Reverse Sweep

"The most exciting, challenging and significant relationship of all is the one you have with yourself. And if you find someone to love the you you love, well, that's just fabulous." - Carrie SATC

So the Red Sox pulled the reverse sweep. That was quite the series. I know a lot of very happy people and of course some sad ones. Too bad for the sad ones though cause their Yankees have won enough for them to get over it. Tonight I hope the Astros win, a Texas v. Mass world series would mirror the election and in both cases I'll be rooting for Mass. (Guess it should really be Mass v. Conn). I can't wait until the World Series is over. Why do I only care about baseball in October? I'm also like that about hockey and basketball, yet I'll watch football anytime. Soccer I seem to only care about every 4 years, like during the World cup, well I guess every 2 years because I watch the women's world cup too. Fyi FIFA 2005 is awesome and addicting.

So I wake up this morning and decide I am not going to class. I was so tired from staying up late and I hadn't done my reading for contracts. I go into Fede's room and tell him I'm staying home (since I was going to give him a ride)...so I tell him to take my truck. I had to get out of bed to tell him, so I got past the hardest part of every morning. I decide to shower since I can do that sleeping. I get out of the shower and lay in bed and it feels so good. I decide to read for contracts since I'll be missing it, I might as well learn what I'm missing. I read and when I finish reading, I notice I can still make class. I put on some clothes and drink a red bull and decide to show up to class, on time I might add. I'm glad I did because I got to ask some questions that helped me get "Parol Evidence." I decide to go home between classes instead as my way to justify going, but after class I stop and eat lunch in the cafeteria (spreading my views on voting irregulatires) and then I figure, ok I'm here so I'm going to my next class. I go to Civ Pro to learn about intervention and class actions. So a day I had totally almost skipped, I ended up attending. It sucks I almost found a way to justify staying home to myself, but I'm also proud of myself for using the same technique to trick myself into going. Isn't my life interesting.

I saw Al Gore on CSPAN making a speech at Georgetown. It was very good. He pretty much explained the motivations and mindset behind the Republican party and a lot of their actions. Sometimes I'll sit there and wonder where they get their motivations to do bad things, I mean we all want what is best for the country, but somehow their decisions never seem best for the country as a whole. Of course it sums up into them caring for and protecting their own interests, but the way Gore explained the thought process and justification was really impressive. Some of the cool facts he shared were that a US sponsored study found that over 90% of Iraqis view the US as occupiers and 2 % view us as liberators. I guess we are to think that 90% are freedom haters. Over 90% of those tortured and abused at that prison in Iraq were not guilty of anything and just there for questioning and were let go. So the argument that we don't owe terrorists human rights shows that when 90 are not terrorists we are jerks. The people we are trying to free might not trust us when we sexually humilate their people. Way to go Rumy. Isolated instances argument you can save because its been proved that there were clear instructions. I mean we are outside the Geneva convention in treating enemy combatants. He also noted how an important republican (pardon the missing name) who is not voting for Bush is quoted as saying "they spill out mistruths with an evangelical fervor." We believe them. And if you know my feelings on evangelical Christians and how they use the word of God to manipulate and serve their own ends instead of those of the lord, you would see how that really struck a chord with me. He did a nice explanation on how Republicans have made poor people hate taxes to serve their own ends and all that other democratic stuff. Don't forget I feel the democrats are part of the problem as well, but at least they stand for the right stuff and are clearly the best of two evils. Dean, why did you have to scare the democrats into thinking you weren't electable?

Angie dropped by yesterday and dropped off a documentary called Unprecedented about the 2000 election and about the voting in Florida. It is narrated by Danny Glover. He spoke at my graduation. I thought I knew a lot about the voting irregularities in Florida, but it was so much more messed up than I imagined. Some stuff is complicated, so I won't try to explain it here, but the issue of purging felons was crazy. In Florida if you are a felon you can't vote. The law was actually created at a time when people were upset that blacks got to vote, so this would decrease their voting numbers. It was beefed up recently before 2000 because it wasn't being enforced as hard. That aside, they create this list of felons and then try ot match it with the people registered to vote. If the names match they delete you off the list. In theory it makes sense if you agree with the idea, but the way the did it was more messed up. They sent out memos saying they wanted the process to be all encompassing, so they just matched people who were somewhat close, ignoring Jrs, srs, name spellings, different birthdays etc, even those with our felony dates or dates in the future. (yeah explain that.) Now this wasn't like a few people that were getting mistaken due to errors, it was thousands...mostly blacks and 93% of blacks vote democratic. There was an example of a preacher who was purged and had his vote thrown out whose name was "johnny jackson Jr" and was born on 9/8/?? and he was matched with a felon named "John Jackson" (no Jr) born in 8/8/??. Close enough I guess, so he didn't get to vote. Then out of state felons who had their voting rights restored in their states are on the list and purged as well, unless they write the governor a letter and ask for his permission to vote.

It goes on and on, with details about the companies outsourced to do it. It has a nice explanation about how the chad ballots sucked and how the new electronic ballots with no audit trail suck too. They already have cases of backdoor code where you can change the results. In Nebraska, the CEO of the company who made the voting machines was the senator whose own machines counted his votes in his last election. Now even if you feel this could still be fair, (like Cheney and Halliburton's no bid contracts) he didn't even disclose that he was the CEO of the company.

It also talks about the recounts, the lawsuits, the way republicans sent all their staffers down to Florida to protest in Miami-Dade county like they were citizens of Florida. The shadyness of Katrine Harris was mind blowing. They made a key point that Gore should have asked for a total recount than a partial recount, which would have been more fair and how that could have cost him the election. The supreme court ruling was talked about and how Scalia (I really don't like this guy in general to begin with) has so many reasons to recuse himself from this case, including his son being benefiting from the election of Bush, but didn't. They also noted that Bush v. Gore only applies to Bush v. Gore and not any other case, this is rarely done in court cases and if you applied Bush v. Gore to any election it would invalidate it. Of course you get a lot of great arguments in the dissent.

This is just a tidbit of the information I learned, but there is a lot more and yeah, 2000 is over, lets move on, but a lot of these same practices exist today. It really makes you worry about our voting process and fair it really is. Dude, I vote, you count it, you add them up, it shouldn't be that complicated.

Wow I'm really going off on this issue, so let me tell you about a press article Angie wrote. Here is a part of it.

"The absentee ballot instructions, instruct the absentee voter to insert their ballot in a sealed secrecy envelope. Apparently, the absentee ballot does not fit in the secrecy envelope, which the voter is instructed to place the ballot in. Since, the absentee ballot does not properly fit in the secrecy envelope a voter is not insured of their privacy when voting.
Furthermore, the instructions do not instruct how much postage should be placed on the envelope being mailed to the board of elections. Therefore, the absentee ballots may be returned to the voter, which may result in those votes not being counted. After speaking with the Miami Dade Board of Elections, Voices for Working Families was informed that a voter needs to place three 37 cents stamps or two 37 cents stamps and a 9 cent stamp. The United States Postal Service is also stating conflicting information regarding how much postage needs to be place on the absentee ballot. "

If this election is close, and every vote is important, I hope people fight all the injustices out there. I'm done with my surmon.

On a more materialistic side, my new laptop from Dell (3rd laptop actually) arrives tomorrow. I will have to set it up, but it will be nice to have a good laptop for law school again. Still working on finding out who has my old one.

I may say I'm not settling, but it's obvious I'm settling