October 2008 archive

State Officials, Attorneys Prep for Possible Voting Problems

With a rush of early voters going to the polls, state officials are preparing for a strong voter turnout and lawyers are amassing in battleground states in case problems occur. Legal experts weigh the situation.

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“I really question why we are not like other democracies. Most Western democracies, when you turn 18, you automatically are registered. You do not have to go through this entire process of tracking down, constantly registering, losing your registration if you move, all these problems. You become a permanent registrant in that country.”

Barack Obama Talks To America And Offers Hope And Change

John McCain Talks To America And Offers Fear

The Decided Go in Droves to Vote Early



By JENNIFER STEINHAUER

Published: October 29, 2008

HENDERSON, Nev. – At grocery stores across Las Vegas, voters are casting their ballots, and then shopping for bananas or hitting the slot machines a few feet away.

About 100 people have voted from the windows of their cars, A.T.M. style, in Orange County, Calif. Several busloads of voters pulled up to the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections in Cleveland on Sunday, did what they came to do, and then repaired to a church across the street for some fried chicken.

In all its forms, early voting has been an election year hit. Enormous lines in Florida led Gov. Charlie Crist to issue an executive order extending early voting hours statewide from eight hours a day to 12, while in Georgia an elderly woman in Cobb County stood in the sun so long to vote that she collapsed.

Chinese want a piece of movie ‘Action!’

 Thousands of would-be extras arrive at the gates of Beijing Film Studio each year, hoping to become stars or just to generate a little excitement in a tough life.

By Mark Magnier

10:41 PM PDT, October 29, 2008

Reporting from Beijing — When you have a movie calling for 700 eunuchs, it’s good to live in a country with a potential pool of more than 1 billion extras. And this is the place to find them: at the gates of a nondescript compound on the north Third Ring Road called the Beijing Film Studio.

It’s just after 6 on a recent morning, but a sizable crowd is already swarming the entrance to the studio, which has become a mecca for wannabe actors across China yearning for their big break. Most aren’t particularly ready for their close-up — migrant workers with dusty clothes and dirt-etched fingernails — but they’re hungering for a bit of celluloid to counteract a tough, often dull, existence.

By some estimates, 100,000 people land in front of these gates each year looking for infinitesimal roles as policemen, soldiers, pedestrians. The odds don’t favor wallflowers, which prompts many to toot their own horns, sometimes literally.

USA

Banks to Continue Paying Dividends

Bailout Money Is for Lending, Critics Say

By Binyamin Appelbaum

Washington Post Staff Writer

Thursday, October 30, 2008; Page A01

U.S. banks getting more than $163 billion from the Treasury Department for new lending are on pace to pay more than half of that sum to their shareholders, with government permission, over the next three years.The government said it was giving banks more money so they could make more loans. Dollars paid to shareholders don’t serve that purpose, but Treasury officials say that suspending quarterly dividend payments would have deterred banks from participating in the voluntary program.

Many families have a story about that night.

My grandmother used to describe how my grandfather spent the night on the roof of their tenement building, drunk out of his mind, brandishing his old WWI  Navy service revolver.  From time to time my grandmother would hang her head out the apartment window and shout out updates.

“Al! Al! They’re coming! God’s sake, they’re by Passaic now!”

“Shut up and get your head back in the house, will you?”

“Oh God, Al! They’re coming up on the Palisades! They starting to wade over to New York!”

“Will you get back inside, god damn it!!!”

“Can you see ’em, Al?  God’s sake, can you see ’em???”

A long pause … his eyes would have been squinting, scanning the horizon hard, searching for Martian machines the way he had once scanned for German U-boats … his voice drifted down from up above on the roof  … his voice sounded very small, very sober, and very, very scared.

” … yeah … yeah, I see them … they’re coming ….”

He went to his grave insisting that he saw a line of vast Martian machines striding across to Manhattan. You understand: he saw them.

From the Writer’s Almanac:

   It was on this day in 1938 that a radio broadcast based on a science fiction novel caused mass hysteria across New England: Orson Welles’s adaptation of War of the Worlds. The first part of the broadcast imitated news bulletins and announced that Martians had invaded New Jersey. There was a disclaimer at the beginning of the program explaining that it was fictional, but many people tuned in late and missed the explanation. So they panicked; some people fled their homes and many were terrified.

   War of the Worlds (1898) was a novel by H.G. Wells set in 19th-century England. Orson Welles kept the same plot but updated it and set it in Grover’s Mill, New Jersey.

Everyone and their uncle seems to be puttin’ up one of those fancy color-coded electoral maps lately, and I’m seeing a trend in a lot of them.  They’re BIASED!!!  The liberal polling elite are falling all over themselves to see who can show the biggest lead for Mr. Socialism.  But one American hero is brave enough to put out a patriotic electoral map that shows what is REALLY happening in this race.  That patriot is Bill O’Reilly of the Fox News Channel.  

Lord almighty, save us from these revolutionary socialist FREAKS who want to break up this great country of ours that has survived for hundreds of years – until now.

Holy crap – listen to what this guy says about redistribution of wealth:

Another means of silently lessening the inequality of property is to exempt all from taxation below a certain point, and to tax the higher portions of property in geometrical progression as they rise.

Kee-ripes, how un-American can you get?!?

1. The LA Times reports Defense War Secretary Robert Gates calls for modernization of U.S. nuclear weapons. “Unless the United States modernizes its inventory of nuclear weapons and develops a replacement warhead, the atomic arsenal’s long-term safety and reliability will deteriorate,” according to Gates.

   “No one has designed a new nuclear weapon in the United States since the 1980s, and no one has built a new one since the early 1990s,” he said…

   “To be blunt,” Gates said, “there is absolutely no way we can maintain a credible deterrent and reduce the number of weapons in our stockpile without resorting to testing our stockpile or pursuing a modernization program.” …

   “Currently, the United States is the only declared nuclear power that is neither modernizing its nuclear arsenal nor has the capability to produce a new nuclear warhead,” Gates said…

   “Let me be clear: The program we propose is not about new nuclear capabilities — suitcase bombs or bunker-busters or tactical nukes,” he said. “It is about safety, security and reliability.”

   Gates also endorsed the ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.

Four at Four continues with Pakistan and Syria demanding apologies from the U.S., movement to negotiate with the Taliban, and Spanish dominance of U.S. wind energy.