Battles with Integrity

I'm taking a quick break from mid-term studies to remind y'all:

Alameda County voters can check their registration status online: http://www.acgov.org/rov/voter_reg_lookup.htm

If you're concerned, if you don't know, even if you're just curious to see if it works, check it out.

(It worked for me, but it just confirmed what I had inferred when I got my sample ballot in the mail.)

Like when he flaunted navy regulations, flew below safety guidelines, clipped a power line and blacked out a portion of Spain? (...and kept his wings, because it's good to be the son and grandson of admirals.)

loupyone posted a cool youtube video encouraging people to vote, or not vote. Anyway, it made me curious. How many of us vote? This is a totally non-scientific self-selecting poll, so the data are useless on a large scale, but I'm still curious. I'll collect the data and provide the percentages, but otherwise the poll is confidential. If I knew how to make it anonymous, I would.

Anyway, here goes.

[Poll #1270701]

With the nomination pretty much in the back for Senator Obama, no matter what Senator Clinton thinks, it's time to start thinking about November.

In that vein, USA Today (the comic book of newspapers!) has put together a rather useful and interesting flash Electoral Vote Tracker which allows you to easily calculate the electoral votes for any number of scenarios. Feel free to take a look, and if you like, post screenshots of scenarios you think might turn out, and tell us why.

Not if you want to stay out of jail, anyway:

http://www.reason.com/blog/show/125968.html

Your tax dollars at work.

Found on democracyinusa.
x-posted to war_on_error

How is it that Richard Branson of Virgin fame gets to perform a publicity stunt wedding for his new flights to Las Vegas, to little comment, but the idea of a marriage between two same-gendered folk sends some folk into paroxysms of rage.

Sometimes I can't summon the energy to even try to understand.

Nonetheless, best wishes to Mr & Mrs. Dimitrios Papadogonas (Virgin America director of marketing) and Coco Jones (Yahoo sales rep). May your new life together be successful and fruitful, with as little turbulence as possible, and with no crash-and-burn at the end.

From Harper's Index for October 2006:

Minimum amount of USDA farm subsidies since 2000 that have been paid out to people who do not farm: $1,300,000,000

Minimum value of “small business” contracts given out by the U.S. last year that went to Fortune 500 firms: $1,200,000,000

Dairy Industry Crushed Innovator Who Bested Price-Control System

I get really frustrated when folks claim that our socio-cultural-economic system rewards people who work hard and punishes layabouts. Many people who self-identify as conservatives rail against 'the Welfare state', even as they support initiatives that provide government assistance to those (rather, companies who purchase their candidates of choice) unable to compete in the market without help. Cornel West describes some of these people as free-market fundamentalists. At first I thought this was a misnomer, as these free-market fundamentalists don't hew to a strict view of the free market, where each actor has an equal chance in the market to face off against his or her competitors. Then I realized that 'fundamentalist' means less a fundamental interpretation of the intent of the original concept, and more a personal interpretation about how to self-justify one's own prejudice, nevermind the consequence. Just like much other fundamentalism, really.

Marx's communism is dead. Nobody has been advocating equality of outcome for years. Too many folk have been beating that dead horse for far too long.

One of the questions I have about the whole Milton Friedman debating point of equality of outcome vs. equality of opportunity is this, if one believes that we now have equal opportunities, how does one explain that women/the poor/minorities don't routinely find themselves at the same level of advancement/wealth/societal success as men/middle-to-upper-classers/white? Is it possible to reconcile income and social disparity with equal opportunity without saying that some folk (namely rich white men) are simply better than other people?

It seems logically that either the playing field is level, and I'm suceeding and you're not just because I'm better than you, or the playing field isn't level. Just my thought.

It's not fair. While Jon Carroll was away on vacation, he managed to do something I've been dreaming of for almost a year now, but have yet to achieve. I'm not bitter, but Jon Carroll made it on to Bill O'Reilly's enemies list. Those media types get all the breaks.

Dominion of Caramida NS-Wikipedia entry, aka too much time on my hands.

Should you find yourself with the same, you can make one, too!