Hey, just a quick note for anyone who ends up here:
I have moved the blog to americantheocracy.org
Thanks for stopping by!
-
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
Just a quick note to point out that the WA state Democrats have put together a web form where you can give the state party superdelegates your opinion on who they should vote for at the convention.
Washington State Democrats – Lobby the WSDCC Superdelegates
This is not all of the superdelegates for WA but the rest, with the exception of Tom Foley, are currently elected officials the Govenror, Senators & Representatives. A full list of superdelegates and what commitments they have currently made can be found at Superdelegate Transparency Project – Congresspedia.
Today, I went to the Democratic Caucus here in Washington. It was a really great experience. The turnout for my district was amazing. There were hundreds of people coming out to be involved in democracy just in my small part of the world. Truly inspiring! This was my first caucus as in the past I had not realized that the Democratic Party largely ignores the primary results here. It seemed that there were quite a few people that were in the same situation. I have to admit I like the Caucus process. It is really so much more personal getting together and talking with your neighbors about what you think would be best for the country.
Caucuses are a messy affair, especially with large numbers of participants. However, the organizers managed to keep it running smoothly. We were scheduled to be in a middle school cafeteria but by the time to start that room was overflowing. There was some brief speeches about each candidate and then several of the precincts (mine included) moved off to other parts of the building so there was some space to talk and get to the business of the day.
When you first sign in you select the candidate you are voting for. Then there is some discussion about the candidates. People were excited and passionate on both sides of the Obama – Clinton discussion. There are a lot of people that spoke for both Obama and Clinton. Yours truly even made some of his thoughts on the matter known. The rules keep the debate short but in the end I think anyone who felt comfortable speaking their opinion to a group of over 40 people had a chance to have a say either in the slightly more formal timed speeches or the open discussion that followed. To get an idea of how much bigger this caucus was than past ones some of the people who who had been at the one in ’04 said there were about 5 people in attendance for my precinct that year.
It was interesting to see the people on both sides make a case for their candidate. The Clinton supporters were very focused on the arguments of experience along with fear of having someone with less time in government at the federal level as President in this current time of turmoil and her universal health care plan. The Obama supporters were in big on hope, electability (there were some who even expressed concerns that they would not be likely to vote for Clinton in a general election), the problems with mandating health insurance on people and the idea that Obama lines up better with the progressive goals of the Democratic party.
After the speech making and discussion there is an opportunity for people to change the candidate they are voting for. In our group there were no uncommitted people and everyone else was pretty committed to who they selected initially so the votes were tallied and delegates to the Legislative District Caucus were selected. Our group broke around 3 to 1 for Obama. It sounded like the other precincts around us had similar outcomes. The news reports are saying about 66% for Obama which seems pretty reasonable. In my precinct there were 4 delegates to the Legislative district Caucus available. I volunteered and was elected to go. So I will be there to support Obama at that event in a couple months.
I stayed around and made sure all my paperwork was good for the delegate process and went home really energized at having seen and participated in such an event.
Here is a quick, last minute reminder that the State Caucus is today at 1PM. You can find where you are supposed to go for your meeting at http://www.wa-democrats.org/caucusfinder. (Sorry to any Republicans who stumble across this. You’re on your own.)
The Washington State Primary is not used by the Democrats and only partially used by the Republicans for delegate selection. So going to your caucus is the best way to be involved in the process.
Today the NY Times released an editorial about the ongoing abuses of the Bush administration and the lasting impact of them on America. It begins, “There are too many moments these days when we cannot recognize our country.” It is a lament of proud, patriotic Americans about what has been done to our country since 9/11 in the name of national security.
Looking at America – New York Times
It is a well written piece and summarizes a lot of what I and many of the people in my life feel about our country these days. However, at a couple points, I think it may be too forgiving of the Bush administration and the Republican Congress.
“Out of panic and ideology, President Bush squandered America’s position of moral and political leadership…” I really have a difficult time believing that the administration was in a state of panic when it went about orchestrating a power grab for the President and the executive branch. It seems more that a sense of panic was created for the American populace in order to obfuscate what was really going on, the limiting of civil liberties of Americans. There is no doubt that 9/11 was a tragic moment in American history. However, the Bush administration very deftly used that tragedy to further its own goals.
“The White House used the fear of terrorism and the sense of national unity to ram laws through Congress…” while damning, neglects the complicity of the Republican controlled Congress in abdicating legislative power of oversight. For the first 6 years of this administration Bush largely got what he asked for from the Congress. The Republicans fully supported what was going on. Sadly, many Democrats were forced along for the ride with fear of being beaten with claims that they were “soft on terror” in the next election. Not that there was a lot the minority could do against a unified Republican majority determined to consolidate power.
It concludes with a call to action for Americans to elect someone more fit to be President in the upcoming election cycle. While it would be ideal for something to happen before the next President is elected it is highly unlikely that there will be serious investigations right now. Hopefully, we can get someone who will investigate the abuses of this administration and not just gloss over what has been done to America in a spirit of moving forward. Yes, we need to move forward but we also need to determine the real scope of the damage, expose the abuses that have been kept secret, fix the problems created and hold the responsible parties accountable.
Going into the new year and the presidential election cycle we truly need to focus on what needs to be done to get America back on the right track after the tragic Bush Presidency. We cannot allow the country to continue down its current path.
Be Active!
Participate!
Vote!
Today Republican candidate Mitt Romney made his case for being a Mormon elected as President. While I do not agree with many of Romney’s positions it was a very interesting speech. It has been a long time since a major candidate has been in the position of standing up in front of America and justifying his religious faith. He may even make some progress with the Evangelical elements in the GOP. Although, it is unlikely that even with this speech they will be truly happy with him as a candidate.
Romney made sure to play up to the concerns of the intended audience. He spent plenty of time wrapping himself in the flag and proclaiming his faith. He was not really trying to convince proponents of a secular society that he was the right guy. Although he did state that the his church ties would not have authority in regards to his actions as President. Rather he focused on making sure that it was clear that he shared moral values with the the religious right despite differing faiths. Romney did not really discuss Mormonism and said that a candidate should not be the spokesman for his faith. In fact, he only used the word “Mormon” once in the whole 20 minute speech. He made it clear that he felt that faith and religion had a very large role to play in American society. This was tempered somewhat by stating that no religion should dictate to the state.
Romney makes the common conservative argument that working to maintain the separation of church and state is really an effort to remove religion entirely form the public discourse and replace it with a secular religion. While I think he is wrong in this assessment he did temper it throughout his speech by referring to the freedom to practice divergent faiths including presumably his own. Unfortunately, there did not seem to be a lot of room in Romney’s vision of America for non-believers “freedom requires religion” or for faiths that are not rooted in Judaism, Christianity or Islam as they received even less attention than his own Mormon faith.
Despite all the efforts to make the evangelicals happy and the promises a faith based presidency he did make a couple statements that were very interesting considering the primary target of the speech.
Early on in the speech Romney states, “Religious tolerance would be a shallow principle indeed, if it were reserved only for faiths with which we agree.” This might have just been calculated attempt to get the the evangelicals who will never support him to think differently about their position. Later in his speech he returns to the theme talking about the lack of religious tolerance of the original colonists who had just fled persecution. However, even if it was simply an attempt to shame evangelicals into supporting him there is a great deal of truth there. To support religious freedom means that freedom needs to apply to everyone, including those without faith.
Towards the end of the speech Romney states, “We face no greater danger today than Theocratic Tyranny.” Of course, he was referring to the dangers posed to the world by radical Islam. The statement itself is true beyond its intended scope. It condemns the goals of all who would use religion to justify limiting freedoms and committing acts of violence in the pursuit of power. An American Theocracy would be no more benign than the Islamic theocracies around the world.
A judge in Florida ruled yesterday that it was more important to keep the trade secrets than to examine the electronic voting machines. In this race currently decided by less than 400 votes there were around 18,000 ballots that had voted on other races but did not register a vote on the congressional race. This seems more than a little strange by itself and opening up the code of the machines to test them for errors or tampering might allow this close race to be sorted out. However, the judge decided that it was merely conjecture that there were problems with the machines and ruled to protect the trade secrets of the manufacturer.
The expectation that someone could produce evidence of tampering or problems with the voting machines without having access to the workings of the machines itself is an absurdly high standard. Sadly, if there was tampering with the machines it is reasonable to expect that someone who had access to the machines prior to the election had access to them after the election as well. There has been testing on the machines so it isn’t as though they have been sealed up somewhere the whole time
Electronic voting has some real issues to get people to trust that it is a valid means of determining elections. Sealing up the processes by protecting trade secrets is not the way to get people to believe in this system.
Thank you again, Florida, for showing the rest of the world how not to run an election.
It started off sunny this morning and the sun is still trying to shine through the endless Seattle gray. The Republicans lost control of the House, the Senate is still undecided possibly until New Years and it appears that at least some of the conservative ballot initiatives across the country are failing to pass. There were some reports of some voting issues but none of the major problems that might have happened.
All in all not a bad day after a major election, kind of a nice change really.
The day after the election just gets better. One of the key architects of the failed Iraq policy, Donald Rumsfeld is stepping down. Its a few years too late but it is finally happening. It seems that the current administration might have realized in a Democracy the leadership is supposed to actually listen to the people. The insular world that W and co. have lived in the last several years has made them follow a path that looked bad at the outset and has only become worse from there.
Rumsfeld Resigns as Defense Secretary After Big Election Gains for Democrats – New York Times
Get out there and fill in the ovals, punch out the chads, mash on screen buttons or whatever you have to do. Sure, it isn’t a perfect system but it is the system we have. Despite all the potential issues with the voting process if you fail to participate your voice definitely will not be heard.
