A friend e-mailed me about a moveon.org petition along the lines of, aren't you glad they had paper ballots in NH and don't you wish they were everywhere? Which prompts this post.
Paper ballots or no, most NH votes were counted on Diebold optical scanners proven hackable and yielding dubious results in past elections. We know that in 2004, the media "adjusted" the exit polls to more closely match reported vote totals; so exit polls are no longer all that helpful. In NH, between the exit polls and the most recent previous polls not long before, there was a surprising swing in %'s away from Obama and in favor of Clinton -- but little or no changes in the %'s for other candidates.
Personally, I don't know what happened; but moveon's failure to fully grasp the problem gives me no confidence in their ability to identify the solution.
For help getting up to speed on this issue, start by checking out RFK, Jr.'s articles in Rolling Stone on election fraud in 2004 and subsequent elections, here and here, and then check for updates on the issue in democraticunderground.com's Election Reform forum.
Given that the problems have not been fixed, it's more important than ever that we vote in massive numbers.
UPDATES: Dennis Kucinich "has sent a letter to the New Hampshire Secretary of State asking for a recount of Tuesday’s election because of 'unexplained disparities between hand-counted ballots and machine-counted ballots.'" He says he's making the request not because he thinks a recount would affect his own total but in the interests of "public confidence in the integrity of the election process." More here.
But apparently, it's to be only a partial recount. Here's why one election fraud expert, Mark Crispin Miller, doesn't expect the recount to tell us whether or not fraud really occurred.
January 10, 2008
Why We Can't Know Who Won the Primary in NH
Amazon Customers' Tags for "Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left"
(More about the book, by Jonah Goldberg, here.)
January 7, 2008
David Lynch on Mobile Video
Esp. true of Lynch's films, which are packed with highly-symbolic visual details that would be invisible on a small screen (regardless of the resolution).
Excerpt from "I-Be Area"
by Ryan Trecartin, via The New York Times. "Ah think Ah just saw a highly advanced, 3-D, text message of mah future self givin' me the middle finger, and I'm gonna f*ck right back in his face." -- "You're totally paranoid!" -- "Ah know what my original wants to look like, and I can't believe you tried to re-cycle me into that person . . . I mean he looks cool and Ah liked him, [but] that's not my original and Ah know he's somewhere LAUGHING . . . ."
Per The NYT, a lot longer than his A Family finds Entertainment (right) but still engrossing; judging from the excerpt, considerably less frenetic.
The same article mentions other works I'd also love to see, including new work by Sadie Benning and Nathalie Djurberg.
January 6, 2008
January 4, 2008
Healthcare in the U.S.
(Graph from naked capitalism.)
So, if our money isn't lengthening our lives, where's it going?
I recently had bunion surgery and my doctor prescribed a knee-walker to help me get around during the recovery. The manufacturer told me they could ship one for ca. $250 and get it to me in 3 days.
My insurer told me it would be covered only if I got it through an "in-network provider."
Now, you might think the point of dealing with "in-network providers" would be that the insurer could negotiate cheaper prices; but apparently, no.
Out of a list of at least a dozen supposed in-network providers, it turned out only one could actually provide the item -- and it would take at least two weeks, partly because special authorization was required from the insurer, because this in-network provider's price to procure the item was over $1,000.
I called the appeals people at the insurer and said hey, we can get it quicker from the manufacturer and you'll save over $700.
The insurer could not have been less interested.
When the knee-walker finally arrived, it was an inferior model from a different manufacturer.
I have to at least ask whether the insurer and its in-network provider weren't splitting the mark-up at my employer's and ultimately all of our expense (not to mention the delay and other inconvenience).
The California Nurses Association (CNA)/National Nurses Organizing Committee (NNOC) is collecting healthcare horror stories as part of their campaign in support of publicly-funded healthcare, which they call "CheneyCare," for all of us. You can tell your own story and sign their petition here.
UPDATE: Eliz. Edwards on TDS tonite (May 20, '09) said, out of every $700 paid for to United Healthcare, $1 was paid to the CEO.
January 1, 2008
Audio Tour for the Lawrence Weiner Retrospective
From an interview of Lawrence Weiner at artkrush, re- the retrospective of his work now on view at the Whitney:
"AK: The audio tour for the retrospective . . . doesn't provide the usual explanations of the works in the show — rather, it provides a soundtrack for viewing it. What is this audio compilation, and what do you hope it conveys to viewers?
"LW: IT IS A REMIX OF RECORDINGS THAT I HAVE MADE WITH MUSICIANS OVER TIME — AN AMBIENT SOUNDTRACK."
The show at the Whitney runs through February 10, then opens at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles on April 13.
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