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Friday, December 3, 2004

disenfranchisement flipped

Since the election of 2000 (intensified after this most recent election), we have been subjected to a constant sniveling from those who feel they are "disenfranchised" because they are blue voters stuck in red states. (I cannot recall ever hearing the same from conservatives in blue states, although they certainly exist). As a little exercise, I looked at the voting records of the congressmen and senators representing my last four homes; it is interesting, to say the least.

Now, a word about the numbers I used to come up with the "composite conservative" number. I went to the website for the American Conservative Union and pulled the lifetime rating for each legislator (as delineated by the ACU). I then went to the website for Americans for Democratic Action, and pulled their numbers (it's only for the last session; I did not feel like crunching numbers for the career records, and ADA hasn't updated their lifetime list since 1999). I took the second number and inverted it as a proportion of 100% (80% became 20%, for example), since I was looking for a "conservative number". I then took the inverted ADA number, added it to the ACU number, and divided by two. This gives a fairly equal weight to records, since the ACU is undeniably conservative, and ADA is undeniably liberal.

WASHINGTON (2nd District):

Murray (D) 6.5
Cantwell (D) 11.5
Larsen (D) 15.0

California (53rd and 51st districts):

Boxer (D) 3.5
Feinstein (D) 10.5
Davis (D) 7.0
Filner(D) 2.0

Florida (19th District):

Graham (D) 22.0
Nelson (D) 18.5
Wexler (D) 7.5

I'd say that most of those "blue in a sea of red" types have nothing to complain about. FWIW, at the presidential level, Washington and California have voted Dem since 1988, and while Florida is a reliably Republican state, Broward County (a part of which is in Wexler's district) is the bluest county in the state.

posted at 02:10 PM |

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I read an interesting point today while trolling blogs. 'How does the post election selection trauma in the US compare to the election trauma of the electorate in Afghanistan?'

Totally OT

http://instalawyer.blogspot.com/

Monday, November 29, 2004

[...]Well Task Force 2-7 Cav made it back from Fallujah earlier than expected, mission accomplished. It feels so good to be back from a second successful mission that was as difficult as it was dangerous. We left Camp Cooke on Nov 1 and staged at Camp Fallujah for about a week. While there, we got the good news that George Bush was re-elected and we had busy days and nights of planning and rehearsals for the big attack. 2 days before "D Day," a 122 mm rocket impacted 50 meters away from our tents that sent everyone to the floor. We staged there at a remote part of the post and it was obvious that a local national tipped off the "mujahadin" (Arabic name for the enemy) where we staged. From that attack, we lost one soldier and 4 more were wounded. That attack gave the rest of the Task Force enough anger to last the whole fight. After all the drills and rehearsals, the day for the attack finally came on Nov 8. Prime Minister Allawi gave the green light and Coalition and Iraqi forces went all the way.[...]

http://instapundit.com/archives/019440.php

HELPING THE TROOPS: Reader Ron Ford sends this very comprehensive list of support-the-troops websites...

posted by POLLTROLL on December 4, 2004 10:14 PM

That may be true but lets face it, when was the last time a conservative lost a political race that was close. Especially at the national level. Bush I, did not even come close to winning against Clinton, neither did Ford against Carter.

posted by Paul on December 9, 2004 10:17 AM

Actually, Paul, Ford lost nationwide by about 800,000 votes, but lost Ohio and Hawaii by a combined total of 18,000 votes. Had he carried those two states, he would have won enough states to win in the electoral college. (One of the Republican electors from Washington State voted for Reagan instead, but he probably would have voted for Ford if the alternative was a Carter presidency.)

posted by timekeeper on December 9, 2004 06:22 PM

Thursday, December 2, 2004

Right wing idiocy

When I read things like this, I understand why the left has problems with some religious conservatives:

- An Alabama lawmaker who sought to ban gay marriages now wants to ban novels with gay characters from public libraries, including university libraries.

Oh, spare me.

A bill by Rep. Gerald Allen, R-Cottondale, would prohibit the use of public funds for "the purchase of textbooks or library materials that recognize or promote homosexuality as an acceptable lifestyle." Allen said he filed the bill to protect children from the "homosexual agenda."

As the article notes later on, however, this is far more than just a simple little bill to prevent "Heather Has Two Mommies" from being assigned as required reading for the first grade. This would require EVERY book that mentions homesexuality (except to condemn it) to be removed from the shelves of all schools, libraries and universities in Alabama. This includes classics such as "The Color Purple" and "The Portrait of Dorian Gray", as well as plays such as "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof". It would also ban any mention of homosexuality in school and college textbooks. The bill doesn't just ban the depiction of homosexual sex, it bans the depiction of homosexuality altogether.

I have little patience for most of the gay-rights groups who lump in their support of equal treatment with a boatload of socialist hooey (environmentalism, wealth redistribution, the anti-war movement), but it is crass stupidity such as this that really frosts my balls. If this jackass were representing me in the state house, I'd vote for almost anyone running against him, regardless of their views, because what he proposes is detestable and quintessentially un-American. We don't ban books in this country, especially because we don't care for the sexual orientation of one of the characters.

(Link courtesy of Captain's Quarters.)

posted at 04:30 PM |

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I can't believe how many of these morons are out there. I guess that with all the regulations protecting women's and racial group's rights, people needed someone to discriminate against. Good job religious right extremists!!

posted by Paul on December 3, 2004 10:59 AM

Assault and (moon)battery

As a result of the ugly brawl in Detroit two weeks ago, two individuals have been banned from The Palace, home of the NBA's Detroit Pistons. One of the two was alleged to have thrown the cup at Ron Artest, which started the brawl between the players and the fans, and the other was one of the idiots who ran onto the court.

The lawyer for moonbat number one is terribly upset about the unfairness of the whole affair:

"That's ridiculous. Are they going to ban Artest and the other Pacers who ran into the stands and beat up on our fans and the people that live in this community?" Shawn Smith, Green's attorney, said. "They're completely picking on the little guy. ... It's not fair."

No, it's eminently fair. Your client was the catalyst of the brawl; if he had not thrown the cup, the fight would not have entered the stands. He ought to be lucky that Artest hasn't filed an assault charge against him. As it stands, one of the other fans might be facing felony assault charges for throwing a chair that hit several people, including a police officer.

As to banning Artest and the rest of his teammates, I am all for it, as I argued two weeks ago. But the blame for what happened cannot and should not be laid entirely at the feet of the athletes, as the fans' behavior was totally unacceptable as well.

posted at 02:01 PM |

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They're completely picking on the little guy. ... It's not fair.

Oh whah. He gets told not to come into the arena any more. Small tuition for the 'don't act like a jackass' course of life instruction.

The tuition bill for Artest, otoh, is a couple of bucks more. But since he's already been given a few million for basically doing something any kid on a playground can do, throwing a ball at a round hoop 10 feet up, he's also on the list of folks that won't get any tears from this direction over this matter. In fact, his name comes right after the boneheaded cup thrower that's added to his publicly demonstrated stupidity by forking over probably not a small sum of money to have a paid whiner do his complaining for him.

posted by Wind Rider on December 4, 2004 09:13 AM

Tuesday, November 30, 2004

on Spam and Macs

Sometime later today (when I get back home and can use my own computer again), I will be installing scode, a nifty little plug-in that requires commenters to copy the code that appears in the box before they can comment. I know it's a hassle for you, my 15 loyal readers, but since my previous fix no longer works (I am receiving comment spam on my new posts now), I have to do something before I get overwhelmed by junk comments for pron, drugs, teen s*x, and gambling sites. Also, comments now close after five days (previously, it was seven days), as I know for a fact that scode is not a panacea. Look at the comments at Thief's Den if you have any doubt. He's been gone for two weeks, and his site is absolutely buried in spam.

BTW, for those of you with Macs, how do you do accomplish ANYTHING with only one mouse button? I've been using my friend's Mac for a week now, and I am going NUTS, because I do so much with the right mouse button that I haven't figured out how to do with a Mac. The lack of separate backspace and delete keys is also a problem (as well as the mislabeling of the backspace key as the delete key), and the nifty little feature in Windows browsers of deleting the entire URL (instead of laboriously deleting a long URL character by character). I am *so* looking forward to using Mozilla again.

posted at 09:21 AM |

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Easy. Either

1) Ctrl-click means right-click. You get used to hitting ctrl.

2) Buy a USB wheel mouse. Plug it in. It will Just work. Both my G4 and my iBook have non-Apple wheel mice. (Keyboards are another matter, or were when last I tried; some of the keymappings are different, and I was never able to get a PC keyboard to work on a Mac properly, but I haven't tried lately. Mice, however, work perfectly.)

posted by Sigivald on December 1, 2004 10:45 AM

Sigvald is correct, Ctrl+click on a Mac will open the contextual menus. As for deleting URLs, a click on the touchpad will place the cursor, two clicks will select the previous word and three clicks will select the entire URL. There is also a convenient feature called "Help" that explains these features quite nicely. Please stop trashing the mac as you must be more smarter than the machine you are using.

posted by The Friend on December 2, 2004 10:51 PM

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