One thing that should be noted about the Democrats who didn’t win this time or had close races, this does not necessarily mean they did not perform exceptionally well. One has to consider that the Republicans in these races were often in seats considered “safe,” and had large leads going in. Webb, for example, is a Democrat in a Southern state, and started off 31% behind Republican George Allen less than a year ago. Democrats made much greater gains than many of the close races made apparent.

Howard Ford may have lost Tennessee 48%-51%, but you have to remember that it used to be Bill Frist’s seat, who won it in 2000 65%-32% over the Democrat then; for Democrat Ford to do so well in another Southern state, especially when Republican Corker and the NRCC played so vile and dirty a campaign, is quite an accomplishment, and a sign of how badly Republicans are doing in that state.

In Rhode Island, Republican Lincoln Chafee had high approval in the polls and had won his seat in 2000 with a 57%-41% landslide; Chafee lost to Whitehouse today 47%-53%. And Republican Jon Kyl of Arizona may have won over Democrat Pederson 53%-44%, but in 2000 he won with 79% of the vote, with both of his competitors scoring only in the single digits. A 9-point win after that is stunningly bad for Kyl, representing a loss of confidence in him by a full quarter of the state’s voters.

There are more examples of this type in the House and Governorships, but the point to make here is that the shift was much greater than it may seem from the number of seats Democrats picked up. If the Democratic Party can perform well over the next two years, especially if the economy does better and Democratic issues (minimum wage, balancing the budget, implementing the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission, funding stem-cell research, and letting Medicare negotiate for better prices on medicines), then the gains made this year could be a stepping-stone for further gains in 2008. Also helpful could be the oversight Democratic control will enable, reigning in the out-of-control Bush administration, and shedding light on a myriad number of fiascos and crimes that the Republicans have used their majorities to cover up.

But first, let’s see what happens in Montana and Virginia, and then see how far Pelosi and the Democrats can get with the first-100-hours agenda.

Wow.

Democrats take the House and maybe the Senate. No matter what happens from now, the Democrats have already exceeded expectations, especially in the Senate.

Before the election, the numbers were:

House

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Democrats: 201
Republicans: 230

Senate

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Democrats: 45
Republicans: 55

There are 435 seats in the House, so 218 is a controlling majority. The Democrats have pretty solidly won 227 at this time (Republicans have 191), and 17 seats are still in play. Some see the Dems as having 231 seats at least, which is more than the Republicans had before today. Democrats probably won’t have a rout; they will probably win with 5 or 10 more pickups than most people expected, so it’ll be a big victory, though not a huge one.

The real surprise is in the Senate. Very few, if any, expected the Democrats to win there–but now, it is still in play. The Democrats won key races in:

Pennsylvania (Casey beat Santorum, 60%-40%)
Ohio (Brown beat DeWine, 55%-45%)
Rhode Island (Whitehouse beat Chafee, 53%-47%), and
Missouri (McCaskill beat Talent, 50%-47%).

That gives Democrats 49 seats (assuming Lieberman doesn’t pull any funny stuff), with two more needed to win control of the Senate. Ford lost to the Republican Corker in Tennessee (that’s the one with the racist “call me, Harold” Playboy-party ad). Democratic long-shot Pederson did not win the Arizona seat from Kyl.

But two races are still in play. Virginia is neck-and-neck, with Democrat Jim Webb leading George “Macacca” Allen by a sliver, 49.56% to 49.24%. CNN reports that Webb has a 7,500-vote lead out of more than 2.3 million votes cast; we’ll probably see a recount there, which may string out the announcement of a winner for days. The second race in play is Montana, where Democrat Jon Tester leads Republican incumbent Conrad Burns 50%-48%, but only 74% of the vote is counted, and strongly Republican districts may swing the vote the other way.

So it’s a nail-biter for the Senate–but because a Democratic takeover was such a long-shot to begin with, the Dems will be counted as performing strongly even if both Virginia and Montana fall to the GOP.

But a full takeover of both houses of Congress would not only be a huge win for the Democrats, it would be a tremendous slap in the face for Bush. Right now Republicans can, at most, stem the damage by hanging on to a 51-seat majority, or at least retain a 50-50 Cheney tie-breaker in the Senate; anything less for them is a much greater loss. But anyone who calls anything from this point onward a Republican “victory” is blowing smoke–like Ann “I’ll say anything to piss Democrats off” Coulter claiming that anything less than a 67-seat pickup in the House and an 11-seat pickup in the Senate is a defeat for the Democratic Party. Talk about “lowering the bar.”

Other effects of what we’ve seen happen so far: Pelosi is the new Speaker, and gets credit for leading the Democratic Party to a win, and Howard Dean wins a lot of respect for his 50-state rebuilding effort, which will be credited with helping Democrats win where we frankly did not expect to do so strongly.

Am watching CNN (the only U.S. news broadcast available to me) and watching the counts on web sites. And so far, Democrats are doing incredibly well. So far, three and perhaps four of the six necessary Democratic pickups in the Senate have happened–and so far, the Democrats have completely swept the key races. So far. Cautiously hopeful, but very hopeful.

Already there have been more than enough reports from more than enough places to raise serious suspicions about electronic voting machines. Machines switching people’s votes to Republican candidates have been reported so far in Colorado, Arkansas, Missouri, Broward and Miami Counties in Florida, and in three places in Texas including San Antonio and Dallas.

Obviously, vote-hopping is not happening on every touch-screen voting machine, and it’s not happening to every voter on machines that are affected. So, what is happening?

Jamie Holly on Crooks and Liars gives a clue when reporting on her own voting experience. On her county’s ballot, there is a referendum (“State Issue 1”) that was disqualified but was too late to remove from the ballot. However, an odd thing happened:

I just got back from voting and we suffered from a “glitch”. As I was voting, my ballot started off with governor and then worked down through the list. After voting for all the politicians, up next were the issues. My first issue was State issue 1, an issue dealing with Ohio’s Worker Compensation. I was expecting to see this, but knew my vote didn’t count on it…

So after my voting experience went smoothly, the person I went down with had her turn to cast her ballot. She had the same ballot, the same ballot (iso) card, and the same machine, but her ballot did not appear the same. Instead her ballot started out with a blank blue screen and then went onto the candidates and the state issues, but issue 1 was not on her ballot. She called the poll worker over who said that “this has been happening on some machines”. Well our polling place only has three machines and she was on the same machine as I just got done voting on, and this problem did not happen for me. …

The most interesting thing I kept thinking of was Ken Blackwell on CNN this past weekend saying the machines do not have any problems, it was the poll workers. Well this poll worker did everything the same as she did with me (programmed the card for ballot 84), yet our ballots appeared differently. This machine was a Diebold touch screen machine, and as a programmer I can tell you that it is a definite software glitch. The poll worker did the exact same thing she did for me and all the end user variables were the same.

If the same machine, programmed in the same way, using identical ballots, one right after the other, acts in two different ways, that’s an indication that someone has been dicking around with the programming.

One machine acting the same way with all voters will get shut down or fixed. But have the machines switch things around at random, and it can be explained away as a transient glitch. If it is reported more than once, poll workers are trained to identify it as some mere mechanical problem and follow a handbook set of instructions to “repair” the machine.

The reported vote-hopping incidents may indeed be a glitch, but not because of the vote-hopping. Call me a conspiracy theorist, but I don’t believe that the confirmation screens always show what is really being recorded on the machine–a machine which leaves no paper trail. Maybe when the vote-hopping is shown on the confirmation screen, the glitch is that the vote hopping should have been recorded and not shown to the voter for confirmation.

There is no hard evidence for this. Nothing except massive irregularities. Poll workers taking home voting machines. Voting machines being consistently proven to be wide open to hacking. Nationwide instances of voting machines acting in ways they have no business acting. The voting machines made by a company run by politically involved Republicans dedicated to delivering votes to the Republican Party–a company that fights tooth and nail to keep their machines from issuing a paper trail which can be compared to the electronic vote count. And a political party which has demonstrated an open contempt for election laws: sabotaging Democratic phone banks, illegal fake robocalls that masquerade as Democratic politicians but harass voters, illegally telling Democratic voters they will be arrested/deported if they vote, handing out bogus instructions to lead Democratic voters to the wrong polling place and on wrong dates, illegally impersonating election officials and calling Democratic voters to tell them they are not registered, “mistakenly” striking legitimate Democratic voters from voter rolls by claiming they are “felons,” the list goes on and on and on.

Yep. No hard evidence, none at all. Call me wacko paranoid conspiracy theorist. I got nothin’.

While Symantec yet again rang the bogus virus bell, trying to alarm people about Mac security to get them to buy Symantec software, the person who actually wrote the proof-of-concept code admitted in the source code itself that he had too much trouble making the virus work in the real world.

…the author had expressed what appears to be frustration at trying to make the virus effective on Apple’s platform.

“In the source code, which is a mish-mash of stuff, there is a comment where the author says ‘so many problems for so little code’,” he said. “So it does look as though virus writers, fortunately, still have a way to go before they are able to write Mac viruses with the proficiency and fluidity that they can for Windows.”

The Macarena “virus,” despite the author’s efforts, resulted in nothing more than the source code, with no “vector,” no workable method of spreading the virus. The malicious code simply exploits an old UNIX flaw, but the author apparently could not get the exploit past Mac OS X’s defenses.

In order for Macarena to work as written, one would have to deliberately find a web site with the source code, download it, compile it, and then run it in order for anything to happen. No wonder Symantec rates the code’s “Threat Containment” as “easy” and the “Distribution Level” as “low.”

For some of you, this site has not been displaying correctly for a week or so: the header and sidebar remained intact, but the main body of the page with the blog entries disappeared. If that’s what you experienced here, then the problems started when you upgraded to Firefox 2.0 and had a certain screen size. You might have found that decreasing the text size would have brought it back into view, but might have made the text too small to read comfortably.

It took me a bit of work to hunt down and fix the problem–an old bit of css coding (which Movable Type put in the stylesheet years ago) that told browsers to hide “overflow”; Firefox 2.0 must have redefined “overflow” in some way. I removed the offending code, and all should be as it was before. If not, I hope you’ll let me know.

I have seen these lists before (they’ve been around for years) and was sometimes tempted to do one, but knew it would be a bear of a job. But then Shari did one on the 1st, “Roy” got his done by the 2nd, and Sean turned his in on the 3rd, and I kind of figured, why not jump on the bandwagon. Paul, you’re next.

1. I was born in Mountain View, CA, but grew up initially in Cupertino, not far from the future site of Apple Computer headquarters.
2. Half of my left ear was bitten off by a Saint Bernard when I was seven years old; plastic surgeons reattached the ear, but skin grafts left scars behind my ear and on my abdomen (don’t ask me why the latter, I don’t know).
3. During childhood, I wanted to be an astronomer; I owned two telescopes, including an 8-inch reflector.
4. As a child, my favorite color was yellow, but now it is green (preferably dark green).
5. As a child, I was a birdwatcher and a member of the National Audubon Society.
6. The first movie I ever saw was Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
7. I was a huge Star Wars fan when I was a kid and saw the movie more than 18 times in theaters.
8. I was voted “Most Creative” in high school.
9. I was badly bullied in school, and once even had to transfer to another school due to the problem.
10. When I was 13, I burned my retina in my right eye looking at the sun too long (it’s a small spot and doesn’t appear unless I look only with that eye).
11. I was quite non-social in high school, from being both socially shy and more than a bit goofy.
12. In high school and early college, I used to paint and do other creative stuff; not so much any more.
13. To this day, I hate going to discos or dance clubs (especially because of the sound levels).
14. During high school, I worked part-time at Green Library at Stanford University, and as a Stanford worker, was able to submit several political cartoons to the Stanford Daily newspaper.
15. My favorite candy is See’s (a West-coast chocolatier), and in high school, I used to scarf down about a pound a week.
16. I began studying Japanese language in college partially because of an interest in Japan, and partially because a Japanese major did not involve Math.
17. My usual part-time work during college was in movie theaters, which didn’t pay well, but gave me lots of free time between shows and got me free tickets to any movie theater in the area.
18. I once sued an employer (a shady movie theater operator) for unpaid overtime in small claims court; I won the case and successfully had the money (about $600) removed from their bank account by a deputy sheriff.
19. My first trip overseas was to Japan in 1983 when I was 19 years old.
20. I was the president of the Japanese Club in college, which is to say that I was the least non-motivated of three people in showing Japanese movies to the local community (but it looks good on my resume).
21. During college, I shared a car with my brother: a tiny, underpowered Datsun L1200 which actually made us money because people kept rear-ending the car and the insurance paid more than we spent on repairs.
22. My most serious traffic accident was when an 80-year-old man ran a stop sign in a giant Cadillac and I broadsided him; the Caddy was only slightly dented, but the Datsun L1200 was totaled.
23. I first went to live and work in Japan in 1985.
24. I have lived in Japan for a total of fifteen and a half years; the first two of those years I lived in Toyama (a countryside area on the Japan Sea coast), and the other 13 1/2 years have been in Tokyo.
25. I have lived in five different apartments while in Tokyo (in Asagaya, Tachikawa, Koganei, Nakano, and Inagi).
26. I have climbed Mt. Fuji to see the sunrise three times.
27. My first job in Japan was with a local branch of the YMCA, where I was cheated out of 70,000 yen of earnings.
28. I decided to pursue a college career in Japan when I saw the job possibilities while I was in Toyama.
29. I studied and got a special drivers license for small motorcycles (up to 125 cc) while in Toyama, and toured the mid-Honshu region on a Honda motorcycle.
30. I have an A.A. and B.A. in Japanese, and an M.A. in English (concentration in TESOL).
31. I presently work as a professor in an American college in Tokyo.
32. Two points which are very obvious to anyone who reads this blog: I am an avid Mac user and a liberal Democrat.
33. When I go to eat sushi, I only order tuna (maguro or toro).
34. I have recently started birdwatching again (also obvious to blog readers).
35. I enjoy digital photography and digital movie editing.
36. I love the smell of coffee but not the taste.
37. Since August 2, 2003, I have blogged every day (1192 days to this date), making this my most persistent hobby.
38. I am a pack rat, but once every year or two manage to get myself to throw out large amounts of stuff.
39. I don’t like living in small, crowded apartments, even if it means a long commute to avoid them.
40. I am not a great fan of classic literature, and have not read very much.
41. I hate loudspeaker trucks (common in Japan, even not during elections).
42. My favorite drink is root beer; my favorite snack is sunflower seeds, though the salt is too much for my tongue if I eat too many.
43. I am mildly diabetic (type 2); when I found out in January this year, it was after a junk food binge and period of inactivity that made my doctor believe I was about to keel over because of my blood sugar levels (I had an A1C of 9.9; it’s now hovering around a healthy 5.3).
44. For the last two years, I have been immobilized by illnesses at Christmastime; two years ago, it was a serious nosebleed, and last year, it was a broken foot; everyone is wondering what it will be this year.
45. My musical tastes include classic rock and movie soundtracks, which predominate the 3500 or so tracks I have on iTunes.
46. I have a fairly good musical sense, but cannot play any instrument or even sing very well.
47. With very few exceptions, I don’t like horror movies.
48. Before buying any expensive items, I try to make myself wait for two weeks to protect myself from impulse buying.
49. My Japanese language skills have reached a plateau where everyday conversation is possible but it would take a lot of effort to improve.
50. I have ideas for writing several stories, possibly books, but never get around to writing them.
51. I hate entertainment based upon the humiliation or exposure of others.
52. I love Akira Kurosawa films, especially his earlier funnier ones; my favorite movie is The Seven Samurai.
53. It’s hard for me to start new habits or try new things; it’s also hard for me to get started on projects, though once I get started, it’s hard to stop me.
54. I have a horseshoe (conjoined) kidney.
55. When alone, I am a night owl, often staying up until three or four in the morning; around others, I conform to their sleep schedules fairly easily.
56. I no longer even miss newspapers or magazines.
57. With very few exceptions (e.g., butterflies), I absolutely hate insects.
58. Every few years I experience an ocular migraine.
59. I hate wearing neckties, and avoid doing so at every opportunity.
60. I wear clothes more for functionality rather than style; as an example, I don’t wear suspenders because they look good (they often draw ridicule, in fact), I wear them because on my body type, a belt doesn’t do the trick.
61. I have a terrible memory for faces and names, not that my memory in other respects is stellar.
62. In my younger days, I used to be frightfully nervous about speaking before groups; teaching cured me of that.
63. While taking care of me one time when I was about ten, my grandmother gave me a hit off her cigarette; I took a puff but (wisely) did not inhale. That was my one and only experience with using tobacco, and I despise the stuff today.
64. I have well over 500 VHS tapes in my apartment, mostly aggregates of tapes sent by my father over the years (he used to record all the favorite shows my brother and I liked and sent them to Japan); as I now have most of the media on my DVD collection and never watch the VHS tapes anyway, they are all headed for the trash.
65. I have trouble reading almost all political fiction; even when I agree with it, it tends to come across as simplistic and too heavy-handed.
66. I could care less about people’s sexual activities and preferences; I care more about how they treat other people.
67. I don’t wear hats or caps, but will if someone asks me and I feel like it.
68. I try not to collect things because I never do anything with them.
69. I love small gadgets but ironically have very few of them.
70. I love having a view out my apartment window.
71. I hate entering text information using only a numeric keypad.
72. The white-collar job I would least want to have would be selling something I don’t like; after that, any repetitive, mindless task.
73. I have been bumped up to business class twice, to first class never.
74. With the exception of a trip when I was an infant, I have never been anywhere in the continental U.S. save for the three West Coast states (although I have traveled extensively in Japan and have visited China, Korea, Spain, and Hawaii).
75. When I was younger, people thought I was a lot older than I was; now, people think I am a bit younger than I am.
76. I hunt-and-peck pretty quickly, and can’t touch-type.
77. I am an agnostic with leanings toward deism; there are, however, some religious concepts that I confidently disbelieve in, such as the existence of hell, god having human form, or that the Bible is the literal word of god.
78. I save my favorite part of the meal for last on my plate so I can enjoy it at the end, and hate it when people assume I don’t like that part and grab it without asking.
79. Dave Barry once wrote about excruciatingly embarrassing moments in life that pop unwanted into your consciousness at random times; that happens to me a lot.
80. My experience with non-prescription drugs is limited to relatively sparse and sporadic alcohol consumption and two attempts at smoking marijuana as a teenager.
81. I sweat way too easily.
82. If I receive really bad service, I usually forsake the company involved, at least for a few years’ time and sometimes longer.
83. When I leave my apartment, I usually have to come back up half a flight of stairs and make sure that I really did lock the door.
84. You know how most people in Asia seem to be able to squat and have their heels touch the ground? I can’t do that.
85. I can be calm and patient about a lot of big things, but accumulated small stuff gets to me, as does anyone who I can see is purposefully trying to scam me.
86. I have a very low opinion of people who want to widely distribute their work but are too lazy to provide proper documentation.
87. I like chocolate and I like nuts, but not together.
88. I have no tattoos.
89. If you’re still reading this list, you’ve earned the right to know that I have bathroom shyness; happy?.
90. I have passed the age where I can go a night without sleep and not fall asleep during the middle of the next day.
91. If I had to get a car, any car, cost notwithstanding, I think I’d like a Prius.
92. I love time travel stories, but there are too many where a guy crushes a bug and it turns out to be him in the end, so don’t do that one again.
93. My favorite food is bacon, if you can legitimately call it “food.”
94. During a three-month period early in college, I developed a case of persistent hives–on the soles of my feet.
95. An eating weakness: if it’s in the house and I want to eat it, it gets eaten.
96. My first year in Japan, I hosted a half-hour infomercial for a local technical college, and later did radio ad voice-overs and even a modeling job for a car commercial on TV.
97. I have trouble listening to radio; there are too many commercials, like TV, but with TV you can see visually when to turn the sound back on.
98. I have big feet. I shall allow you to deduce the rest.
99. When I write, I tend not to do drafts, but rather write everything in one chunk, and then proofread; this is a habit from pre-word-processor times when I had to type essays on an old-style typewriter.
100. I’m a sucker for science fiction.

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I found that it’s more interesting reading other people’s lists after you have done your own, since you then have a much better understanding of what is involved. While the ones written by this local cluster of blogs have been very good, the ones I found searching the Internet (you get desperate for inspiration (not stealing!) after 70 or 80 list items) were spotty, and all too often lazy–like cutting up one item into three or four, or making comments on list items into list items themselves (good example of that here). Had I done that, I probably would have twice as many items on my list. It’s hard to keep off the list anything which would be a near-universal experience for people of your age (I have one or two in there I guess), and make the list only consist of things that distinguish you from others. The personal history and experiences are a good source of material, but only last so long.

One interesting point: a lot of people mention The Matrix in their lists. Weird. Another note: if I did intend to steal anyone’s list items, the one I would most likely steal would be, “There! Are! Four! Lights!” Though you have to be somewhat of a Star Trek fan to get that one.

Symantec is crying “Wolf” again, this time about a virus it has named “OSX.Macarena.” It is more of the same as before–a proof-of-concept release of source code. It does not carry a malicious payload, nor is there any evidence that it was released in the wild. Symantec’s “detailed” report is curiously undetailed; as usual, they don’t simply say it doesn’t exist in the wild, instead they only say there were “0-49” infections, the virus was on “0-2” web sites, and that “geographical distribution” is “low.” Which makes it sounds like it exists in the wild when it doesn’t.

As usual, people are interpreting this as yet another harbinger of the impending release of the first-ever harmful virus in the wild targeted at Mac OS X. Since it is proof-of-concept, the idea goes, it will be easy for someone to take that shell and pack a harmful piece of code inside. I can’t speak to that intelligently as I have zero experience with coding, but it occurs to me that these proof-of-concept shells have been around for the better part of a year now and none have been re-engineered to carry malicious code, as was predicted every time. What’s the hold-up?

As before, there’s still no need to rush out and buy anti-virus software, unless you want to be really, really safe.

A note on a milestone: this blog received its 5000th comment last night. More than 900 of those comments are for my post on Eyelid Twitching.

That number, of course, does not include any of the spam comments that regularly shower the site (more than 7000 have gotten past my spam filters and had to be manually removed; the filters have caught and blocked hundreds of thousands more–and no, I am not kidding or exaggerating about that number).

5000 comments may sound like a lot, but it averages out to between two and three comments per post. Not too bad, but not as many as blogs with smaller readerships. I think one of the reasons for this is that I am not very good at responding to comments; if readers feel that the blog’s author is not reading the comments, they will be less likely to write more comments. Many prefer conversation of a sort, instead of just leaving a note.

Actually, when you leave a comment on this blog, it generates an email to me, and I read every one. I’m just not good at correspondence, is all. Most times I read it and agree, and have nothing to say. I should respond more, though. My apologies if you commented and I said nothing in response.

One of the Mac’s selling points over Windows for business users has been the relatively low cost to maintain. With no viruses, adware, or spyware, and with the system so relatively easy to maintain, one could save a lot of money in IT costs alone by switching to Macs.

Somehow, this message never got across–probably because IT departments are the ones to advise businesses on which systems to purchase and employ. A stupid move, that–it’s like asking your auto repairman which car you should buy. Unless he can be trusted implicitly, you’re begging for him to recommend a lemon to you so he can make a mint off of you in repairs. Ask him if you should get a high-rated foreign job, and he’ll tell you no–not because the car is bad, but because he’s not familiar with it and you’d have to take your repair business elsewhere.

But now, with Microsoft looking at possibly dismal sales when Vista is released this month to businesses, they’re claiming that businesses can save a ton of money with the switch-over, because Vista will “allow companies to sharply cut the amount of time it takes to maintain PCs.” In fact, MS is stating that businesses could save $320 per PC per year–despite the fact that Vista machines would still require more IT maintenance than Macs would! What a savings you can get with Macs!

IT managers are quick to disagree:

“We manage 6,000 desktops and 1,500 laptops,” Taylor said. “At $300 per PC per year, that should add up to $2 million in savings. The only way we could actually save that would be to eliminate 30 people, which we’re not going to do.”

On the other hand, Taylor, whose staff has been testing Vista on 100 PCs for more than 18 months as part of Microsoft’s Technology Adoption Program, agreed that many of Vista’s capabilities will boost automation and manageability, freeing up his staff’s time for more valuable projects.

It’s hard to see how to take that: this guy could be lying to save his budget. Note how he talks about retasking his people to other work instead of making cuts in his own department.

However you read his interests, it’s clear that he thinks Vista could save time on maintenance. Which means that Macs could save even more, and could have for a long time. So why not make the Big Switch? Well, in the case of the two parties quoted above, it would profit neither. It would only profit the businesses who use lots of computers. And hell, screw them.

Remember how Republicans wanted “every vote to be counted”? Well, there’s a difference between saying it, and doing it.

The standard Republican policy in any election is simple: keep Democrats from voting. Get police (or people pretending to be police) to knock on doors and patrol streets in minority neighborhoods and intimidate people on election day. Send out mailers telling minorities and immigrants that they’ll be jailed, deported, or otherwise penalized if they vote. If possible, create “felon lists” (filled with non-felon Democrats) and revoke their voting rights without informing them (in Florida, of course, they kept Hispanics off the list to protect Cubans who vote Republican). Rig the voting machines across the country to switch votes for other candidates over to Republicans (and never the other way around; keep track of these stories here), and call it a fluke. Undersupply voting machines in strongly Democratic districts to cause long lines and delays to discourage voters. And on election day, send armies of Republican operatives to polling places, demand that all voters be asked for restrictive IDs (while at the same time, hypocritically opposing voter-motor registration laws), and challenge as many Democrats as possible to scare people off and create logjams in the lines of voters. And more. One Republican in 2004 even talked openly about suppressing the vote in mostly black neighborhoods.

It has become so open, so blatant, and so common that it defies belief that nothing is done about it.

Republicans then have the gall to accuse Democrats of cheating–but what it comes down to is unsubstantiated claims, mostly based on bogus Republican challenges to suppress votes, a very small number of individuals or small groups with only the most tenuous connection to the Democratic Party committing fraud that only affects a handful of votes, and “signs” of voter fraud, like more people registering to vote in Democratic districts. Virtually no hard evidence, never systematic, and never claims about police, voting machines, or other officials or equipment directly involved in election matters.

Look, when one voting machine switches votes from one candidate to another, it’s likely an error. When voting machines across the country consistently switch votes exclusively from non-Republican to Republican candidates, that’s no coincidence. If one election official is found to be doing something fishy, it’s an isolated incident; but when police, election officials, and candidates themselves are caught in illicit activities that overwhelmingly favor Republican candidates, it’s a pattern. And sorry, but Democrats registering to vote is not “election fraud.”

There is a massive amount of evidence of election fraud committed nationwide to win elections for Republicans, but it seems that people are unwilling to prosecute or even believe it because of what it would mean to the legitimacy of our Democracy. This attitude came forth in the 2000 elections, when we were willing to overlook egregious election fraud in order to maintain stability and avoid a constitutional crisis–and Republicans have been running with it ever since, using that fear of chaos as a tool to rig elections.

There is a point where “maintaining stability” costs far too much.

Remember that blogger who was violently grabbed, dragged, and thrown and pinned to the ground after he asked Senator Allen a question? The men who assaulted him were, to the best of my knowledge, even asked anything by the police, much less arrested or charged.

Well, it seems that the blogger (Mike Stark) tried to see Allen again, and Allen’s supporters formed a human chain to stop him. When the blogger tried to get past, he “brushed” the side of one of the people, who, apparently just like those soccer players who feign torturous pain at every contact from an opposing player, promptly fell to the ground. Several sheriff’s deputies immediately handcuffed and dragged away the blogger.

Not hard to see who the local constabulary backs. Unfortunately, this might even work for Allen; had the blogger not tried to do anything again, the one violent incident may have made people see Allen as surrounded by thugs. For the blogger to do something like this again will paint him, in the eyes of most people, as the one responsible for any trouble.

Remember how Enron’s Ken Lay was George Bush’s best pal and biggest contributor in Texas, until the Enron scandal, and the Bush had never heard of him? Remember how Abramoff was the kingpin of Republican lobbyists, until he was indicted, and then no one in the Republican Party, especially the White House, ever recalled meeting him? (In fact, some Republicans whispered that he was actually serving Democrats.)

Now Merle Ted Haggard, an evangelical leader, has been implicated in a drug and sex scandal. (Haggard is credited with rallying conservative Christians behind Bush in get-out-the-vote rallies, and is said to be included in weekly phone conversations with Bush.) So far, Haggard has admitted only that he bought crystal meth but didn’t use it and never had sex with that gay prostitute. Which probably won’t go over well with conservatives, who have practically made a mantra out of criticizing Bill Clinton for his statements that he smoked pot but never inhaled, and never had sex with that woman.

But here’s the inevitable reaction from the White House, which has close connections with Haggard:

He had been on a couple of calls, but was not a weekly participant in those calls. I believe he’s been to the White House one or two times. . . . But there have been a lot of people who come to the White House.

Who would like to take the side of any bet that Haggard was part of only 2 or 3 calls and not more?

I know that it’s a natural political reaction to distance yourself from a political liability, but how many times can you claim that you had never heard of a close friend, ally, or advisor who has fallen from grace before people start to wonder?

A side note on the affair: it seems like the media has finally gotten a juicy story (read: sex and/or drugs involved) to replace the Kerry non-story. Strange, I would have thought that the Bush administration publishing how-to documents on building a nuclear weapon on the Internet and keeping them there for weeks for terrorists, rogue states and dictators to read would maybe have qualified–but then, I’m not a news editor, so what do I know?

Last week, Kerry misspoke and unintentionally said something that could be interpreted as a slight on the soldiers. After protesting that his intent was clearly and provably different, within a day or two, he apologized to the soldiers and the country, yet the media still makes a huge deal out of this.

Now it seems that the Bush White House, in a political election-year effort to make the Iraq War seem legitimate, released documents on the Internet from around the first Gulf War when Iraq was actually engaged in nuclear research, as well as more recent documents given to the U.N. in 2002 to ensure that Iraq was not building an atomic bomb then. The documents were not so relevant to Bush’s war as they were to the first war; it is a common Bush tactic to try to confuse the two, as Hussein was a much more legitimate target back then.

The problem? The new documents publicly released on the Internet contain information on how to build a nuclear weapon.

According to the New York Times article:

The documents, roughly a dozen in number, contain charts, diagrams, equations and lengthy narratives about bomb building that nuclear experts who have viewed them say go beyond what is available elsewhere on the Internet and in other public forums. For instance, the papers give detailed information on how to build nuclear firing circuits and triggering explosives, as well as the radioactive cores of atom bombs.

These documents contained sections in the clear which had actually been redacted when given to the U.N.!

One can be assured that these documents have been downloaded by any number of rogue nations, aspiring nuclear dictators, and terrorist groups, putting them that much closer to developing an atomic weapon.

And yet, this story is not stirring the media nearly as much as the bogus Kerry non-story.

Nevertheless, we have the president making public dangerous nuclear secrets, at the urging of Republicans in Congress. Yes, it was an error, but then so was Kerry’s statement; the difference is that Kerry’s statement only bruised some feelings, and then only because the president, the GOP, and the media whipped up a frenzy about it.

So, when are President Bush and the Republicans in Congress going to apologize to the whole world for putting it into mortal danger?

I don’t see Wolf Blitzer asking that question three dozen times a day.

I haven’t been birdwatching much in the past three months–other things on my plate, as it were. But I had a chance to get back to it, a bit, with Sachi today, as we went to Kasai Rinkai Park. Unfortunately, I forgot to bring my zoom lens, so the photos aren’t very good–but then again, today’s visit was less about photographing and more about enjoying.

However, I do think I might head back, maybe on Monday; there seemed to be a lot of good birds around. One blind was crowded with birders, as a Eurasian Jay had made an appearance; I’m sorry I missed it, but then again, without the telephoto, I wouldn’t have been able to get a good shot of it anyway. Other uncommon birds were in attendance as well, but even without hours of waiting and superior photographic equipment, Sachi and I still saw a long list of birds, including Snipes, Azure-winged Magpies, a Kingfisher, Coots, a variety of ducks (though they aren’t there in full numbers yet), as well as the usual Egrets, Herons, Bulbuls, Starlings and so forth. A good dozen and a half species that we could identify, at least.

A few I was able to get shots of: a Bull-headed Shrike…

That Kingfisher in action (lower right, see lower shot for detail)

And something I thought was a Goldeneye, until I saw the detail on my computer at home–and figured that it must be a female Greater Scaup, still not too common a sight (but a lot less rare than the Goldeneye).

Let me end with this unusually tall photo of an Egret on the shore at sunset.

In the second half of the show, we’ve had some dance groups, who have been pretty good–impressive for kids who don’t do this much.

“OK,” a cheerleading-style dance group (with one odd member…)

The first set of “Studio B,” a 9-person dance team

Studio B did several sets, with costume changes for each one

The Drama Club put on a performance

…and finally, “Voices of America / Japan” did some singing for us.

Every year, my college has an Arts festival in early November. It’s a 4-day weekend for the school (tomorrow is Culture Day), and so we celebrate by getting many of the students to show off their talents by singing, dancing, and performing in various arts media. My own contribution is to edit together a 15~20-minute video to start off the festival; this was the 4th consecutive year I’ve done this.

I am blogging this live from the (appropriately named) “live house” where we hold the festival; for some reason, they have a high-speed Wi-Fi node here, so I can blog as the festival progresses. I won’t do too much, but perhaps a few times I’ll give an update on what’s going on.

The video featured a parody of the TV show “24” along with some other musical bits

The first group, “Mediterranean”

Roger & Friends–this friend is Miyuki, a very talented student and a great singer

Roger & his other friend, Masa

Masa going solo

My setup for showing the video

More later…

Five months ago, I started a fresh version of an experiment I sometimes carry out to catch spammers and con artists. I put a virgin email address on my main web page, but I made it the exact color of the background–in essence, it is invisible to the naked eye (unless you select the text, highlighting it). Why? Because spammers and con men use a technique where they create a “bot,” or an automated program, that “harvests” email addresses from web sites and other public text areas on the Internet. These bots look at the code of a page directly, and suck up anything that looks like an email address. Making it invisible to the naked eye assures that it was harvested by a bot. Doing this experiment gives me a window onto how it works.

Sure enough, within five days of putting up the address, a Nigeria con email came through the door, and the email has been increasing for the address ever since.

One interesting point I have discovered: the harvesting method is used predominantly by con artists. If my email address gets on a spam list, only about one in a hundred spams–if even that many–are con games. But the emails from the harvesting method are almost all con artists, perpetrating cons including the Nigerian scam, European “lotteries,” and Bank/PayPal/eBay account “update” scams. The lion’s share of the rest of the spam is from alleged stock brokers trying to sell shares–another scam, of a different type. Taken all together, bot harvesting seems pretty much dominated by criminals.

And now, Republicans.

I have started getting emails from right-wingers trying to spread their message, and they have come through the spam-catching email account. The most recent is from a web site called “ControlCongress.com,” a right-wing advocacy site, which sent me a spam titled “A Conservative Plan for Iraq.”

The fact that it came through the spam-catcher account demonstrates that either they use the same bot-harvesting technique as the spam-scammers, or they bought their email lists from the criminals. Either way, it’s clear what company they are keeping.

Not that any of this is much of a surprise…

“You know, education, if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. And if you don’t, you get stuck in Iraq.”

The GOP is trying to avert some attention away from their multiple scandals and massive mismanagement by trying to turn the spotlight on Kerry. the above remark was included in a session where Kerry was joking about how bad things are under the Bush administration.

Actually, Kerry mangled the line. According to his script, he was supposed to say, “I can’t overstress the importance of a great education. Do you know where you end up if you don’t study, if you aren’t smart, if you’re intellectually lazy? You end up getting us stuck in a war in Iraq.” In other words, it was supposed to refer to Bush himself, not the troops.

But Kerry did mangle the line–it came out as something else. But let’s consider for the moment as if Kerry had actually intended to say what he said.

The criticism is that, the GOP is claiming, Kerry was essentially saying “all soldiers are stupid.” Which, of course, is an intentional misreading of even the misstatement, for maximum negative play. And once again, the GOP is using the honor of the soldiers as cover for their own sorry political asses–as if Republicans weren’t knifing soldiers in the back while using them as political props.

The fact is, in “you get stuck in Iraq,” the “you” does not even apply to soldiers: it applies to Bush. Bush gets stuck in Iraq. But hey, let’s run with what the conservatives have played the line into, and assume Kerry was talking about the troops.

It is fact that the military is discarding virtually all qualifications for recruiting, and that they commonly target people who have no good options after they graduate from high school; it is similarly accepted that if you have no good options, the military might be one of the only ways out for you. None of this means “all soldiers are stupid,” nor does it even mean that people who fail in school are poor soldiers–the military trains you well, and gives you ample motivation to become a lot more than what you were. The “uneducated” part applies only before the military trains you, not to active soldiers in the field, which is what the GOP is hoping to play this into.

So, the conservative misreading of what Kerry was misspeaking in jest was about having so few options that the military–previously a good alternative–is now a terrible one because you’re likely to be jammed into the streets of Baghdad. And if that were such an attractive option, then why are so few MIT and Harvard grads signing up for duty?

What Kerry is made out to have said has real applications in practice–and the irony is, it’s because of Bush’s stretching the military beyond its limits that this is true.

The Republicans are excellent at taking remarks out of context and vilifying them. Look at Al Gore’s “inventing the Internet” comment. He never said that, but did that stop conservatives? The guys credited for actually inventing the Internet said Gore’s statement was accurate, and he deserves lots of credit. Gore’s political contributions were in a large part even responsible for the multi-trillion-dollar Internet boom of the 90’s; Republicans rewarded his efforts by taking a single statement, misquoting it, re-interpreting it, and then ridiculing him for it.

And if the Republicans have to take an intentional misinterpretation of an unintended misstatement by someone who’s not running for office nor is a party leader, in order to try to smear the whole party in an election, you know they’re low on ammo. That the press is running with this non-story (damn that liberal media!) is simply testament to their attraction to flash and not substance.

Short version: Kerry was right, in every interpretation of what he said. Doing poorly in school can leave you fewer options, one of the least favorable is to get sucked into the Iraq conflict. If that offends conservatives, they should consider why it is true.

This time, actually, it’s kind of the reverse of noisy neighbors; instead, I have acquired a neighbor who is incredibly sensitive to noise.

As I’ve mentioned before, I live in a building which has excellent soundproofing. A couple moved in several years ago with an infant, and I don’t hear a thing from them. If the person upstairs vacuums, I don’t hear the machine; I just hear the knocking sound it makes if it bumps on the floor–vibrational sound like that. The fact that the loud motor of a vacuum cleaner is stopped says something for the floor-to-ceiling sound cancellation. The only time a neighbor got out of hand was when a kid two floors down got it into him to let loose with an electric guitar with his amps turned up full blast–and even then, it was very, very muffled in my apartment. It took an hour of it to get me annoyed enough to look into it–and I am easily annoyed by sounds like that. That’s how good the soundproofing is.

Now, several weeks ago, a couple with a kid moved into the apartment below me. Before, there had been a woman who lived there, and though I had asked her repeatedly if I made any noise, she said “no” every time. Maybe she felt intimidated or something, but I did my best to say that I was a noisy person (I sometimes watch TV till very late at night), and welcomed any report of noise, saying I’d be glad to turn it down. She insisted that she couldn’t hear anything.

When the new people came in, they came around with a small gift (a hand towel), as new neighbors in Japan often do. I gave them the usual invitation to let me know if I was being too noisy for them. The very next night, the husband came up and complained about the TV noise. OK, I thought–I was using speakers on the floor, and it had been pretty loud. So I stopped using them, and started using my headphones a lot more; otherwise, I used much smaller, desk-mounted speakers, and not nearly as loud.

The other day, the guy came up again to complain. This time, he said that I was making loud noise constantly from 1 am to 6 am–and I could honestly tell him that (a) I was not making that much noise, and (b) I had gone to bed at 3 am. He seemed puzzled, and maybe like he didn’t fully believe me.

Now, tonight, he came up after midnight and complained about noise from my apartment. This time, it was me–but the noise he complained about was my laughing. I was watching a video (volume down), and it was funny, so I laughed–but for no longer than 1 or 2 minutes, and certainly not continuously. Now, keep in mind that the noise of a vacuum cleaner cannot penetrate the same barrier from the apartment above. This guy has to come up and tell me to knock off laughing? I laugh a little loud, but not that loud.

What’s more, he said (unapologetically) that he had found the source of the noise that kept him up all night recently–it was from the apartment above me, he said. Now, remember, going through two floors, it took a kid playing electric guitar full blast to get me to notice. And the person in the apartment between us absolutely heard it, too. But now the guy below me says the people above me were making a racket that kept him awake–and I didn’t hear a thing.

If this goes on, I am going to have to have a talk with this guy. I mean, I am all for keeping the noise down. But if I am going to have to walk on eggshells because he has better hearing than your average dog, then we have a problem.