The results of the 22nd congressional district in Texas:
Democratic Lampson 76,743 52% 100% of precincts reporting
Republican Sekula Gibbs 61,813 42%
Libertarian Smither 9,008 6%
In case you don’t recall that’s the district formerly occupied by Tom Delay! Who would’ve thought a year ago that a democrat would win it today!
Daniel Ortega, the Sandinista leader who the Reagan administration tried to hard to covertly overthrow, also got elected president of Nicaragua yesterday.
The democrats have taken back the house in both Washington and Lansing and in Arizona, Barry Goldwater would have been proud. Arizona became the first state in the union to vote to reject a ban on single sex marriage. Up in North Dakota, voters told their legislature to butt out of decisions on abortion and Missouri voters want stem cell research. Now if Jon Tester and Jim Webb can hold on to the senate seats in North Dakota and Virgina, we can get the impeachment hearings started.
This video clip speaks for itself. Here is a link to the actual video on the White House website. If you’ve never read 1984, this page has a relevant passage give a good example of the workings of the Ministry of Truth.
I just stumbled across a very interesting site called Maps of War that features a variety of animated maps of the middle east. The Imperial History map is particularly fascinating if you’re unfamiliar with the history of region. Over the last five millenia there have been a succession empires that rose and fell and these are shown in conjunction with an animated time line. In general, empires have lasted about three centuries, including their rise, peak and eventual decline with periods of chaos in between. The United States is well into it’s third century and the downward spiral has accelerated in the past five years as the chaos has accelerated.
A lot of people know of President Dwight Eisenhower’s farewell address to the United States just before leaving office in January 1961. That’s the one where he warned people about the dangers of letting the military-industrial complex have too much power. If you’ve never seen it, it definitely worth watching especially in this time when the military-industrial complex is so explicitly personified by the likes of Dick Cheney. The whole speech is available on Google Video and is definitely worth watching. The relevant portions of the speech are also shown in the film Why We Fight which is also on Google video. It’s definitely worth watching to see how the military industrial complex has corrupted American democracy.
The military is so desperate to get new recruits, that recruiters are telling outright lies to students to get them to sign up. They’re going so far as to tell them that the war in Iraq is over and troops are being brought home. They’re also telling them that if they don’t like it that they can just quit, which is definitely not the case. The New York city ABC news affiliate did an investigation, sending students into 10 different recruiting stations in the city with hidden cameras. The results were startling, and that’s one of the reasons why we don’t want recruiters coming into our schools trying to sign up our kids. Fortunately, the Ypsi school district has a policy and it will now be enforced to stop giving recruiters free run of the cafeteria. That’s especially important after hearing that two more local kids died this week in this senseless, unnecessary war.
Continuing on the discussion that has been going on here and over on Mark’s site, comes yet another example Diebold’s utter incompetence. HBO has a new documentary premiering tomorrow night called Hacking Democracy. The film is apparently critical of Diebold and other voting systems companies. Needless to say Diebold is not happy about it and doesn’t want people to see it. According to TechDirt, Diebold not having seen the film they are trying to get HBO to cancel it. However, their complaints about inaccuracies in the film actually relate to a completely different movie called Voter Gate. If they can’t get something relatively straightforward like this right why would anyone trust them to run a voting system?
In an interview on C-Span, Laura Bush was asked about the stem cell research issue and the ads that Michael J. Fox has been doing in support of candidates who support stem cell research (sum of whom are in fact Republicans). In her response she said ‘It’s Always Easy To Manipulate People’s Feelings’ which is absolutely true because that’s all her husband and his administration have been doing for the last six years. Almost everything the Bush administration has done has been based on manipulation, using irrational fear to get people to accept things that they should not even be considering like illegal wars, domestic spying, eliminating habeas corpus and legalizing torture. The republicans know more about manipulating peoples feelings and than anyone and they have no business calling anyone else on it.
We’re watching a film right now, called Mr. Conservative. It’s a documentary about Barry Goldwater made by his granddaughter. Goldwater is a fascinating character and had some really interesting and apparently contradictory views. He was very much pro-choice and stated publicly that there is nothing wrong with having gays in the military. On the other hand he was vehemently opposed to the 1964 Civil Rights act. During his 1964 republican convention speech, he made the statement “Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice”. This is absolutely wrong. Extremism is always wrong regardless of the direction it comes from. It doesn’t matter whether it comes from the right or left, from christians or muslims. Extremism is wrong and will almost inevitably, create trouble. Just look at what has happened in the last six years. We have had probably the most extremist government in the last 100 years and we are now in deep trouble. Extremism is wrong.