Local elections

A week from tomorrow, we have elections.  Wow.   It's the municipal one, where we vote for who rules our fair city, and it is a bastion of christian conservative enclaves.   oooooo......  with pockets of opposition, there are five parties involved.

A municipal campaign lasts about six weeks, and is 'fought' out in newspapers, and via placards and posters.   Mostly.  You don't really hear much, and the slogans on the posters are 'empty promises'.  No one gets too excited about them. 

And after all the spectacle of the past two years of watching the US ones...   I feel cheated.  No robo calls.  No polling calls.  No one ever calls me, and if I get an IFES questionnaire call once every six months asking about my buying preferences, or whether I feel safe in my neighbourhood, it's actually a welcome diversion in a rather dull day.

So here is how we do it:  you don't have to register.  You ARE registered as soon as you are of voting age, or become a citizen.  I have never seen the inside of a voter registration office, but they know me.  I can move, I can move to another state, but they always know where I am.  And that is because, if you move, you have to go to the neighboorhood office of the part of the city you live in and register your residence.  Which gets passed on to the election board, which updates you on the voting rolls.  Easy.

If you want to, you CAN register with a party affiliation of your choice, but I've never done so.  For that, you have to get directly involved and do party work, and then you are a known affiliate of that party.  I've always preferred to remain independent, and take my voting right seriously, weigh all the sides, and vote as I think is right.

Some people would think it is creepy to register your residence, but on the other hand, some criminals get caught that way.  Or used to be...

Fourteen days ago I received my notice in the mail.  It was just a slip of paper telling me when the election was, where to go to vote, and what the opening times were.  This you present when you go to the polling place assignated.

In the city, such as mine, they are in public schools, and where I go, there are four stations, so you go to the one on the slip of paper.  It's simple.

Once there, you might have to wait for a couple of minutes if there is much interest in the vote.  There might be five people ahead of you.

But mostly not.  There is a table with stern looking poll officials from all the parties presiding over the procedure with lists of the people who will be coming in. 

You present your slip of paper and your passport or national identity card as proof you are who you say you are.  And I know that will throw some people off balance when I say that.  But it was never unreasonable to ask for one, having one was always a fact of life and a necessity, because, you see, most of the EU countries are small, geographically and until the EU became the EU, those documents were necessary to go from one place to another. 

For instance, you wanted to go to that super fish restaurant of an evening in Maribor, Slovenia, then Yugoslavia, only an hour's drive away?  Well, you had to have ID to cross the border, for instance.

Therefore, having the one or the other used to be a necessity, and had absolutely nothing to do with the voting process, but was just a check on proving you were the person on the list.  We've never had a problem with it, because the documents were always a necessary evil.

Whatever, you show them the document, you get your ballot, and they are fairly clear cut and easy, because it used to be, you voted for a party and they delegated your votes and assigned who got positions.  Meanwhile, you directly vote for whoever you want on the city council, for instance, can split your ticket however you want, and can write in candidates if you so please.

So it's not rocket science, and done in a minute or so.

And you seal it in an envelope, dump it in a box, and the commission is responsible for the counting.  Also simple.

The national turnout used to be really high...   up to 80%.  It hasn't been that in a long while.  People got cynical.

I used to go ballistic when US ambassadors would inject themselves into the discussions and said they would 'teach us about democracy'.  Reallah...  really?

The polls close around four pm.  By six, seven at the latest, results are known, but the country is small.

There was one nugget on the news last week during the long discussion on msnbc about voter supression regarding someone having been in Vienna, and got laughed at for propagating the US system of voting.  And it was a conference where they decided that if the US sends people to oversee fair voting in third world countries, they would send delegations to oversee elections in the US, because things weren't kosher.  The commission members got kicked out of five states.  Says a lot.  And they had no reason to be insulted...  they insult us all the time...  That was in a former election, but should have been done in this one.

The US has national data bases for every damned thing you can think of.  You would THINK that they would register all eligible citizens in that, and there wouldn't be the individual state nightmares that are the result of bigotry and resentment, that the impediments are incredible in the eyes of the world, but they do muddle on, don't they.  Broken system.

And as Peter always says...  'that's the different'.

Re-connected...

After two weeks, my phone works again.  It was a lousy day, I couldn't find a place to call from. 

In the erroneous assumption that 'everyone has a handy' (cell phone), I've become the exception to the rule, and there aren't any telephone booths any more out on the streets, which is probably saving the telecom loads of money.  But cells are prohibitavely expensive.    And am old fashioned and like my land-line.

So I wanted to use a turkish call center, but they weren't open, and landed at the ho-tel.  The telephone cell we used to have got turned into a trash closet for tools and stuff.  But a former colleague was there and so I could use his...  it was a toll-free number, after all.

Nothing much has changed on the surface, but I happen to know that there is a lot going on beneath the surface.  I was just glad for the connection and right things.

Am disgruntled that my provider can turn a connection OFF if payment is late, but aren't courteous enough to automatically turn it ON once the payment certification reaches them. 

Tja, well, that won't happen again....
 

I have a horrid fascination with KLG and Hoda on the Today Show...

They sort of remind me of the iconic duo on the series 'Absolutely Fabulous'.  They are up in the morning drinking wine, dishing, being 'naughty', have fixed 'dazzling' personalities that are so fake you think they have pin walls at home to paste on their smiles once they get out of work and get maybe grim, are social climbing sorts of beasts who like to brag about who they are going out with in the evenings, who are mostly high B list, and can generally either bemuse or irritate me. 

The UK had sort of a duo like that in the above mentioned series.

They were cult.  The one an over the hill pill popping, drug taking former hippie and 'alternative culture' person, the other a dessicated alcoholic ex model, best friends, and utterly destructive.  But funny.

Kathie Lee Griffin and Hoda Kotb are sort of mirror personalities to those two, and whether it's a gag or not, they often become parody despite themselves.

 

 

Whatever.  I couldn't find a clip from two days ago, but you get the idea. 

 

 

Now the eternally baked in youthful looking KLG spent twelve years writing a musical.  About Aimee Semple McPherson.  She was an evangelical faith healer who was so famous, she is in the lyrics of the song 'Hooray for Hollywood'.   Just after 'Shirley Temple'. 

 

 

She was a huckster and base founder of the evangelical movement, but had her ups and downs, so, yes interesting subject. 

 

So after many years of sweating blood over it...  It opened on Broadway on Thursday.  Which news I saw Friday, which meant the dread NY Times had already reviewed. 

 

 

Now I and the viewers had been (mal)treated to some of the songs from the show and clips here and there and it was interesting to see what you have to do to get a show there accepted and then try to get it off the ground...   I found the idea interesting, but the music was...   forgettable.  Not good, not bad, sometimes nice...  and I thought I was being unfair.

 

So I called up the Times on my internets, and yup, there was the review.  It was unkind to Ms. Griffin, but basically said what I'd been thinking of her all along...  and described it as too long, not 'deep' enough into the subject matter, and the music was 'generic'. 

 

Autsch!  Au weh!...   The reviewer did say it wasn't the Thanksgiving turkey that had been hoped for....   And that Broadway had seen too many 'religious and evangelical productions of late of the gospel variety'.  Such as 'Leap of Faith' and revivals of 'Godspell' and 'Jesus Christ Superstar'. 

 

The reader reviews so far weren't so good either.  I think this was something where you have a good idea, but it comes in just a hair's breadth too late, something I learned when sending out manuscripts and getting told 'oh, it was so good, but we just published something just like it.'

 

So on the one hand?  Yeah, I have a bit of schadenfreude.  On the other?  If they're smart, they'll bus in scads of evangelicals from Kansas or 'gawwd' knows where and get their investment back, maybe make a bit of profit.

 

Such things are always big gambles.

 

 

 

 

 

Generals Redux

It always takes Rachel Maddow to put things in perspective.  Common sense reigns here. 

Elsewhere, the Petraeus story has become a sophmoric joke for the entire world.  As in a DJ on a rock station here in the middle of the night picturing the General getting down and dirty with Rihanna.  Snicker, snicker, snark, snark. 

Shit happens when you put up heroes to the world, and they turn out to have feet of clay. 

I'm not sure the US realises how damaging the affair has been as far as how the outside world perceives it.  It leads to a loss of respect.

It's enough to give anyone 'the sadz'.

 

I wish to share something I found funny and true

Joe Jervis of  'Joe.My.God' fame, and he's won many awards, found a hilarious term for the Rethugs who lost.  Their heads don't explode any more.  They have 'The Sadz'. 

That's what happens when a party bullies a country for over 20 years and lose.  They get disoriented.  adn then they get 'the sadz'. 

Enough to make you laugh and cry at the same time...  sniff........

Speculationalism... which is what journamalism is ALL about...

General Petraeus of the US stepped down two days ago.  The FBI had investigated him and it turned out he was having an affair.  Which, in the military is prohibited.  Which is all we know and what he said.

What BURNS me is the non-stop speculation.  Or speculationalism in journamalistic terms.  Oooooooo...  something to BITE on.

Well, the 24 hour news cycle got on it, and whoa!  Now there's shirtless photos of FBI agents running about, and some sort of triangle, and gaaaawwwwd knows what else.

Well, aren't we all now tittilated and DISTRACTED.

Especially since even the cadaverous asshole Eric Cantor supposedly knew about it before the elections but didn't use it, because, well, ya know, it wasn't verified at that point...  and Petraeus is a right leaning person, after all.

So if we are to believe the press, two socialites, very rich ones, got in a tangle over one guy, and some harassing e-mails flew, and one of them upped the game, got an amorous non-shirted fed on the trail, and things took off from there.  ooooo... how scintillating.

Except, the lady who helped launched it was sex-texting another four star general.  Maybe...

Heady stuff, for sure.

I fuckin' hate the press in the US and the cycle.  I had journalism in high school as a subject and aced it.  You write only when you get the confirmation of at least three parties, and only after you have ALL the facts.  If you are reporting as supposed facts come in, you are blurring the issue.

It's just another damned spectacle, if you ask me.  And people there don't know how damaging this spectacle is to how they are perceived in the rest of the world, which angers me even more. 

Today's news reported on it...   with the comment that it was something out of a SOAP OPERA.  Sort of schadenfreude in tone.

Whelp, I can concur. 

This rant was brought to you by 'Morning Joe' Scarborough  on the tee-vee.  Which is one of the most misogynistic shows on MSNBC.  Lots of white male conservatives who are so disrespectful to women it defies description, and the co-anchor is the daughter of a former Nixon diplomat who can only shine when 'Daddy' is on.  Supposedly liberal, but hey, lives in New York and otherwise in the south of France.   Tja...  no influence.  Is there to cluck and shake her head, is constantly interrupted by male bloviators. 

WHY this is on a supposedly liberal network is beyond my comprehension.

Certainly, there are questions about this whole thing.  But I ended up LAUGHING when Joe Scarbourogh had his head exploding and demanding intervention from the ACLU.  That is so rich and ironic... 

For many many reasons...   if it had been a democratic leaning person, for instance.  He'd have demanded him to be put in stocks at the very least.  And he's concerned with protection of rights?  I seem to remember when he was screaming for them to be taken away after 9/11.  Oh yeah, put 'em in stocks.  It's a trauma 'Murka never recovered from.  Because they were told they were superheros and invincible. 

In all such stories, there were chinks in the armour, I guess, and 
things go very wrong.

What Scarborough does is bloviate.  He can bray, and his laugh sounds like a jackass and in my opinion he is.  But today, he outdid himself on breaking every journalistic rule, and spinning, and speculating, and being rude, which is just who he is and what he does.  Try to torture yourself and watch it through, and maybe you'll see what I mean..  It's here.

 

Am looking for crazy eyes, but no news yet

Wanna know how La Bachman fared in her run for the House. 

She's such a piece of work. 

And why, WHY....  did she and her husband get 23, count em, twenty three foster children, what with their being on the go and involved in politics?  Where did they find the time to nurture them?  Or even raise them? 

This has been a mystery to me for a long time.  Was it the money?  Every time I heard about it, Charles Dickens scenarios popped into my feeble mind.

And after having seen a video clip of her dancing with 'hubby', who is so 'fey' looking that you could choke on a cookie if the milk weren't there, have always had horror visions of what that fambly must be like, and understand that some of them didn't come out to be the fine upstanding ranting raving kooks who raised them. 

I do hope she lost her job.  From her pandering to the most awesome conspiracy theories to her idiocy in trying to raise up witch hunts and compromising national sneakurity in so doing... 

I so wish she lost her job.