The more, the ferrier
Now that the Hudson River ferries have been saved, another company is planning to start shuttling passengers on the East River to LaGuardia airport. That means some of our visitors will miss the pleasure of taking a taxi from the airport and talking to the driver about his home country and how many family members he's supporting and/or putting through college, but other than that, it will be possible to travel by ferry all the way from the airport right to our place.
posted by Janet Dagley Dagley @11:10 PM
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8.1.05  |
Nation remains intact despite Congressional debate
This may come as a surprise to some Republicans, but the United States has survived two hours of debate on voting irregularities in Ohio.
Yes, even though representatives to both houses of Congress spoke aloud about those problems on television, the government has continued to function uninterrupted, the expensive inauguration will go ahead as scheduled, and the war in Iraq is still proceeding according to plan. Nothing changed except that the problems people had voting in Ohio last Nov. 2 are now on the record, the Congressional Record, as is the report prepared by the Democratic staff of the House Judiciary Committee: Preserving Democracy: What Went Wrong in Ohio.
Thank you, Sen. Frank Lautenberg, for standing up, speaking out, and introducing legislation to address at least one of those problems.
posted by Janet Dagley Dagley @11:51 PM
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7.1.05 |
Thank you, Sen. Barbara Boxer
The spunky California Democrat has announced she'll sign the complaint from the Congressional Black Caucus and others about the Ohio voting irregularities.
posted by Janet Dagley Dagley @1:00 PM
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6.1.05 |
This just in from Rep. John Conyers
The ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee and the second-most-senior member of Congress has just posted this update on the election investigation.
posted by Janet Dagley Dagley @6:18 PM
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5.1.05 |
Dear readers,
On November 2, 2004, my neighbors and I stood in line for nearly an hour in order to vote, even though we arrived before the polls even opened. We waited, and waited, and waited, while the election workers scrambled to get the machines working, using their cellphones to call for tech support. Finally they got one of the two machines for our ward rebooted, and only then did we get to vote.
While we stood there in the darkness, we started chatting. "We'll never fix this problem if we only pay attention to it one day every four years," one of my neighbors said.
Our ward, precinct, county, state and region voted overwhelming for John Kerry, voted into a black box with no paper trail, with no way to recount if the election had been close.
This is not about who won. This is about restoring the basic building block of our democracy: the integrity of the vote. I want my vote to count, and it want it to be recountable if necessary. I want everybody else's vote to count, too, even if their vote might cancel out mine. I want to have confidence in my democracy again.
Tomorrow the House of Representatives and the Senate will meet in a joint session to certify what has yet to be verified. A recount of only 3 percent of the vote in Ohio found significantly fewer votes for Bush than had originally been counted, and so far every error discovered was in favor of Bush. There has yet to be a full recount in Ohio. A statistician who studied the discrepancy between the exit polls and the election results concluded that there was only a one in 250 million chance of that being due to "random error."
As they did in 2000, members of the Congressional Black Caucus* will rise to report on the problems with the vote, problems they took the time to look into by going to Ohio and holding hearings, hearings that not a single Republican would attend. Hundreds came forward to testify about the problems they experienced or observed. Unless at least one senator has the backbone and the decency to sign their complaint, they will not even be allowed to speak.
I am urging my two senators to sign, not because it would change the outcome of the election. I want them to sign because we need to do exactly what my neighbor said that November morning. We need to pay attention to this problem now, when it's not election day, when it doesn't change the outcome, rather than waiting until we're standing in line in the cold four years from now to vote once again into a black box.
Those boxes, and the votes that go into them, or get lost in them, or don't even get cast because there aren't enough boxes, mean a lot to us voters. They ought to mean at least as much to the people who get their jobs, or lose their jobs, because of them.
If you sign, Senators, George W. Bush will still be chosen President by the Republican-controlled House of Representatives. But at least we can look into the problems with the November election and start doing something about them in time for the next national elections.
Want to contact your own senator about this (or any other) issue? Do it here. Several senators have reportedly said they might sign the complaint if they get enough calls from constituents.
*co-founded by Rep. Shirley Chisholm
posted by Janet Dagley Dagley @4:53 PM
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Energizer bunnies on Mars
They keep going, and going -- Happy first anniversary to the Mars Rover program. Spirit and Opportunity are still roving the surface of the red planet, even though one of them accidentally ate a rock the other day.
posted by Janet Dagley Dagley @4:58 PM
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4.1.05 |
Congresswoman Chisholm: Unbought, unbossed, and unforgettable
Reporters get to meet lots of famous people, but they never ask for autographs. But there I was, that day in October, 1972, holding out my reporter's skinny notebook hoping for a signature. And so was every other reporter in that packed room.
We were at a press conference being given in a school classroom in Dayton, Ohio, by a presidential candidate who had no chance of winning and who wasn't even on the ballot in our state. It was the most crowded press conference I ever attended.
TV cameramen -- and they were all men in those days -- put down their gear and elbowed their way to the front of the room with the rest of us when the conference ended. Local anchormen -- and they were all men in those days -- joined the fray as well, even if it meant getting their hair mussed.
Always a competitive reporter, I was one of the first to thrust my notebook out, and the obliging candidate accepted it, lifting a pen to sign. Before that pen reached paper, a dozen other notebooks were thrust in between. The candidate signed, and signed, and signed, and finally reached the bottom of the pile: my notebook. Just then, a campaign staffer whispered emphatically that there was absolutely no more time -- they had a plane to catch.
"Just one more minute," the candidate replied, indicating the last notebook left on the table.
"I'm sorry," the staffer told us both. "This happens everywhere she goes. We really have to go now."
For years, I saved that notebook, because although I didn't get a signature, the candidate had made an impression on it. I could have rubbed a pencil across it to make it more visible, but that just didn't seem right. But if you looked closely, you could see it: Congresswoman Chisholm.
I would have voted for her, if I'd gotten the chance, not that it would have made any difference. I don't know if any of the other reporters felt that way, but we all wanted her autograph because Shirley Chisholm was living history: the first black woman elected to Congress, the first woman of any race to run for president.
I never asked for anybody else's autograph.
posted by Janet Dagley Dagley @4:21 PM
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3.1.05 |
Neighbor kids finally win a game
The neighbor kids play football every week, but tonight's victory was their first since last Halloween, and the very first NFL victory for the new kid on the block, Eli Manning. The win was also a birthday present for the rookie quarterback, who turns 24 on Monday. Whatta way to end the season.
posted by Janet Dagley Dagley @11:58 PM
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2.1.05 |
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