Why Are We Back In Iraq?

Two days until Objection Day. Two days left to dial up (877)762-8762, and voice your vote for America's senators to stand up for the sake of democracy. Every phone call counts, as long as you cut a hole through the tin foil so your voice can be heard.

One thing is for sure if this is to work. The debate about election reform must become and remain front page news. Each day for two solid months (across the web at major sites and minor blogs and some major MSM stations and at many alternative media outlets), if you take the time to look a little bit, you will find countless (countless could also be applied to too many of America's votes) reports about numerous election irregularities which have occurred in both blue and red (assuming there really is red) zones. But it's not enough coverage, for crying out loud. In order for significant election reform to take root in this land, again, the debate about election reform must become and remain front page news.

There are signs. Today, circulating through many sectors of the major media (some of these stories do every now and then) is a study that shows that two-thirds of Florida's provisional ballots were rejected during the last election. "An analysis by the Tallahassee Democrat, which polled counties about rejected provisional ballots, found that slightly more than 7 percent were tossed because voters had been purged from the rolls either because they hadn't voted in several years or were found to be ex-felons."

I haven't done enough research on Florida yet so the law about voters being bumped from the rolls because they hadn't voted in the last two years is news to me. This may have come as quite a surprise to those voters who only come out every four years for the presidential elections. As for the other rejects...hmmm...I wonder how many rejected voters might really be law-abiding citizens who simply have the misfortune of sharing the same names (or slight variations of) as ex-felons. We'll have to wait and see what Greg Palast's response to this news is. As usual, I can't wait to find out. If only there were one hundred more Greg Palasts (and Daniel Hopsickers too).

Enough stalling it's time to take on my least favorite "moderate Democrat." I read the schizophrenic article written by Markos about people like me on Daily Kos. It seems that Kos believes in election reform and he believes that fraud was committed but not enough to write enough about either. He compares this battle with the misguided attack on the Sinclair Stations which probably kept "Fahrenheit 9/11" from running on television before the election. And I also read a few worth-reading rebuttals at Watching The Watchers and Fact-esque. I'm quite certain that there's plenty more out there, maybe I'll add some other links as I come across them in my surfing and searching.

Sorry for the provocative title (my longest one, so far) but I'm not going to get that much into Kos right now. I've wasted too much time on him as it is. Did I mention that Objection Day is two days away?

But I will say one thing: the fact that he wrote it three days before D-day should tell us all something about him. And that something ain't liberal nor moderate nor democratic. He wrote that if you disagree with the way Kos sees things "do something about it, but do it somewhere else." I can't tell if he's speaking for just his Website (or the entire Internet) or if he wants us to love-or-leave-the-country, as well. I'd have to guess that he's going to start purging the accounts of the Daily Kos naysayers. Like what he did to me in the first week of November. While bloggers like me want to encourage debate, Mr. Kos believes in stifling it.

Uh oh. I feel a paranoiac seizure taking hold of me. I can't help myself sometimes. Either Markos is the bastard son of Karl Rove or the Kos is part of the same cabal (whose name may be spelled with 3 letters) that Judith Miller, William Safire and other party-hacks-disguised-as-journalists belong to.

Or just maybe two-thirds of his brain has been rejected by his swelled-up head.

Off subject a bit, I have a confession to make. Duran Duran is a favorite band of mine. Not so much anymore (I wasn't crazy about what I heard off of the new reunion album) but I can't go more than a few months without popping Rio into my CD player and un-tunefully singing along. New Wave music was my thing in the eighties, that is, until Chuck D. brought the noise and I became a hip hop head 4 life. The only New Wave band that I never deserted would be Depeche Mode. That's because they still rule; their last two CD's were minor masterpieces. They have adapted through the years - much like U2. An almost impossible thing to do in any musical genre.

As I wrote this post about Objection Day I couldn't get a certain song out of my head. A song recorded as a splinter project of Duran Duran called Arcadia. The key line from the song that has momentarily possessed me: "I'm looking forward to re-election day."

# posted by Ron Brynaert : 1/04/2005 02:05:00 AM