From the Randi Rhodes Show

Exit Polls: Paper vs Electronic Voting States

Who did you vote for?

If you voted for Kerry and lived in a paper-ballot state, you probably voted for Kerry. If you voted for Kerry and lived in a paperless electronic-ballot state, you probably voted for Bush.

Diebold did indeed deliver Ohio for Bush. While they were at it, they delivered New Mexico, and Florida. Welcome to the Bush Leagues.

Surprised?

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Moving Forward

The right is trying to position the left as losers because their incumbent candidate won by the slimmest margin since Woodrow Wilson in 1916.

This is an important frame for them to spread, because the truth is not in their favor. What they want people to forget is that we on the left have made a HUGE difference in this election.

"What?" you ask, "But Kerry lost."

Well, the right's smear campaign WAS effective. And the Secretary of State in Ohio did a good job of making it clear he was only going to count the "spoiled" votes that were likely to go in his candidate's favor. That did make it impossible to take the popular vote. As a result, Bush will be inaugurated on January 20, but that's very different from the typical comfortable margin taken by an incumbent. Bill Clinton had more than twice the lead over his opponent when he was re-elected in 1996.

Remember, 2 years ago, George Bush was considered UNTOUCHABLE. Now the right is desperately trying to manufacture a mandate where their landslide should have been.

During this election season, we've learned a LOT and we're not going away.

We're not going to roll over. We know that all that awaits is a kick in the ribs, not a tummy-rub. We’ll coalesce into something bigger and stronger for the next round. We will take our country back from these manipulative adolescents who have lured the gullible into granting them 4 more years of looting the national treasury for personal gain.

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The Return of Wealth Care

I just heard a pundit ask why we shouldn't have "free market health care."

The Frame
This implies that health care is a market - just like a furniture store. It implies that the person seeking health care can choose whether or not they need care.

The Reality
In reality, unlike a furniture store, where you can opt for a less-expensive fabric for your new sofa, or skip the sofa altogether, you can't choose a less expensive cancer. You can't choose a less expensive genetic heart disease. You can't choose a less expensive car accident. If you're in the military, you can't choose less expensive wounds.

Health care is not a commodity, it is a necessity. Illness is not a profit center, it is a cost center. Markets eliminate cost centers, not by providing necessary resources to them, but by ceasing to support them altogether.

We had "free market" health care once, before the advent of health insurance.

People died horrible deaths, they were cast into abject poverty due to simple bad luck, and preventable plagues swept the world.

Broad-based health care was developed to protect us all from these terrible threats.

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VOTE

The title says it all. Read it, then Do it.

Bring a friend!

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Look Who I Ran Into on the Way to PT!

A Brief Stop on the Way to PT

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Freedom Isn't Free

I've heard this a lot lately - "Freedom isn't free." When someone points out the stupidity of Bush's war against a harmless, weak country, a common response is: "Freedom isn't free."

The Frame
This frame implies that the war in Iraq is a war for our freedom. It implies that our freedom was threatened by the Iraqis. It implies we would not be free if we hadn't attacked Iraq.

But there's a problem here - if we hadn't attacked the weak, harmless Iraqis, at what point would we have lost our freedom as a result? Seriously, what was Hussein doing that would make us less free?

He had no WMDs, he had no connection to the terrorists who actually threatened us, he posed no threat whatsoever. He could not even have posed a threat according to Condoleeza Rice herself:

But in terms of Saddam Hussein being there, let's remember that his country is divided, in effect. He does not control the northern part of his country. We are able to keep arms from him. His military forces have not been rebuilt.

So what freedom would we have lost by leaving Iraq alone and focusing more effectively on Osama bin Laden and al Quaeda?

Don't get me wrong, freedom really isn't free. But the price of freedom is not pointless war, it's eternal vigilance:

The unconstitutional excesses that have irreparably diluted our freedom have, without exception, arisen from heavy-handed overreaction to crises that did not really exist.

Citizens must speak up against those who threaten our freedom, soldiers must fight against those who threaten our freedom, voters must vote for freedom, and the press must alert us to threats to our freedom. We all have our parts to play.

So where are the current threats to our freedom? How about the people who threaten the rights granted to us under the constitution - like those who crafted the ABUSE A PATRIOT act, those who feel it's OK to lock people up indefinitely without charges or trial, those who want to pass a new law that makes it so the government never has to disclose where and why someone was disappeared.

From Section 201: Prohibition of Disclosure of Terrorism Investigation Detainee Information
...the government need not disclose information about individuals detained in investigations or terrorism until disclosure occurs routinely upon the initiation of criminal charges.

Those are actual, current threats to our freedom.

Let's send those people home - give them a timeout to think about their actions and why they were wrong. Maybe they can come back out when they're ready to play nice.

Nah, probably not.

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