Tag Archives: politics

I signed the petition. Recall Walker!

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I signed the petition to recall Walker.

Today, I went down to the Labor Temple on S. Park in Madison and signed the petition to recall the governor of Wisconsin, Scott Walker. You can find out more about the recall effort at A United Wisconsin to Recall Scott Walker AKA United Wisconsin, which is the group that is organizing the recall. On their website, you can find out where to sign a petition all over Wisconsin or even print out your own petition form. The goal is to get one million signatures of which a little over half a million have to be valid. I bet this man thinks you should sign the recall petition! And before you’re done, visit the Democratic Party of Wisconsin’s Recall Headquarters.

The Time is Nigh: Vote

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We’ve been winding our way through the past two years to get to this point. Today is Tuesday 4 November 2008: Election Day 2008! So drop what you’re doing and get to the polls!

I’ve been hearing a lot of people saying that this is the most important election of their lifetimes. I felt that way in 2004 (just check this blog’s archives) and if more people had been smart then perhaps we wouldn’t be in such a pickle now.

It’s all pretty strange. The polarities have switched. The Republicans are now the Joe Six-Pack party filled with people who are voting against their own economic self-interest. And the Democrats have become the party of the elites, who are also apparently voting against their own economic self-interest.

2004 was the make-it-or-break-it election. There was still time then to reverse four years of bad decisions by Bush. Now it’s too late, and whoever wins this election is going to have a very, very tough job.

As a law professor for 11 years at the prestigious University of Chicago, Obama has proved he’s got the brainpower to make tough choices. McCain, as a military hero, has proved he’s got the mettle for tough choices. The deal breaker for me for McCain is his VP choice in Sarah Palin. Palin is someone who aspires to be as bad of a president as George W Bush has been. It is quite easy to see her being even worse than Bush. Among the people I know who like her, it seems her only qualification is that she’s a dyed-in-the-wool conservative. Sad. She has neither intellect nor experience. She, like Bush, has minimal foreign policy experience, and we’ve seen how well that worked out us. With over a million people dead in Iraq, a story that hasn’t seen the light of day, it seems the Republicans want the killing to continue. Palin appears to be one of these people that love war, but like Bush and Cheney, haven’t bothered to complete a tour of duty.

So yes, it’s very important that you get out and vote today. And I will be doing so myself in a couple of hours. I just wish that people had been as passionate in 2004 as they have been now. The unmitigated disaster of the past eight years could have been stopped in its tracks. Ah, well.

Count my vote, dammit!

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Okay, so most of the vote tallies are in, in my state of Iowa. Well, except for the local US House race in Iowa District 2. That includes left-leaning Johnson County where I live. The incumbent is Jim Leach (R) who has held the post for 30 years against newcomer and political science professor Dave Loebsack (D).

KCRG is reporting right now that 99% of the vote is counted, and it’s neck and neck at 50% each. Dave Loebsack is slightly ahead with 96,661 votes, and Republican incumbent Jim Leach trails with 96,049.

What’s holding up the final tally? The Johnson County auditor is having trouble processing the absentee ballots. They ended up having to do a recount of all the absentee ballots in Johnson County because of process and procedural errors — that includes my absentee ballot vote which I mailed on Friday. In Johnson County, 40% of the people voted early with absentee ballots. My thought is that a lot of Dems voted that way, and the House seat is definitely going to go to Loebsack.

That’s my prediction (“Loebsack wins!”) at 12:22 a.m., and I’m sticking to it. The auditor has said the recount should be done by 1 a.m. The race is not over yet!