the press after all.
Day 1
Day 2
The snickers are growing, soon to become the uncontrollable laughter in church everyone tries to suppress. Guffaws for the gaffes. They're still trying to be polite over here, covering the story, anyway. In today's Le Monde, the headline announces:
It basically means that she's trying to get her shine back. Which pretty much means that she got a little tarnished. The photo of Palin in New York City yesterday they chose to run with the piece says it all. Yah.
La gouverneure de l'Alaska est notamment revenue sur des propos qu'elle avait tenus lors d'une précédente interview, selon lesquels la proximité de son Etat avec la Russie contribuerait à renforcer ses compétences diplomatiques. Sa saillie du 11 septembre, sur ses voisins russes qui étaient si proches "qu'on pouvait même voir la terre russe de l'Alaska", est devenue une réplique comique, utilisée entre autres dans l'émission satirique Saturday Night Live. "C'est marrant qu'un tel commentaire ait été ainsi moqué par la presse", a réagi Mme Palin.
Um, they caught the irony that she thinks it's funny how the press is making fun of her reply that her being able to see Russia from Alaska gives her foreign policy and diplomatic experience. Yah, not much is getting past our friends outside the continental US, even if it sails over Palin's head. Yah, and that passport thing came up. You know, how her parents didn't give her a backpack and tell her to see the world, and how she has always worked, even two jobs, until she had her kids.
Well, this former single mother, who went to college (and graduated in Barack's class from Barnard-Columbia) and grad school on scholarship, and had to resort to government assistance (yah, it's true) when her son was a year old, still managed to take him to see friends in Europe, twice, before he was through kindergarten. Things have gotten better for us, but we've had our close calls, and, somehow, he's still going on trilingual and on his third passport at 17.
Yah, you know, Sarah, it's kind of, well, a question of priorities and not settling for the day to be clear enough to see across the strait to experience a foreign country. I hate to tell you, but there's just nothing like travel, even for this book worm. And, I've never looked into the local public library's policy on banning books.
So, back to Le Monde's observations.
Dans la première partie de cette interview, diffusée mercredi, Mme Palin n'avait pas été en mesure de répondre à certaines questions. Elle a notamment fait l'impasse sur une question portant sur les liens entre Rick Davis, directeur de campagne de McCain, et Freddie Mac. Elle n'a pas non plus réussi à donner un exemple des initiatives de régulation économique de John McCain.
Yah, and there, well they seem to have noticed that she wasn't able to answer some of Couric's questions.
And they weren't really the hard ones she might face if she gets to Washington.
Yah, it's not really very good. But, Kathleen Parker of The National Review Online has a suggestion in her article today, "Palin Problem: She’s out of her league".
She suggests that Palin bow out, citing Trig and the challenges of caring for a newborn, "Do it," she says, ''for your country."
Poor McSquirrel and Sarah Nutkin. Winter is about to set in early in the wood. ....
Weak chiaroscuro If you look at the picture in a darkened room, you can actually see the ghostly image of Sam, blowing out his candles. I only bought one package. Silly me. There are only 16 in a package. Thank goodness I had a few from previous years.
What is wrong with my camera? For a few days now, I can't get it to read light when the room is dimly lit, and the flash won't even make an effort to go off. I hate flash, but it's better than ghost images.
Birthdays come but once a year, and this is all I could get. How to deal with the disappointment?
Buy a new camera.
The checkerboard cake
This year, Sam got the grown-up version of the cake, the one that uses rum and coffee in the cake syrup instead of real vanilla. That's the stuff you brush onto the layers before you ice them. It seeps into the sponge cake and makes it moist (I couldn't resist, Liz; sorry!), giving it additional flavor.
The cake is 59 stories tall, has 5900 windows...
I'm just kidding. What it actually is is 3 stories tall and contains the annual production of la Normandie in butter, eggs and cream, plus the cocoa from wherever cocoa comes from.
It takes:
15 eggs 4 1/2 sticks of butter 1/4 heavy cream 12 ounces of chocolate -- semi-sweet and dark chocolate, plus 1/4 Dutch cocoa 2 cups of confectioners sugar some 2+ cups of granulated sugar
You get the idea.
It also requires an entire afternoon for making ribbons of egg yolks and sugar, bringing egg whites to stiff peaks several times over, baking, assembly and icing.
I have often considered how fortunate I have been to have one child to spoil as I like. Could I really do this several times I year?
Mom would say yes. Hm.
How come all the younger kids liked Carvel ice cream cakes better than white cake with white mountain frosting, lemon filling and coconut?
So, What kind of birthday cake would John McCake make?
as the economy craters, Monday, September 22, 2008
Maybe it wasn't that bad Monday?
....
The US appears somewhat unhinged
anyone beg to differ?
So, I take a day off from watching the news, and the New York Times filled my email in-box with alerts and Naomi Wolf is seeing Eva Peron in Sarah Palin. The problem is that I have been seeing the same thing. Wolf writes in the Huffington Post September 22:
How, you may ask, can I assert this? How can I argue, as I now do, that there is actually a war being ramped up against US citizens and our democracy and that Sarah Palin is the figurehead and muse for that war?
Look at the RNC. This is supposed to be McCain's America. But you see the unmistakable theatre of Rove's S and M imagery -- and you see stages eight, nine and ten of the steps to a dictatorship as I outlined them in The End of America. Preemptive arrest? Abusive arrest? "Newly released footage, which was buried to avoid confiscation, shows riot cops arresting and abusing a giant group of people for nothing."
You see, the problem is that over the Bush II years, the parallels with the rise of the brown shirts in Hitler's Germany was too disquieting. It kept coming to mind.
And then I read Philip Roth's The Plot Against America. He took a big risk with his literary career with that one. The reviews were anything but neutral. It was a scary book, and what was scarier still was that it didn't seem implausible enough.
Not anymore.
But that's why he wrote it.
Then came Wolf's The End of America.
And here come the rumors that the government is bringing the troops home to prepare to face riots in the USA, us. We the People.
I don't think it is possible to be too alarmist right now. Banks are failing, Sarah Palin has been selected as John McCain's running mate for the GOP ticket for the 2008 presidential election. She talks baby names with world leaders, Afghani world leaders. Light of the house.
"That's nice!"
And the press gets 29 seconds, one camera man, and what? One reporter?
I have to go do the dishes and take myself and my flu to bed, but buried at the end of yesterday's political post I wrote:
Some things need to change big time before America gets so tripped up in her own knickers that she falls down. How can these things happen in a great and free nation?Guys, Democracy ain't free and easy anymore. We already are fighting for it at home in The USA now. Forget Iraq.
It bears repeating. We are in the middle of one of the most important presidential elections, and Bush calls the candidates to Washington for an "historic meeting" to solve a financial crisis they made with their deregulation. Well, two things. One, no one looks that serious in this "historic meeting". Two, photographers and reporters got to get into this one, at least for the photo op.
Oh, why not? Three, this so ridiculous that there is no way they can get away with a police state in The United States of America. There isn't even an article. Just a picture just big enough to get both presidential candidates in.
(Is it just me, or does Obama look the tiniest little bit antsy?)
I'm with you, Senator. You know what needs to be done and can't wait to do it, so let's get back to debating and get Barack Obama in the White House where he belongs and send McCain back to the grill in Sedona, where he's "Grill Master Supreme," about the only additional title I am comfortable giving him, because, as Jill Zuckerman reported back on March 2 in the Chicago Tribune's Washington Bureau The Swamp, he has another reason for barbecuing:
“I have so much nervous energy, it keeps me moving,” said McCain, dressed in jeans, running shoes, a sweatshirt and baseball cap as he used tongs to flip the ribs.
Let's just keep him at the grill, because we really don't need his nervous energy, or any more messes, in the White House. Let's keep his in the kitchen, where he can only risk burning down one of his houses.
Which is the dining room, which is the entry, which is the stair hall, which is the living room, which isn't going to get much better after the renovation's all done.
I'll just try to think of it as French country loft style.
Checkerboard cake making
A tradition for Sam's birthday, and it always falls on mine to get it done!
I guess I have a little cleaning up to do.
I hear you, Grandma, I know, clean as you go, but the problem with this cake is that you just keep going! You have to make two cakes, one vanilla and one chocolate. You know, to get the checkerboard effect, otherwise it would be hard to see, chocolate and chocolate, or vanilla and vanilla. I set out all my ingrediants on a nice clean surface, washed up after the first cake -- and during the first, since I don't have enough big bowls --, and still had this mess.
Wisp nibbled on one of the layers, that rotten cat! See, Lisa, someone was lucky, only it wasn't the dog! ....
Update: Further emailing with the Registrar's office of the Town of Greenwich and Christine Houben, Regional Field Director, Americans Abroad for Obama, and a telephone call to the Town Clerk's Office provided the following clarifications of language. I knew that in the case of those US citizens living abroad, you can register to vote in the Federal Election, but not in the local or state election because one no longer owns property or physically lives in CT, for example, but your registration is on an election by election basis. We are not on the voter rolls in all states. "This applies," according to Ms. Houben, "in some states, not in others." To ensure that my ballot is counted, I need to send in the FPCA, which registers you for this election and requests a ballot, and "just vote in the Federal (Presidential) election, not any state or local elections (Dog Catcher, Sheriff, etc.)."
This does not change the substance or diminish the importance of the rest of the post for hundreds of thousands of others!
PS: If you make it through to the bottom of this, there's a disillusioned, sad, tired, yet daring to hope American treat!
"There are about 30 scams the Republicans are deliberately using, particularly in the swing states to get Democratic voters off the rolls. These scams originate in the so-called Help America Vote Act, which was passed after the Florida debacle in the year 2000." -- Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., September 24, 2008 ARE YOU LISTENING EVERYONE?
Sorry to shout. I am a little upset about this bit of news, even in the midst of the joy FiveThirtyEight.com creates in this Obama supporter. You see, even if we support Obama and intend to vote for him, we can't if we think we are registered, but aren't actually, anymore.
'The perfect match'
"One of these requirements under HAVA is called 'the perfect match,' and what that does is little known but it is devastating. A quarter of the voters in Colorado have just been removed from the rolls because of this... they use a computer system to compare your registration application to all [your] other government records in the state... your Social Security records, your Motor Vehicle records, and any time you've had any interaction with the government, and if there is any information on your voter registration that is different than the information on another government record that they found,they remove you from the voting rolls."
Are you a student? First time voter?
Make absolutely certain to read the Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. piece, if you want you vote to be counted and not end up in the trash bin:
"If you're a newly registered voter... you MUST include your license or some other state I.D. when you come to vote. What that means is that if you're a college kid... if [you] send in the absentee ballot, and [you] don't include a copy of [your driver's] license, [you] vote is going to be thrown into a trash can. And none of these people know this, because you had to have to read the law in order to know it. There is no notification [of this requirement] when you fill out your registration form, so all of those 12 million people that the Democrats have regstered -- those ballot are going to be just thrown out."
What happened to me, a veteran voter
About three weeks ago, I tried the tool to check your voter registration that the Obama campaign sent out. The tool was unable to find my voter registration. It tried several times, with different information, and it could not find me listed where I have been registered to vote since at least 1992: Greenwich, Connecticut.
I voted in all state, local and presidential elections in Greenwich, cast my last presidential ballot in 2000 for Gore before moving to France in 2002. In 2002, I received an absentee ballot and cast my vote for Kerry, sending it off certified receipt requested. I recall receiving the signed card, and feeling relief. It worked, now if it would only be certain to be counted.
This year, I assumed all was well, until the Obama campaign voter registration check tool failed to find me in the Connecticut state voter rolls.
I was wrong to assume anything, since Republican Assistant Registrar of Voters, Ruby J. Durant, of the Town of Greenwich replied to my telephone call, in which I left my email address, with the following email:
According to our records you are not registered to vote here in Greenwich, Connecticut. If you voted in the 2004 Presidential election by Absentee Ballot, you probably voted on a Federal Ballot, which you are entitled to do as an American Citizen living out of the country. This office (Registrars of Voters) does not handle absentee ballots, so if you have any other questions please contact our Town Clerks Office (who handles Absentee ballot questions) @ 203-622-7897. I hope that this helps.
I am in no way suggesting that Ms. Durant is responsible for any wrong-doing. There is also a Democratic Assistant Registrar of Voters in the Town of Greenwich. I find this comforting, nonetheless.
I will say in all truthfulness that I do not recall how I received my absentee ballot in 2004, but I do not remember requesting it. I could not swear by that. It was not, to the best of my knowledge, a Federal Ballot.
I was, however, absolutely and positively registered to vote and have voted in the Town of Greenwich.
So, where is my registration?
They do not require renewal, to the best of my knowledge.
I contacted www.votefromabroad.org immediately, and received the forms needed to register and obtain my absentee ballot. I have returned the Federal Post Card Application (FPCA). These are the critical dates and actions to take to vote absentee from abroad:
October 4: If I do not receive my state ballot by October 4, I mail in my vote by Federal Write-in Absentee Ballot. This a back-up in case one does not receive one's state ballot. If the state ballot arrives subsequently, I fill it in and mail it, too. It does not count as a double vote. The local election official only counts one.
Between September 20 and Election Day (November 4): if I have not sent the FPCA (I have), then I should send it together with the FWAB. From Vote From Abroad, "Every voter who submits a valid ballot request 30 days before the election is legally entitled to use the FWAB. In addition, some states have later deadlines. You may send in the FPCA + FWAB right up until Election Day, but it will depend upon your state whether your ballot is deemed valid."
Dissuasion and exhaustion from the Registrars' offices
An Obama campaign volunteer in Virginia sent me the following copy of an email she received from the Registrar's Office in Martinsville, VA:
We are working twelve hours a day here in the office, and coming in on Saturday and Sunday, and we can't do anymore. Please leave our telephone number off of your letter. A voter does not get a new voter card if he is already in the system and most of them are. I wish you wouldn't send this letter to the bulletin [local newspaper]. We are trying to put this election together, and it must be done on time or we go to jail. This election is getting enough advertisement!!!
The rest of Melody's email to fellow Obama volunteers reads as follows:
Is this voter fraud or voter repression - either way something stinks. She claimed that she is overwhelmed, working 12 hours a day, 7 days a week and can not keep up with demand. This is GREAT NEWS for Obama!!! People who have not voted for decades or never are coming out to register, in droves!
The bad news and question of the hour is, is there an emergency plan to get extra people in to help with registration efforts NOW? Apparently, this registrar is ill prepared to handle the amount of people coming forward. Will we loose registrations this way? Will she not be able to lift up the phone to answer crucial questions? Can any of you guys call or write to your registrars and see how its going in your area? ALERT the media, call out the troops. We need attention called to this right NOW!!! The deadline to register is fast approaching. And it looks like it will be a fight to the finish.
I am telling you guys, the people who are not registered are not being counted in the polls. This could be the real difference in winning or loosing. No kidding!
Worried? You ought to be
Now, here's what you can and must do: It's important to spread the word of what Melody experienced and of my "disappeared" voter registration to see if these problems are widespread.
Consider taking the following steps:
Call or visit your local Registrar's or Town Clerk's office to see if there is anything that private citizens can do to help them answer the demand and get voters registered officially. Try to volunteer to help process paperwork.
Is there a watchdog organization for voter registration activity? Just Google watchdog voter registration organization to get going. Try your state.
Call your Democratic US congressional representative's office to discuss this and report any problems you have.
Contact your state DNC office to do the same.
Send a letter to the editor of your local paper and call your media outlets to talk to reporters.
Finally, contact friends and family in other areas who could do what you did to test the waters elsewhere.
Election Protection on the National Campaign for Fair Elections site. You can still sign up here to volunteer even if you don't have a legal background!
Some things need to change big time before America gets so tripped up in her own knickers that she falls down. How can these things happen in a great and free nation?
Guys, Democracy ain't free and easy anymore. We already are fighting for it at home in The USA now. Forget Iraq. You can't just make up your mind which candidate you prefer and head over to vote on election day because thousands or millions like you will be in for a nasty surprise come November 4.
Thanks for reading, now, watch the video of Barack in Charlotte on Sunday, make a donation (please... pretty please... all you need is a credit card and a couple bucks, and you get the credit), a call and send this on to everyone you know.
Barack Obama Charlotte, North Carolina - September 21
....
Here's the RFK, Jr. article:
Votes are being stolen, now, by hundreds of thousands--and the Democrats aren't doing anything about it. RFK, Jr.
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.: There are about 30 scams the Republicans are deliberately using, particularly in the swing states to get Democratic voters off the rolls. These scams originate in the so-called Help America Vote Act, which was passed after the Florida debacle in the year 2000. It was originally suggested by Democrats and Republicans, but it was passed by a Republican Congress with a Republican senate and a Republican president. And instead of reforming what happened in Florida it basically institutionalized all the problems that happened in Florida. And institutionalized a series of impediments that make it very difficult for Democrats to register, for Democrats to vote and then for Democrats to have their votes counted.
One of these requirements under HAVA is called 'the perfect match,' and what that does is little known but it is devastating. A quarter of the voters in Colorado have just been removed from the rolls because of this--[and] just this one scam. And what it does is, they use a computer system to compare your registration application to all [your] other government records in the state. So they'll look at your Social Security records, your Motor Vehicle records, and any time you've had any interaction with the government, and if there is any information on your voter registration that is different than the information on another government record that they find, they remove you from the voting rolls.
For example, if I registered as Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and yet my motor vehicle license said Robert Frances Kennedy Jr., I'd be removed from the rolls. If your initial is different, if you leave an initial out, if you leave a "Jr." out, if you leave a hyphen out in your name. And what they've done is a study in New York that said 80% of the errors are errors by state clerks taking down this information. And particularly [in] immigrant communities, [where] people tend to vote Democratic, people have namesŠspell Muhammad with an "o" instead of a "u"
(Crosstalk)
Papantonio: Are the Democrats suing to stop this?
RFK, Jr.: No, the Democrats are doing nothing to stop it. In New Jersey, which is a swing state, 300,000 voters in New Jersey were just sent letters saying that they are now ineligible to vote. New Jersey is nice enough to actually notify them--most states will not even notify them. And New Jersey intends to send out 870,000 letters so that is three quarters of a million people off the voting rolls in a state that could decide this vote by 50,000 votes. And these are Democrats that are being pushed off the rolls.
Let me tell you about one of other scams people should know about. If you're a newly registered voter--and of course the Democrats have done these gigantic registration drives--12 million people on registration--if you're a new voter, you MUST include your license or some other state I.D. when you come to vote. What that means is that if you're a college kid--and college kids now, they're sending in absentee ballots, they're not going to the voting place, they do everything online or they do everything remotely. They don't dream of going to the precinct house voting on election day and waiting in a long line. So if they send in the absentee ballot, and they don't include a color copy of their [driver's] license, their vote is going to be thrown into a trash can. And none of these people know this, because you had to have to read the law in order to know it. There is no notification [of this requirement] when you fill out your registration form, so all of those 12 million people that the Democrats have registered--those ballots are going to be just thrown out.
Papantonio: And if Democrats won't talk about this, how the hell's anybody gonna know about it? I'm involved with this kind of thing every day--I didn't know that until you just told me. The media is not talking about it. How in the hell is somebody gonna find this out? It's just incredible.
RFK, Jr.: Hopefully--Obama is getting $66 million a month--hopefully somebody in the Democratic organization is going to pay some attention to this before Election Day.
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is an environmental lawyer and activist in New York. He is one of the few who has also covered election fraud and voter suppression.
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