St. Olaf chastised by Thought Police
I'm surprised to see that my onetime neighbors have raised
the ire of the Center for American Experiment, a nearby conservative
"think tank". As Ms. Overland ably relates, this was accomplished by
(horror of horrors) teaching incoming Oles about environmental
sustainability.
Question for our experimenting American friends: how many schools are
teaching their students to poison the air and water, destroy topsoil,
waste limited energy resources, and spread toxins about willy-nilly?
Or is this the sort of purely personal decision that
honest Americans aren't supposed to express opinions about?
[/politics]
Got out the vote
Got to my polling place at around 8:15 this morning and spent about forty minutes in line waiting to vote. Pretty impressive turnout, especially compared to the primaries and to the city council election last fall, neither of which I had to wait more than a minute for. Not a very exciting ballot; out of the six "races", only two were contested. In its favor, I will say that the ballot was as simple as could be. Boston uses optical character recognition voting, which requires voters simply to fill in the oval next to the candidate they favor. Very difficult to screw up, machine readable, and easily recountable; I simply can't imagine why anyone thinks that the various touch-screen voting technologies are preferable.
[/politics]
Wed, 06 Oct 2004
Got to my polling place at around 8:15 this morning and spent about forty minutes in line waiting to vote. Pretty impressive turnout, especially compared to the primaries and to the city council election last fall, neither of which I had to wait more than a minute for. Not a very exciting ballot; out of the six "races", only two were contested. In its favor, I will say that the ballot was as simple as could be. Boston uses optical character recognition voting, which requires voters simply to fill in the oval next to the candidate they favor. Very difficult to screw up, machine readable, and easily recountable; I simply can't imagine why anyone thinks that the various touch-screen voting technologies are preferable.
[/politics]
The Bald Mr. Cheney
Based on my granddad's pool cue, I've got a good risk of losing my own
hair one of these days, so let me first say that I have absolutely no
problem with the fact that the VP is a little short on the stuff. It's
the bald faced lies that stick in my craw. My favorite so far from last
night's debate was his claim that, due to Edwards' supposedly poor
attendance in the Senate, he and Cheney had never met before. When, in
fact, there are pictures of the two at a prayer breakfast in February
2001... (from
Kos).
[/politics]
Tue, 14 Sep 2004
Based on my granddad's pool cue, I've got a good risk of losing my own
hair one of these days, so let me first say that I have absolutely no
problem with the fact that the VP is a little short on the stuff. It's
the bald faced lies that stick in my craw. My favorite so far from last
night's debate was his claim that, due to Edwards' supposedly poor
attendance in the Senate, he and Cheney had never met before. When, in
fact, there are pictures of the two at a prayer breakfast in February
2001... (from
Kos).
[/politics]
Get out the vote, Suffolk Co.
Today's primary will select the Suffolk sherrif, since there's no Republican running. Your options are 1) the incumbent Andrea Cabral, who seems to be doing a reasonable job, and 2) current Councilman Stephen Murphy.
As a recent transplant, I can't claim to be an authority on Mr. Murphy's character, but I did witness him scurry out of Doyle's a few months ago. He was trying to avoid eye contact with a perfectly innocuous young woman who had been involved in the dioxin resolution that had recently been debated in the city council. Murphy stood out in those debates as one of the few councillors who took the dioxin industry's lobbyists more seriously than Boston's public health community. I can only guess that his unpopular move was weighing heavily on his conscience that evening.
Of course, there are also the publisher's clearinghouse style giant fake checks that Murphy has been handing out to local communities in the name of homeland security funding, even though those communities don't actually get the money (Boston does) and though Murphy has almost nothing to do with how the funds are spent. And, to top it off, Murphy's no-shows to debates scheduled with Cabral.
[/politics]
Today's primary will select the Suffolk sherrif, since there's no Republican running. Your options are 1) the incumbent Andrea Cabral, who seems to be doing a reasonable job, and 2) current Councilman Stephen Murphy.
As a recent transplant, I can't claim to be an authority on Mr. Murphy's character, but I did witness him scurry out of Doyle's a few months ago. He was trying to avoid eye contact with a perfectly innocuous young woman who had been involved in the dioxin resolution that had recently been debated in the city council. Murphy stood out in those debates as one of the few councillors who took the dioxin industry's lobbyists more seriously than Boston's public health community. I can only guess that his unpopular move was weighing heavily on his conscience that evening.
Of course, there are also the publisher's clearinghouse style giant fake checks that Murphy has been handing out to local communities in the name of homeland security funding, even though those communities don't actually get the money (Boston does) and though Murphy has almost nothing to do with how the funds are spent. And, to top it off, Murphy's no-shows to debates scheduled with Cabral.
[/politics]
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