A Feeling Like Floating (WI Sup Court Election Drama)

One of the questions that fascinates me the most is, "If you were insane, how could you discover that fact?"

The conservative incumbent running for the Supreme Court here in Wisconsin had lost the race in the original vote counting. A recount has been all but certain though since the margin between the two candidates was less than three-hundred votes.

Going into this election I was pessimistic about the chances that the republicans would play fair.

I never expected something like this though.

From MSNBC.com

WAUKESHA, Wis. — A stunning discovery of votes in Wisconsin could give the state's hotly contested Supreme Court race to the conservative incumbent in an election largely seen as a referendum on Republican Gov. Scott Walker's explosive union rights law.

Adding another twist, the county clerk who said she incorrectly entered vote totals in the race has faced criticism before for her handling of elections and previously worked for a state GOP caucus when it was controlled by the candidate who stands to benefit from Thursday's revelation.

The corrected totals gave Justice David Prosser a 7,500-vote lead over little-known liberal assistant state attorney general JoAnne Kloppenburg, according to unofficial tallies. Before the announcement, it was assumed the race was headed for a recount. The difference between the two had fluctuated throughout the day Thursday as counties began verifying votes, but at one point was as close as 11.

From the AP

Nickolaus was given immunity from prosecution in a 2002 criminal investigation into illegal activity by members of the Republican Assembly caucus where she worked as a data analyst and computer specialist. Prosser, who as speaker of the Assembly in 1995 and 1996 controlled the same caucus, was not part of the investigation. Nickolaus resigned from her state job in 2002 just before launching her county clerk campaign.

....

Nickolaus said she didn't notice an absence of votes because her figures showed a 42 percent voter turnout, which exceeded the 30 percent turnout the county typically sees in spring elections.

"That was an amazing amount of votes," she said. "So I had no reason to believe I was missing anything."

......

"There is a history of secrecy and partisanship surrounding the Waukesha County Clerk and there remain unanswered questions," Scot Ross, director of the liberal group One Wisconsin Now, said in a statement.

An audit of Nickolaus' handling of the 2010 election found that she needed to take steps to improve security and backup procedures, like stop sharing passwords. The audit was requested after the county's director of administration said Nickolaus had been uncooperative with attempts to have county experts review her systems and confirm backups were in place.

The best part: the immunity she was granted in 2002 was part of a corruption investigation into the Republican party officials illegally using their positions for campaigning.

My brain is exploding.

Sorry about Paul Ryan.

No really! As a Wisconsinite I feel it is my duty to apologize to all of you for Paul Ryan.

I am so fucking sorry :'(

Only Korans? - Part 3, unfortunately

[04/16/2012] - I feel like I've learned a lot since I wrote this, and it now no longer 100% represents my views on the subject; they aren't enraged because we burned some books.


"Worse than useless" is the most concise way I can think of to describe that bigot Terry Jones.

That's all I have to say about him.

In Afghanistan many people have now been murdered because of a Youtube video of a Koran being burned. I'm disgusted by the bigotry of the group that burned that Koran. I'm outraged that those people were murdered. There is nothing to justify what has happened, though there are certainly explanations. Understanding their outrage is not a reason to sanction their actions. Understanding the maliciousness of the original offense does not mean that any part of the retribution should be forgiven.

When I made the original post I titled it "Only Korans?" to imply that no so-called Holy Book should be safe from burning in an act of defiance. Now though I'd like to repurpose that title for its other meaning.

That book is merely a Koran.

To Hell with the accommodationists and strict-multiculturalists. Their wretched hypocrisy, essentially born out of pity for murderers and tyrants, is nauseating. I have no respect for you or your opinions if you can look at the events that have just occurred in Afghanistan and say, "See? This is why we must forbid insulting Islam."

Fuck it. I have nothing left to say.

I'll quote Madison-area band Erebus instead:

(From 'God Loves Us')

The bones of infidels

Of countless human souls

How could the world forget

The graveyard it’s built on

This earth is drenched with blood

In the name of God

Surely the work of the Lord Has been Done

Let us pray for the 3 million children a year,

That are destroyed by the holiest butcher

Let us pray for the billions of infidels

That were created,

So they can burn in hell

Has he the will but not the power?

Impotent

Has he the power not the will?

Sadistic

Just fucking end it all

I’m blessed,

you’re blessed,

we’re fucking blessed

I’m saved,

you’re saved,

it’s fucking great

Grab mom and dad and grandma too

Cuz it’s true,

God loves me and you!

Why keep a prison

When we’ve got one here on earth

What can we expect at the gates?

When you’ve turned your back on us?

You wash your hands

And sit in judgment

Or are we just fuel

For the Flames

Let us pray to the god that has betrayed us all

Born a sinner, you will die nothing more

Pray to the tyrant, laughing on a throne of despair

Demanding all from a world too poor to give

We are controlled by guilt and fear

Suffering

Gambling on a roll of the dice

Cowardice

What are you waiting for?

I’m blessed,

you’re blessed,

we’re fucking blessed

I’m saved,

you’re saved,

it’s fucking great

Grab mom and dad and grandma too

Cuz it’s true,

God loves me and you!

How much worse can it get?

I’m disgusted

I don’t want your paradise

Send me to hell

Retcons

I've decided to go back through all of my posts and add labels; I'm also going to update/correct certain things that I got wrong or were simply stupid things to say.

I'll update this post later with all of the major corrections when I'm done. I'll also create a page to help keep track of these corrections.

I'm also working on finding a better background; I like the coffee beans (obviously) but I think it makes it too difficult to read some of the text.

Guilty Conscience Much?

Media Matters has a video of one of those "traditional marriage" quack-experts, by the name of Peter Wolfgang, addressing Connecticut's state congress. His argument is that providing legal protections to trans-gendered individuals will lead to men going into women's bathrooms to sexually assault little girls while the child's (presumably) straight father stands outside.

Mr. Wolfgang literally calls the bill, "The Bathroom Bill".

Stare rep Holder-Winfield responded to the inanity very well (the following transcript is literally copy-pasted from the link above):

REP.HOLDER-WINFIELD: Good afternoon, Mr. Wolfgang.

WOLFGANG:Good afternoon.

REP.HOLDER-WINFIELD: You said if this bill passes, nothing would prevent thesexual predators from taking the actions that you suggest might happen. What prevents themfrom doing that now?

WOLFGANG:Well they’d certainly have more of a reason to do it. And men in general shouldnot be allowed into women’s bathrooms. At issue is the fact that you have anexception for sex but not for gender identity and expression if this billpasses and men can enter women’s bathrooms.

REP.HOLDER-WINFIELD: But my question to you is, whatprevents them from doing it now? Youranswer, while a response, doesn’t actuallyindicate what does that.

WOLFGANG:Well, I mean, you know, there are laws thatprevent crimes, obviously, from taking place in bathrooms in general. But, I mean, why give sexual predators a pretext? Whygive them an excuse to say, “Look, I’m transgendered and that’s why I went intothe women’s bathroom.” Obviously it’s – you know, there are laws for registeredsex offenders.

REP.HOLDER-WINFIELD: And so those laws would actually exist if the crime wascommitted after entering the bathroom, even if thislaw passed – if this bill passed, is that not correct?

Wolfgang and his ilk betray a severe lack of comprehension of the issues at hand when they rattle of the type inanity seen above. I'm honestly proud of Wolfgang for acknowledging that sexual assault is a problem in America; but his single-minded fixation on trans-gendered males, and those who would pose as one, obfuscates and distracts from other possible types of harassment and assault. I'll ignore men and boys as victims, since Wolfgang doesn't seem concerned about them, and point out that by his logic he should be arguing for separate bathrooms for the L and B women of the LGBT communities. IMHO a *more* sensible topic to discuss would be how to offer protections to everyone from everyone else.

The failure of his imagination to think of those possible scenarios makes me wonder; what has Mr. Wolfgang been fantasizing about that makes him so concerned about protecting little girls from straight men?

Or maybe he's just a dumb-ass bigot.

Fun fact: I've always assumed that it was spelled "Conneticut" until I spell-checked this post and discovered "Conne[c]ticut" is the correct version. Also it was only a few weeks ago that I discovered "gover[n]ment" isn't spelled "goverment". Somewhere all of my English and social studies teachers are crying :'(

Into the Darkness You Go

[update - 07/22/2012: Yeah, no, fuck this.  What the hell was I thinking?]

*Much more important update* This post over at "You Are Not So Smart" is probably relevant and, indirectly, offers a counterpoint of sorts to what I've said above. It deals with the 'sunk cost fallacy'.

I have a lot of respect for Christopher Hitchens*. I found his opinions on the Iraq War (mostly in favor of it) to be very compelling. His conviction that the invasion of Iraq was justified is rooted in the fact the Saddam Hussein deserved to be executed for crimes against humanity. Saddam had used WMDs in the past, had promised to use them in the future, had committed acts of genocide, forced disappearances etc.

What he neglects to mention is that the Bush Administration obviously gave even less of a fuck about the wellbeing of the Iraqis than Saddam did (the fact that the administration was also significantly less directly malicious towards them is irrelevant to this post). I now think that Hitchens is misguided in his defense of the Iraq War. We went to war based off of blatant lies and then did nothing to help the Iraqi people rebuild after we destroyed their nation. Regardless of whether Saddam should have been removed from power, what we have done in Iraq is monstrous. False pretenses aside, once we were committed to military action we had the chance to do something great for the Iraqi people. Instead of even attempting to help them rebuild we ignored all of the problems and Iraqi protests until the nation disintegrated into sectarian violence and civil war (re: exactly like Afghanistan).

Watching Rachel Maddow's discussions with Richard Engel (two people who I also have a great deal of respect for) I noticed something about Engel's reactions to her questions. When Maddow asked why the we aren't stepping in militarily to protect civilians in other nations Engel immediately started talking about how much more atrocious the Gaddafi regime is. Engel also, as part of his 'reporting', seemed to be pleading for more direct military support for the rebels, specifically close air support**.

Even though there are many obvious differences between the situations, Engel's response reminds me a lot of Hitchen's support of the Iraq war.

Maybe it's sentimental on both their part and mine, but I think they have the right idea. Regardless of whether we should have intervened in Libya, something I feel very conflicted about, we once again have an opportunity to attempt something that will truly help the Libyan people in the long run.

Success certainly isn't guaranteed; but let's at least try this time.

*update*: Just to make it explicit that I'm a deranged left-wing liberal (or so my conservative relatives claim) -

• Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld are de facto traitors because of their roles in privatizing our military.
• The military-industrial complex is as close to Pure Fucking Evil as our species can get.
• I'm extremely distressed (and disgusted) that Obama hasn't managed to get Guantanamo closed, hasn't stopped drone-strikes in Yemen, Somalia, etc.
• et cetera.
• et cetera.

Consider those bullet points to be part of my growing list of "Things I intend to write a post about. Maybe."

*link is to a semi-official youtube channel

** link to wikipedia article on the subject

Aesthetic Conservatism

Have you ever tried talking about the French with a social conservative? My experience is that they nearly always respond with dismissive contempt and a sneer whenever that nationality comes up in conversation. Same thing with academia, environmentalism, secularism and anything else that wouldn't get a tip of that hat on Fox News.

This video of Rand Paul is one of the most perfect specimens of this phenomenon I've seen in a long time. How are you supposed to have a productive conversation with a person like that?

I find Libertarians to be especially adorable. For far too many of them their socio-political 'philosophy' is rooted more in a gut feeling for what the world should be than by any type of analytical thought. The fundamental flaw of Fox News Libertarianism is that it's ultimate goal is "Freedom". Freedom is by nature an impossible ideal; in order to grant one person the freedom to do as they want you must deny another person the freedom to stop them.

For example; if you gut the EPA and allow coal companies the right to mine the Appalachian Mountains however they please, how are the people living downstream from those mines going to enforce their right to drinkable water? By not buying coal? Not paying for goods or services that consume that coal?

Give me a fucking break.

American conservative thought, of all types, has become the realm of fuzzy tabloid-inspired doublespeak. The noxious mixture of religion, corporate interests, and insipid Sarah Palin folksiness has resulted in a culture of conservative thought that is as intellectually bankrupt as it is hypocritical.

But that's okay.

It feels right.