Idle observation -

This comes after dropping in at TF's place and leaving a couple of pertinent (if unwanted) comments.

The post relates to the inability of red-light cameras to give evidence in Court.

I can not help but wonder how that reconciles with him happily marching into a booth in November next year and happily pulling his vote for the Tea Party on a machine.

The Morning News -

To all those who might be interested, the heading links to (what I consider) NZ's premiere news programme (from any medium).

For the next week, one of the presenters (Geoff Robinson) is based in Washington DC and through the technology of Skype, VOIP, and Internet you too will be able to listen to the same news as the probligo gets from 6 a.m. every weekday morning (NZ time).

Very highly recommended.

Take a listen or three... oh, and an occasional report back of reactions would be appreciated.

Politicising stupidity -

Well, TF didn't seem to like my idea but since I am pig-headed I'll repeat it here.

It stems from TF's "How do I become an illegal alien?" post, a reprint of one of "those" letters that react with me the same way as the crumbs the Djinn of All Deserts sprinkled onto the rhinoscerous' skin while said rather grumpy beastie was taking a dip in the wadi.

I am not going to repeat Mr Ruppert's letter here (mainly for that reason).

This is what I wrote for TF -

There are times when I just can do no more than wonder at how some people's heads work.

Don't worry, TF, we have this kind in NZ as well.

OK, so the premise is -

Pay $2,000 fine.

Pay three years taxes.

Collect free citizenship card.
______________________________

I think that if I were this jolly roger's political representative I might reply in the following terms...

_____________________________

First, Mr Ruppert, you might like to refund to your employer the difference between what you actually earned in the past 5 years as a presumably legal US citizen, and what might be paid to an illegal immigrant.

Right, got that?

Now sell your home, donate the proceeds to charity (along with any tax credits that might be due), and live in low income rental housing for the two years that you want tax free.

Still feeling keen?

Now remember that for the past five years you have been an illegal. You know the stress that you feel when you see that policeman shake his finger at you for exceeding the speed limit? Live like that for the whole 5 years, 24/7, the next police is going to stop you with intent and ask for your cards...

Finally, bear in mind that you could, in that 5 years, be one of the 5% that are caught and deported (in NZ it is closer to 50%). Like in snakes and ladders or monopoly - return to go, do not collect anything, and miss your next 5 turns...

Still want to join in?

Yours truly...

Perhaps too, Mr Ruppert might like to take employment in one of those (unwanted) jobs that are more often than not performed by the (unwanted) illegals. You know the kind of thing - fruit-picking, sewer fixing, house cleaning, gardening... And, Mr Ruppert, don't start getting on your high "taking jobs from the poor" horse with me either because even here in NZ we have to import labour to do some of these tasks. Admittedly, the unemployment level is currently still under 4% so the "legal" people can to some extent afford to pick and choose what they want to do for a crust.

The truth, Mr Ruppert, is that whatever way you measure it those "illegals" have been allowed to stay in America simply because America needs them as much as they want to escape Mexico or Vietnam or China or where-ever they might have come from.

And it is because of where they might have come from that I get mighty suspicious of the true motives behind these letters. Words like "red-neck" start to float to the top of the word-cloud, justified or not. The fact that they seem to surface when-ever there are elections in the offing does not give me any consolation either.

Having said all of that, America does have a problem. There are a great number of people who want to live there. Some are more "desirable" than others.

I do not fall into either camp.

Who remembers Diebold - 2

It sure does not take long for the gravy to thicken.

From WaPo, along with USA Today and a lot of others...

A voting system used in 34 states contains a critical programming error that can cause votes to be dropped while being electronically transferred from memory cards to a central tallying point, the manufacturer acknowledges.

The problem was identified after complaints from Ohio elections officials following the March primary there, but the logic error that is the root of the problem has been part of the software for 10 years, said Chris Riggall, a spokesman for Premier Election Solutions, formerly known as Diebold.

Now 10 years is a long time in anybodies' life, quite apart from the life of a politician.

It gets worse -

The flawed software is on both touch screen and optical scan voting machines made by Premier and the problem with vote counts is most likely to affect larger jurisdictions that feed many memory cards to a central counting database rapidly.

Riggall said he was "confident" that elections officials through the years would have realized votes had been dropped when they crosschecked their tallies to certify final elections results and would have reloaded cards so as not to lose votes. Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner has said no Ohio votes were lost because the nine Ohio counties that found the problem caught it before primary results were finalized.

Now "through the years", and [this year's] "primary results" are in my mind at least two quite different things.

"We are indeed distressed that our previous analysis of this issue was in error," Premier President Dave Byrd wrote Tuesday in a letter that was hand-delivered to Brunner. Premier and Brunner are in an ongoing court battle over the voting machines and whether Premier violated its contract with the state and warranties. Half of the Ohio's 88 counties use the GEMS system. Brunner has been a vocal critic of electronic voting machines,

I'll bet to that!!

Go back and check, guys. How many of the states using GEMS in 2000 and 2004 had disputed results?

And too, wait for the sting in the tail of this admission. Yeah, we got this bit wrong. But it is your fault for not checking proper. We hope (while y'all wrangle over the importance of it all and the damages awards) that the online tampering and re-sets problems will get forgotten.

Who remembers Diebold?

It must be the election season again.

Now from AP -

The demise of touch-screen voting has produced a graveyard of expensive corpses: Warehouses stacked with thousands of carefully wrapped voting machines that have been shelved because of doubts about vanishing votes and vulnerability to hackers.
...
It wasn't supposed to be this way. After the disputed 2000 presidential recount, Congress provided more than $3 billion to replace punch card and lever-operated machines. State officials across the country said the new systems would eliminate human error and political tampering.

But problems with the machines soon followed: vanishing votes, breakdowns, malfunctions and increasing evidence that the devices were vulnerable to hackers.

Beginning last year, states including California, Ohio and Florida abruptly ordered election officials to mothball their electronic machines. Over the last two years, the percentage of registered voters relying on touch-screen technology dropped from 44 percent to 36 percent.

In November, when the presidential race between Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain ends, an estimated 57 percent of voters will rely on paper ballots.
...
As of December, 30 states had spent more than $253 million on new voting systems, according to a report by the Election Assistance Commission, the federal agency that oversees spending of the $3 billion federal allotment.

But the agency does not know how many election districts have since abandoned those newly purchased systems.
...
Leading makers of voting machines have made similar statements [denying malfunction and interference] and blame poorly trained poll workers and human error for most glitches.

What price democracy?

Well perhaps the US could ask India. They poll for their parliament over a period of a week. The paper ballots are hand counted. And while there are the occasional accusations of "missing" votes, it does seem to work reasonably well.

Is it perhaps a reflection of the need for instant gratification?