Was it Hacked?

A brief but intense rain fell just now, while I was looking up "seam ripper" and "was it hacked" on Google. It pelted against the sides of the lookout for a few minutes, then stopped. Glad it didn't start until I had climbed up here -- it takes forever for my jacket to dry out if I hang it up wet in this tiny space.

Did you ever get the feeling that you were living in a work of fiction? That absurdly unlikely (or just absurd) things have happened that seem out of place anywhere but a cheap novel?

It gets particularly disturbing when the world seems to be acting out a work of fiction based on "real-world" events. For instance, the travails of the Uribe administration in Colombia seem like a roman a clef of Bill Clinton's Presidency, with everything exaggerated: instead of a slightly left of center Democrat, the President is a borderline socialist. Instead of a trumped-up impeachment, he faces a coup attempt.

Another interesting example: the Ukrainian election, where blatant election fraud has resulted in angry charges and counter-charges, ineffectual attempts by elder statesmen to calm things down, the Supreme Court stepping in and sinking to its navel in the muck, threats of secession by the regions most displeased by the whole mess . . . .

But Ukraine is a real country, and so is the USA. And there really were two elections, and there are two controversies. Really and truly.

If you type "was it hacked" (including quotation marks) into Google, you will get links to several interesting items. The first link, to an article published earlier this month in the Orlando Weekly, is particularly good: informative, well-researched and only just as shrill as the occasion demands.

So, was the election hacked? I don't know. Nobody knows, unless it would be the hypothetical traitors themselves. Wouldn't it be good to find out?

Bikin' to Work

End of November, it's getting to be a chilly trip up here to the lookout tower on the roof. I'm starting to wish I'd set up a circuit that would allow me to turn on the heater up here before I make the long climb up the ladder. Boy, my fingers woulfd probably still be too stiff with cold to type, if the lookout tower weren't imaginary.

At present, much though I might wish it were otherwise, the majority of my income comes from my CNA license, rather than my LMT. Currently, I'm affiliated with a home-health agency, going to people who need a little assistance with this or with that: cooking, dressing changes, emptying catheter bags, whatever their particular needs require.

I prefer night shifts over days, and I prefer long shifts over innumerable short ones (there was a time when I was feeling exhausted, and suddenly realized that, where a normal person goes to work five times a week, I was going sixteen times a week -- itwas the act of going to work that was doing me in). But perhaps even more than these, I prefer bicycling to work.

It feels good to stretch these legs, get some chilly open air into my face and up my nose, get a glimpse of what the world looks like at odd hours. Once I've washed away the sweat and changed into my respectable caregiving clothes, I feel like a king. A king with a full treasury and a clean conscience. I feel great.

The smile alone can't help but be good for the clients.

Thanksgiving Memories

Well, I came up to the lookout to write a Thanksgiving message on my blog before dinner, but by the time I got up here, I'd forgotten what I was going to say. So, I wrote something else.

Kathe and I sat down to eat together, just the two of us. It's the first Thanksgiving in my memory where I sat at a table with just one other person (Tesfaye was in Portland with some Ethiopian relatives, Waldy was up in his room fast asleep). Way better than sitting alone, though.

I finally remembered the story I wanted to tell, and wrote on my palm, "TURKEY PIZZA". And here's why:

Many years ago, before I met her, Kathe made a pizza Thanksgiving feast, with three kinds of pizza including one with turkey meat.

Years later, one of the guests (who had been living with the family at the time) told Kathe that he had thought she had served pizza instead of a traidtional Thanksgiving meal because she didn't like him.

Kathe was astounded. Had he really thought she would base a holiday meal for her family on the hope that it would offend one of her housemates? That she would put her own family through all that for the chance to be rude to one guest? That she would go out of her way to cook ANYTHING for someone she actively disliked? Apparently he had. Wow.

This all comes to mind on account of Midge Decter's speech at Hillsdale College's "Marriage and the Family" seminar, as reprinted in the November issue of Hillsdale's magazine _Imprimis_, in which she asserted that all the (voluntary) sweat, (inevitable) tears and (thanks to certain elements of society) blood which gay men and lesbians had expended for the sake of the right to marry were all the result of a passionate desire to stick it to the straight people and make them squirm.

Wow.

Ukrainian Reign Has Plainly Gone Insane

Oops. Somebody noticed that teensy little provision in the 1,600-page appropriations bill, the one that would give (Republican) committee chairs authority to read the tax returns of any (Democrat) person, without oversight or limit:

http://chud.com/forums/showthread.php?t=73972

I would have sworn that the Senate Republican caucus stepping on its hubristic dick in this fashion would be the most hilarious news story of the week, but then there was that election in Ukraine.

The second-place candidate is crying electoral fraud (apparently with some reason), and George W. Bush (repeat, George Walker Bush, recently declared the winner of a second "interesting" U.S. Presidential election) is calling for a recount and an investigation.

George W. Bush.

Isn't he even a little afraid that there might be a Hell?

Xmas Wreaths

First thing I did today was to go over to the offices of the home health-care service that I work for as a nurse's aide to supplement my massage income. I rubbed the backs of the office staff and schmoozed, and came away with a few more hours.

My anatomy class had a midterm today -- I think I did all right, though I confess that those various electrolytes are still giving me trouble.

Back at home, I went out with Kathe and delivered wreaths. Lots of wreaths. The Willamette Valley Community School (the headline of this post is a link) made a bunch of money off wreath sales, just like last year. A disturbing sign, though, is how many people who'd bought three or four wreaths last year bought just one. I fear the economy is not warming up as promised.

I'm trying to lose weight at present, and hadn't had much to eat all day. By the time we got home after allthat wreathing, my blood sugar must have been in a deplorable state. I know I was in a deplorable mood. But, a little barley and turkey soup and some bread and I was ready to face a massage appointment.

It was my only appointment of the day -- which of course is why I have to do CNA work, also, and why I'm trying to get into nursing school.

So it was that I didn't manage to haul myself up here to the lookout until after 11PM, even though I'd really wanted to do some computer stuff earlier.

A long day, and a little bit trying, but I'll live. I'm tough. :-)

Big Rubber Bands

Yellow ones, pink ones, they seem to be the hot item these days.

I just signed up to wear a blue one:

http://www.neversurrender.org

I'm still tired, mind, but I'm used to working while tired.

Hanging Clicks in Ohio

When I heard that there was evidence of substantial vote fraud in Ohio, I didn't feel outraged. Or hopeful. Or eager to know more.

I felt tired.

It's All About the Oil

I sit at my computer in the imaginary lookout tower that rises from the roof of our house, the gray November morning rolling on around and below me, a small ceramic electric heater purring at my feet, and conclude that it's all about the oil.

Number two stove oil, that is.

Our antiquated oil stove has heated the house for many years. It handles the living room, downstairs sleeping area and kitchen where we spend most of our time. The upstairs bedrooms and the massage studio require ruinously expensive electric heaters. We hope to be able to replace all of this with proper central heating eventually, but for now we depend very much on the oil stove.

A few years ago, our oil supplier stopped carrying #2 oil. The closest substitute was diesel fuel (close enough that stove oil is dyed red to discourage people from using it as fuel to evade the road tax), but we soon found that in our stove diesel produced a lot of soot and clinker in our stove. Finally, we found a gas station in Albany which dispensed stove oil from a gas pump, but alas, they don't delivery to Corvallis.

So, every time I'm in Albany now (usually three times a week), I stop by that station and fill up our two five-gallon cans, and dump them in the oil tank when I get home. It's a hassle, and messy, and let's not forget tedious (I begin to understand why hauling water is the bane of a peasant's existence), but it keeps the stove lit.

And the bright red oil does look rather pretty as it pours into the tank in the dim light of an overcast winter afternoon.

Welcome to My Upper Sanctum

The computer here at Blackberry House sits at the top of the stairs, with my massage studio to my left and Waldy's bedroom directly behind me as I write, but I've been thinking for awhile about moving my writing location elsewhere.

Dick Geis used to write in a space which was simultaneously his cluttered basement and his own mind (also cluttered, and inhabited by his alter ego, adisembodied extraterrestrial named Alter). Other people write from a cave, or the Inner Sactum, or a secret office hidden in the *real* top floor of the Empire State Building.

I've decided to move my writing operations to a lookout tower like the ones Kathe and her first husband used to live / work in for the Forest Service. So there's now, unseen by the populace and unknown to the city authorities, a five-storey tower rising from the roof of 960 SW Jefferson Avenue, with a commanding view on all four sides of the rooftops and treetops of little old Corvallis. There, surrounded by sunlight or gray overcast or starry skies or wind-lashed rain as the case may be, I will write, sending my words down and outward from there.

I like it up here.

Secretary of State

What does it matter that the title "Secretary of State" will soon be formally conveyed from Colin Powell to Condoleezza Rice?

Powell did what Bush told him to do, even though he knew it was wrong, for the sake of loyalty.

Rice will do whatever Bush tells her to do, and seems to have no concept of right and wrong, only of loyalty.

*shrug* The Americans who will be doing the dying won't care much what the Secretary of State says or doesn't say while carrying it out Bush's next blunder.

Weight Loss

Call this whining if you will, but I feel justified in making this simple observation:

You can tweak diet and exercise, vitamins and drugs, all you like, but in the final analysis, the only way to lose weight is to eat less food than it takes to sustain life. A controlled form of starvation. And this is painful.

That's just how it is. It's unpleasant, especially if you have dicey blood sugar.

That's life.

A Tale of Two Brothers

Kathleen S. Burt, My Only Sunshine, sent me this e-mail today:

80% of all votes in America are counted by only two
companies: Diebold and ES&S.

There is no federal agency with regulatory authority or
oversight of the U.S. voting machine industry.

The vice-president of Diebold and the president of ES&S are brothers.

The chairman and CEO of Diebold is a major Bush campaign organizer
and donor who wrote in 2003 that he was "committed to helping Ohio
deliver its electoral votes to the president next year."

35% of ES&S is owned by Republican Senator Chuck Hagel, who
became Senator based on votes counted by ES&S machines.

Diebold's new touch screen voting machines have no paper
trail of any votes. In other words, there is no way to
verify that the data coming out of the machine is the same
as what was legitimately put in by voters.

Diebold also makes ATMs, checkout scanners, and ticket
machines, all of which log each transaction and can
generate a paper trail.

Diebold is based in Ohio and supplies almost all the voting
machines there.

None of the international election observers were allowed
in the polls in Ohio.

30% of all U.S. votes are carried out on unverifiable
touch screen voting machines.

Bush's Help America Vote Act of 2002 has as its goal to replace
all machines with the new electronic touch screen systems.

Republican Senator Chuck Hagel owns 35% of ES&S and was
caught lying about it.

ES&S is the largest voting machine manufacturer in the U.S.
and counts almost 60% of all U.S. votes.

Exit polls for the 2004 elections were accurate within 1%
or less in areas where ballot machines were used.

Major exit poll data discrepancies were noted in counties where
touch screen machines were used, especially in Ohio and Florida.

Source and details:
http://memes.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=3667&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0

"The unexplained Exit Poll Discrepancy"
by Steven F. Freeman, Ph.D.,
University of Pennsylvania
November 10, 2004

http://www.ilcaonline.org/freeman.pdf

--
Two petitions for an investigation of the elections:
http://www.petitiononline.com/uselect/petition.htmlhttp://www.moveon.org/investigatethevote/
----

Alberto the Torturer

If you object to my referring to Alberto Gonzales as a "torturer", since he never applied the electrodes himself, I submit that "I was only giving orders" is not much of a defense.

Taking

In addition to everything else that happened on November 2nd, Oregon passed Measure 37, which requires the state, counties and towns to pay "compensation" to landowners if they can construe a government action as reducing the commercial or sale value of their estates.

Now communities are trying to develop procedures to carry out this law. I have one suggestion:

Let the checks be held by the secretary of the nearest elementary school, to be collected by the landowner in person.

What a Rotten Day

Went to donate blood. Had to wait an awfully long time. By the time I got to the table, it was obvious I was going to be late to class, but I lay down anyway.

The phlebotomist sat talking with a donor who was already finished while I waited for her to hook me up. When she did, she fretted over finding a vein, finally picked one, jammed the needle in and couldn't get blood flowing, asked someone else to do it for her.

It still wasn't a very good stick, the blood flowed too slowly. After twenty minutes, she pulled the plug and threw my donation away, 100cc short of a full unit.

So, I got to class late, missing the last lecture before a major quiz, when the instructor tried to cram in all the stuff she hadn't gotten to yet.

Back at home, the big freezer revealed that it had died, and all the food was half-thawed.

We had a refrigerator in the shed that we hadn't gotten around to hooking up, because the space that would hold it had no outlet. Kathe and I got a new outlet installed in under an hour -- the highpoint of the day, and I didn't fail to appreciate it.

We got the food crammed into the little freezer in the new refrigerator, the little frezer in the kitchen refrigerator, and the little freezer in the apartment. Incredibly, it all fit.

Now we're waiting to find out if the freezer in the new fridge actually freezes.

On the other hand, some folks are in Fallujah right now . . . .

Israelis and other Palestinians

I saw an article on a blog named Discarded Lies (I could only wish they would dsicard more lies), which compares Israeli occupation of neighboring Palestinian territories with the occupation and reconstruction of Germany after the Second World War.

The biggest problem I see with that analogy is that Israel has no interest in breaking the Palestinians down in order to build them up again as a successful democratic society as the Allies did to Germany. The Israelis want, let's face it, to break the Palestinians and keep them broken.

Not drive them out, not exterminate them. Just keep them nearby for a cheap labor force, while preventing them from ever developing a viable civil society, much less a sovereign nation.

The Second World War and the postwar reconstruction were conducted by leftists who held to liberal ideas of human rights and human dignity. Their goal was to overthrow fascism and build a successful democratic nation in Germany. They succeeded, in the greatest liberal victory since the Civil War.

There are two nation-states, and an incipient third one in the territory of Palestine. These nations will not know peace until they are all living by liberal principles.

Judicial Activism

President Bush came into office with a long list of people he wanted to appoint to Federal judgeships. That's not surprising, seeing as how Bill Clinton left office with so many seats vacant. Clinton had nominated 246 jurists, and 45 of them had been blocked by Congressional Republicans.

Bush is unhappy that ten of his 201 appointees have been rejected, and wants Democrats in Congress to stop what he calls an "unprecedented" level of opposition.

I do want everybody in Washington to learn how to get along, I really do. It seems to me that Democrats could have engaged in a partisan tit for tat, blocking Bush appointments wholesale the way the Republicans did to Clinton. Instead, they showed a dignified and manly restraint, while still following their consciences.

I hope that Democrats remain firm in holding the line against activist judges who have a radical social-engineering scheme they wish to ram down our throats.

God and/or Satan

In a previous post, I mentioned Satan at work in the world. I'd like to clarify that statement.

Satan is an embodiment of the perverse human desire for self-deception and ultimately self-destruction. This remains true regardless of whether such an entity exists or does not.

And after all, there is a sense, at least, in which Uncle Sam and Smokey Bear are real and alive. In a sense.

I prefer not to worry too much about categories, when it comes to such beings.

I once mentioned a ghost we used to have in our house to someone who said sternly, "DO you really believe in ghosts?" I replied, "I don't believe in ghosts, but I also don't go out of my way to ignore them."

Or as a woman said in Meeting yesterday, "I don't know if there is a God, but I like to feel His presence in this room."

My Own Conciliatory Gesture

I will no longer refer to Bush as the President*.

After all, he did actually win the election this time.

And I find that it does make a difference to me.

I may think those 51% of my neighbors are masochistic idiots, but they really did vote for him, and he really did win, so that's life. That's democracy.

Now, let's see about this "one nation" business, shall we?

Message to America

To Senator John Kerry: You sounded very Presidential this morning. It was refreshing to hear *somebody* sounding that way.

To George W. Bush: Now is your chance to show that there's some timy shred of sincerity behind all your "United We Stand" talk. I'm willing to give you one more chance to prove it. Go ahead, surprise me.

To U.S. citizens 18-25: This was supposed to be the Scooby Doo election: "I would have gotten away with it, if it hadn't been for you meddling kids!" But you never showed up. I guess you're just a bunch of worthless slackers after all.

To all of you: I really do think that we could start acting like a united country again, even with this President and this Congress. And I think it would be a good idea. Really and truly.

In Praise of My Neighbors

I saw something that did my heart good: a joint Bush - Kerry rally, with campaign signs, American flags and a big signs that said, "United We Stand -- Stop the Hate".

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

In Defense of Marriage -- Everybody's Marriage

I hear tell that there are anti-gay (usually anti-marriage) initiatives and referenda on the ballot in eleven states.

I also hear that every one of them is currently expected to pass.

That makes me very, very sad.