Bits of Stuff, January 1, 2005 (U.S. Time)
Bits of leftover stuff that I won’t blog on in detail here (at least not yet), but which are still of interest:
The Republican party is all about letting a close race stay final. No more recounts, we won the vote, even if there were huge irregularities and even outright fraud, an election is an election, we won so that’s it, stop the counting don’t count anymore don’t even think of counting any… what? We lost? Well, damn, we have to have an entirely new election! it will be an incredible injustice to everyone everywhere unless we win–er, have an election where we win–er, where there is a fair election, nudge nudge wink wink.
I’m not kidding. The GOP seem to trust machines more than humans, because they loathe hand-counting of votes. But the manual recount uncovered 700 ballots that the machines had misread or had been rejected, and in addition to that, found that some absentee ballots had been wrongly disqualified (many of which were likely from the military). But when the votes were really counted and certified, when the election was most accurately measured, the Republican that lost just couldn’t handle it. (At least the county auditor, a Republican, disagrees with Rossi.)
As I’ve said before, the GOP will do anything to win an election they lost fair and square, no matter how sordid or dirty their method: impeach, steal, or recall–but now we can add “revote” to the list.
What will they think of next?
I was kind of surprised by what I saw on Comedy Central last night. I was watching the South Park marathon leading up to midnight, and toward the end they showed the movie, “Bigger, Longer and Uncut” (script). Now, had I thought about it, I should have foreseen the difficulties involved–half the movie consists of obscenities never allowed on TV; to clean it up, the movie would have to be literally butchered.
So, to my surprise, they showed it uncensored. In this age where networks shudder in fear that even the suggestion of obscenity could get them fined in the millions of dollars, Comedy Central, bless their hearts, showed the whole movie with untold hundreds of f***s, s***s, and other creatively constructed obscene expressions (such as “testicle-s***ting rectal-wart”), including the entire musical number, “Shut Your F***ing Face, Uncle F***er.”
They achieved this, apparently, by using he following warning:
TV MA LSV MATURE AUDIENCE ONLY |
I, for one, am impressed. And Comedy Central used good judgment, too–to keep that kind of thing away from the kiddies, they showed the movie late in the evening on New Year’s Eve–the one night of the year, after all, when young kids are least likely to stay up late!
Mac Rumor sites are abuzz over what will be released in ten days at the MacWorld Expo in San Francisco. There are always rumors swirling around the new products that Apple so closely guards, and usually they do a pretty good job of keeping things mum. But this time, there is a fairly strong expectations for a “headless” iMac, that is, an iMac without a monitor attached to it–something Apple has never had since it first introduced the iMac in 1998. This would reduce the price of the iMac to maybe $500, and the form factor would apparently be similar to that of the iPod–the computer intended, some say, to attract PC users who have gotten the iPod and would like to expand their Apple experience.
Also reported is the long-rumored iWork suite, which would include Keynote (the replacement for PowerPoint), and Pages (formerly called “Document,” Apple’s word processor), and, presumably, other apps, likely including the now suite-free apps Mail and iCal. No word out yet on a possible spreadsheet app.
It should be an interesting expo, and probably will be webcast. I’ll try to give info about the link for the webcast when I find out about it.
And finally, we have the next step in the GOP’s campaign to complete seize all power and disenfranchise Democrats: getting rid of the filibuster. Despite the fact that the Democrats have been blocking only a fraction of the judicial appointments from Bush that the Republicans did against Clinton, Bush has taken 20 judges that the Democrats blocked and recycled them, as Republicans work to get rid of the ability of the Democrats to have any say whatsoever in the workings of Congress.
The SouthPark warning you mention is nothing new. They use it for all their 1/2 hour episodes so it can’t be targetted for the movie. They bleep all the content in the TV episodes.
Given that Uncut is a movie, they may not have to censor it when it is broadcast. Furthermore, they may be offering it at a time of day that is less susceptible to regulations.
Concerning voter fraud – yes we may never know what happened in the last election (or any other future one) give the thieves are holding all of the cards, as well as owning the c*sino that the game is played in. That’s why some of us consider ourselves as exiles. Welcome to the ever-burgeoning population of disaffected Americans!
-Curt
PS: Your filter doesn’t let me use the word c*sino or cr3dit… what’s up with that?
Curt: Sorry about the filter. Aside from the p*rn industry and the pharms pushing their medz, C*sinos and Cr*dit advertisers make up the lion’s share of the spammers. This may all change soon when I finally find time to move to Movable Type v. 3 with the comment registration system, and can let up a bit on the spam filtering… but even as things are, I am manually deleting tons of blog comment spam all the time. The spammers are relentless, the cockroaches of the Internet. Sorry it’s an inconvenience.
Comedy Central is cable, and I’m pretty sure that cable networks are not subject to the same restrictions as broadcast networks.
Of course, Comedy Central is usually “free” in the sense that it’s part of the basic group of cable networks that you get when you sign up for cable. You’re still paying for it/them, of course, but it’s not like HBO or Showtime where it’s a “premium” channel that you pay MORE for.
Nonetheless, it’s still on cable, and I’m pretty sure that means they can show whatever they want- they just bleep stuff and have “standards” to keep the uptight crowd off their backs.
As for the Washington governor’s election… I live in Washington and have been following this one closely. I’m happy Gregoire wound up winning, although the Republicans still haven’t decided to give up the fight.
The issue with the 700+ ballots that were found afterwards was pretty ironic. King County is the one Seattle is in, the largest (and most liberal) county in the state. The stink over these ballots not being counted only after the CHAIRMAN of the County Council noticed his name on a list of these ballots!
Basically, what happened was that these 700ish people’s signatures had not been added to a computer database. When the ballots came in, with no signature in the database the election worker set them aside because they weren’t verified.
But there WERE signatures on file- just not in the computer.
The Republicans threw a hissy fit when this was discovered during the hand recount, but it’s their own fault in a way.
The reason is that during the first, machine recount, the Democrats had sued to try and get the court system to make every county in the state apply the exact same standards and judgement about ballots at the county canvassing board level.
The State Supreme Court said no, the state law gives that discretion to the boards individually.
So later the issue with the ballots comes up, and King County’s board says “we count these votes” in the hand recount, and suddenly the Republicans (who were cheering it a few weeks before) are vehemently opposed to the Court’s decision.
The hypocrisy has been disgusting on both sides, but the Republicans’ has been FAR WORSE, and I love seeing them take it in the shorts.
Paul
Enumclaw, WA
I did a little poking around, and I’m pretty sure I’m right- cable can put out whatever they want whenever they want. Broadcast TV is limited because of government rules, but it appears that even broadcast TV is allowed to put on profanity and such after 10pm.
Check out http://www.fcc.gov/cgb/consumerfacts/obscene.html for the info.
Paul
Enumclaw, WA