Monday, June 21, 2004
News
A small sampling of articles that caught my eye recently.
In the 2000 presidential election, 1.9 million Americans cast ballots that no one counted. "Spoiled votes" is the technical term. The pile of ballots left to rot has a distinctly dark hue: About 1 million of them -- half of the rejected ballots -- were cast by African Americans although black voters make up only 12 percent of the electorate.
The U.S. Civil Rights Commission looked into the smelly pile of spoiled ballots and concluded that, of the 179,855 ballots invalidated by Florida officials, 53 percent were cast by black voters. In Florida, a black citizen was 10 times as likely to have a vote rejected as a white voter. - SFGate.com
I know the 2000 elections have been beaten to death, but man, that's gross. Especially considering what we wound up with.
The carefully-crafted image of George W. Bush as a bold, decisive leader is cracking under the weight of new revelations that the erratic President is indecisive, moody, paranoid and delusional.
Although supporters of President Bush dismissed the reports as "fantasies from anonymous sources," a new book by Dr. Justin Frank, director of psychiatry at George Washington University, raises many similar questions about the President's mental stability.
"George W. Bush is a case study in contradiction," Dr. Frank writes in Bush On The Couch: Inside the Mind of the President. "Bush is an untreated ex-alcoholic with paranoid and megalomaniac tendencies." - Capitol Hill Blue
I'm not saying there's a whole lot of stock in this article or anything, but if the straightjacket fits....
Even with concerns growing about military troop strength, 770 people were discharged for homosexuality last year under the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy, a new study shows. The figure, however, is significantly lower than the record 1,227 discharges in 2001 — just before the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. Since "don't ask, don't tell" was adopted in 1994, nearly 10,000 military personnel have been discharged — including linguists, nuclear warfare experts and other key specialists. - Yahoo
What the hell is wrong with this country? The new Uncle Sam, "I want you! No wait, not you, or you. You're kinda cute though. No wait! What am I saying?" The enemy could give a rat's ass if our soldiers are gay, straight, black or white, they see us only as Americans. Isn't it time we do the same thing?
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