Imagine waiting for three hours in line on Election Day to cast your ballot, but you’re turned away at the last second. Right before the voting booth, you’re turned away because you’re not wearing the right kind of sneakers.
Lawyers and campaigners have started bringing up a little known law that completely undermines the First Amendment on Election Day. They’ve started bringing it up, because it can prevent you from voting after you’ve waited for hours in line. Instead of being able to vote, you may be forced to go home and change.
This law prevents against the crime of “passive electioneering,” which is when voters wear political paraphernalia to the voting booth.
If you’re planning on voting, don’t wear anything that shows any kind of support for anything – you’re not allowed. Even though you’re going there to vote for who you think should run the country, for some reason, the people running the election don’t want you to show it.
Imagine people wearing musical hats to the voting booths. Wouldn’t that be complete and utter chaos? Blood would most likely run in the streets! If people could wear Obama and McCain pins to the election, they would no doubt take them off and start piecing each other relentlessly.
If you’re heading to the election booth, you’ve most likely made your mind about why you’re there. Someone wearing a McCain hat or Obama shirt isn’t going to sway your vote or drive you to violence, so why waste taxpayer dollars creating laws on it?
Not only does it lack sense, but it has also damaged democracy and what we are supposed to believe in as a country. If I want to where an Obama Halloween costume when I go vote, I should be allowed. Everyone should just be happy that I’m voting, and stop being so picky.
Everyone is always telling everyone else to go out and vote, but if I show support when I go out and do it, then you won’t let me vote?
From what I can tell, our government only wants half a democracy. They want about 50 percent of us to vote, and the other half to stay home. For some reason, when we get too pumped up about an election, they have to make sure to bring us back down.
Please vote, but don’t be too excited about it, or else they might not let you.
Hopefully we’ll see a lot of publicity on this subject in the next week and a half.
And hopefully someone can explain to me how this isn’t a blatant violation of my First Amendment rights.
When a politician starts speaking, you should already have your guard up.
Get ready to become a filter, because there’s a big difference between what a politician says, and what he or she actually means.
Terms you can tune out to. They don't mean much when politicians say them anymore.
Fortunately, a lot of politicians have put themselves in a lot of compromising situations. This gives us a chance to observe those critical moments right before they actually admit to their misdeeds. It is in these moments where we can see the mind of a professional liar break down.
When one of the world’s greatest liars starts going down, we get to see what desperate attempts they make to try to stay afloat. Those desperate acts are the ones that show us the inner workings of mass manipulation And when we see those moments, we can remember and point out when others use them.
The following are five terms that politicians have used when they’re going down in flames. Check them out, and see if you can tell when politicians try to use the same tactics in the future.
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5)Redirection and Deferment:
We’ll start out with a popular example from about a decade ago. President Bill Clinton’s position was compromised after he put intern Monica Lewinsky in a compromising position. It doesn’t matter what your personal opinion is about the situation, the fact that Clinton lied isn’t up for debate.
Clinton said he didn’t have any kind of sexual relations with the intern, but later admitted he did. This gives us an opportunity to see Slick Willy’s tactics of untruth.
This video takes place after Clinton cracked under the pressure, but there are still some key strategies we can get out of it.
Notice how he immediately tries to redirect the conversation at the beginning. That’s a very successful way politicians get out of what they don’t want to talk about. It didn’t work in this instance, but it has in many others.
His answers also give us some information. If a politician is being asked a serious question, and can’t give a “yes” or “no” answer, there’s a problem. If someone’s making sure not to answer a question, it’s probably because they don’t like the answer they would give.
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4) Unprovoked confirmation that a statement is true:
Recently, John McCain has been put in a situation that has forced him to defend “robocalls” he’s decided to make. These are automated calls into people’s homes that campaign for McCain.
A video of him defending these calls gives us some insight into how politicians will sometimes start defending an accusation that was never made.
McCain starts defending how true the robocall is, when that was never an issue. By doing this, he not only redirects whatever accusation was going to be made, but he also gets off without having to lie about anything (even though what he’s doing is suspect).
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3) Make it personal:
Richard Nixon’s most popular phrase of all time is probably, “I am not a crook.” The problem was, that statement wasn’t exactly true. He was involved in the Watergate scandal.
While his ship was sinking, he was able to give us a statement, which we can now look back on and see as a not-always-effective tactic to cool down the heat.
He makes the accusations more personal by using “I am” and “I’ve earned” statements. These are an effective way to confront everyone who is thinking bad thoughts about you. It makes people think they are attacking you, because they don’t like you.
If they think you did something wrong, call them out on it, and they’ll usually back down. That is, unless they have a lot of recorded evidence to back themselves up.
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2) Realistic, but not necessarily real, links:
One of the best ways to get Americans to fight who you want them to fight, is to link your enemies to people Americans already don’t like.
Dick Cheney gave a good example of this when he was trying to link Iraq to the attacks on Sept. 11. Cheney made statements suggesting that Iraq was somehow involved, and not only was this later proved wrong, but Cheney also backtracked on the statements himself.
Even though he backtracked, this was still a factor in getting support for the Iraq War from the public. This tactic can be very dangerous, because it can lead to a constant war where we keep attacking people who our leaders tell us are linked to people we’ve already fought.
The 7-step Kevin Bacon rule proves that this can eventually kill us all, since we’re all linked in someway. Thank you, Kevin Bacon, for proving the eventual apocalypse.
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1) Fear:
Fear is what politicians use most to control us. People will do almost anything to not feel fear, and that’s why politicians keep feeding it to us. It’s the most effective way to get what they want.
This last one is a little bit of a compilation of politicians, but they’re all from basically the same administration.
We need to realize that there’s always going to be something to be afraid of, but it’s not a reason to allow others to control what we do.
We have to keep our guard up when politicians are talking about scary stuff, because it usually means they want something. It’s the equivalent to a child being really nice to their parents all of the sudden.
They’re only doing it to get what they want, and they’ll do it again when they need something else.
They put up a pretty good argument as to why McCain would be better for their group. They said he would continue the wars in the Middle East and would inadvertently encourage more people to sign up with terrorist organizations. These things would probably happen, but McCain isn’t the only one receiving bad support. Barack Obama also recently received an uninvited endorsement.
He said Obama would be more flexible and rational than McCain, which makes sense. Obama has said in the past that he would consider talks with Iran without preconditions.
Larijani also threw in that there is no way the U.S. would attack Iran right now, which means Americans shouldn’t take something like that into as much consideration when picking a candidate.
I don’t see how someone in America could begin to unravel what goes on in these people’s minds before they announce their endorsements. They have to know that Americans are going to look down on their endorsements, so why would they ever give us a chance to make them public?
This leads me to believe that there’s at least a chance they endorse the person they actually don’t want to win. It would make sense, but then again, it’s definitely not a sure thing.
Since we can’t really determine why these endorsers decided to pick the candidate they did, we should probably just throw out their opinions. We can’t really trust what they say, they’ve both lied and hid information from us before.
These endorsements are non-stories that the media shouldn’t spend too much time on. These organizations obviously have agendas, and the news is just giving them free advertising.
At least make Iran and al-Qaeda pay for their air time like everyone else who wants to shove their opinion on us.
Please note that the words in the following tale, while completely fictional, are still a little graphic and include some foul language. If this offends you, don’t read it… or do, it might be good for you.
A self-portrait of the author writing the story.
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They say I came out of my dad’s ass.
This is because I wasn’t born like normal people. They told me the only way someone like me could be conceived was by violently repressed man-sex. And there’s only one way to give birth to a child conceived like that.
Nothing with a vagina could create someone like me.
I started life growing up in a rural town in America somewhere. I couldn’t tell you a specific state or region, because we moved around a lot. My dad was a factory worker, and we had to move every once in a while to find a factory that was still working.
I must have moved around half a dozen different times, and even though the towns were different, there were still some things about them that were the same.
Church was the same no matter where we went. There were always people that were a little too old, too young or too dumb to figure out something to do on their day off. And when you can’t figure out what to do on your own, you do what others tell you. Apparently someone was telling all of these old and dumb people to doing nothing, except go to church.
Violently repressed man-sex also showed up in the church. I don’t know why the priests always wanted to have babies with me, but it worked out in the end. I never got pregnant.
It would have sucked if I did get knocked up. I would’ve had to keep the baby, of course. Keeping a non-consensual repressed man-sex baby is still better than going to Hell, right?
And they tell me gay sex is a sin, but I think I’ve figured that one out. It must only be a sin if the feelings aren’t repressed first. It’s still okay to commit the acts if you want to badly enough, just try to repress them first. Only the ones who embrace their homosexual tenancies will go to Hell.
That must be why we had camps I could go to if I was feeling too gay. They could teach me how to repress it.
For most of my life growing up, I also had to repress regular, you know, one-man-one-woman-type sex. This was also a sin, or at least until I got married.
Knowing that didn’t make me want to have sex less, it just made me want to get married more. At that point, I just wanted sex.
Sex is a great tool to use when you’re trying to teach someone repression. The thought process must have been that, if I could repress sex completely until marriage, I would be able to repress anything.
It seems like the most logical answer to why they made me suffer like that. They would show me a lot of other things in life that I would need to repress, and this was great practice.
In school, I was always in sports. I don’t know if it was because I wanted to be in them, or if it was because I was forced. I think it was a little of both, since I like to do what people force me to. This is one of the reasons I don’t understand why I didn’t do well in school.
I wanted to do well in school, people told me I should try to do well in school, but I just couldn’t. There was always something else on my mind. I had to practice, or go to church, or think about not having sex.
And I had to hang out with the others guys like me.
Our parents told us we had to hang out. We didn’t mind, we got along, but we didn’t understand why. Why did our parents care so much about who we hung out with?
Sure, they wanted me to play sports, so they could live through me. They wanted me to go to church and repress any natural feelings I had, because if God was watching me, then they didn’t have to. But why group us together? Why couldn’t I talk to someone who wasn’t like me?
Eventually, I started asking my mom why I couldn’t be friends with anyone I wanted to. Specifically this cute black girl that sat in back of me in class, her name was Gia.
When I asked my mom why I couldn’t talk to Gia, she said, “Why does curiosity kill the cat?”
Whenever there was something I wanted to do and didn’t understand why I couldn’t, that’s what my mom would say.
Why can’t I talk to Gia? Why do I have to believe what you tell me? Why do I have to believe what the Bible says? The answers is: Why does curiosity kill the cat?
I kept talking to Gia anyway. I liked how she was different. There weren’t a lot of black people in any of the places I lived, and I guess I kind of saw her as exotic. She was something different, when all of my life was filled with was the same. The same stuff everyday, every lifetime, every generation.
Plus, I liked her curves. Repression was tough.
We hung out for a while, but after realizing both of us were the kind of Christian that makes sex a bad thing, we kind of drifted apart. I guess we were both hoping that the other was someone who could talk us into doing something bad. We couldn’t go through with it on our own, but if someone were to tell us to, we could have probably been persuaded.
It was too bad we were both so good.
My parents got their wish after all, and I wasn’t hanging out with cat killers. At least this was of my own choosing. Even though it didn’t work out, deciding to keep talking to Gia was the first decision I ever made without being told what to do.
I kept hanging out with the crowd of people who were like me, the kids whose fathers gave birth them instead of their mothers. All these children from parents who make their kids believe the stories they did when they were younger.
Parents make sure each child hangs out with the kids whose parents are teaching their children the same values.
Our group didn’t get variety, it didn’t get new ideas, or different view points. There was never a time where our group did something, and one of us said, “I don’t think this is a good idea.”
None of us knew what a good or a bad idea was. We would have had to ask our parents before we could form our opinion on idea quality.
So how could we have determined a bad idea when the content of the idea was too risque to ask our parents about? When something in life came up that we were afraid to talk to our parents about, we had to figure it out for ourselves.
The problem was, how could we figure out something that we knew nothing about?
How could we figure something out for ourselves, when our parents didn’t give us the tools to do so?
But I guess we did okay.
Our whole group was repressed, what were we supposed to do? We had to find some sort of outlet. Some sort of relief for all of the pressure building up inside.
We needed something to relieve all of the pressure. All of the anger at not knowing why we did the things we did. All of those curiosities that obviously never killed us cats. All of those things I didn’t have control over, and thought I didn’t want control over. We all needed to take all of it out on something.
One day, we took it out on Gia.
Gia and I hadn’t talked for over a year, but I still wanted her. Our whole group wanted her. We wanted what our parents didn’t want us to have. We had to rebel. We needed sex, sure, but we also needed control. Not control over Gia, but control over our parents’ control.
If they wanted to make me repress my feelings, then I was going to make sure to do the opposite. I was going to super-not-repress. We all were.
There were five of us walking home after school, and we just decided to follow Gia while she went the couple of blocks to her place. When she started crossing a small bridge about a block from the school, I said, “Hey.”
She turned around, saw all of us, and got scared. Not scared enough to run, maybe because we knew each other a little bit.
She tried to put on a smile, but it was hard to tell if she was successful, because she was looking at the ground when she replied, “Hi.”
Nothing more was said.
One of the guys in the group ran up and put his hand over her mouth, and two others help drag her under the bridge. We were able to keep her really quite, because her mouth was always plugged up with a hand or something. She struggled at first, but at one point she stopped. She just stared at me and let it happen. All five of us had our turn to do whatever we needed to.
All of that repression was no longer repressed. Everything I ever thought of doing I did. Everything that I was told not to do, was something I had to try.
It’s tough to tell the bad things from the really bad things when your parents make it all seem like the same severity. When everything lands you in Hell, you might as well go all out once you know you’re going there.
When we were done, she was crying, and so were three out of the five of us. It’s not like we wanted to do it to her. We just had to do something to someone, since so much had been done to us.
She was the first one to get up and run away. I think one of us said something to her while she was running. Something about not telling anyone about what happened, but she didn’t listen.
She ended up squealing a few weeks later. When the cops asked her why she waited so long to come forward, the incident report stated she said, “I was going to try to forget about it, but I can’t do that now. I’m late.”
A couple of months later you could see the bulge in her belly.
We never got in trouble with the cops. They said she was just trying to cover-up for sleeping around and finally getting knocked up. Unless one of the perpetrators comes forward, they were afraid they didn’t have a case. Even if they tested the baby’s genes, if the father said the sex they had was consensual, there was nothing the cops could do.
Even though we were in the clear criminally, we still had to see Gia with that baby bulge every day at school. We still had to see her being made fun of for being pregnant.
And the only thing our group could think was, “Please, Gia, get an abortion.”
But I knew abortions were out of the question, Gia was too good of a person.
That made me learn one of life’s most valuable lessons, the lesson my parents we trying to teach me: Just repress everything. Repress your sexual urges, and if that makes something bad happen, then repress what happened. For every action you believe is right, but turns out wrong, just repress it.
You can’t just repress urges, you also have to repress facts and truth.
If you don’t repress the truth, then you’re biting the apple of knowledge. Nothing good ever came from knowing things.
I’ve been thinking about becoming a politician, so I can prevent others from knowing things as well.
The following are obvious mistakes Sarah Palin has already made on her road to taking the second highest office in the country.
There are obviously many more mistakes, and if you feel there is a specific incidence that isn’t on the list and should be, then leave a comment. I realize everyone isn’t going to have to same opinion of how terrible each her mistakes is compared to the others.
Let’s get the ball rolling:
5)
One of Palin’s more recently discovered mistakes involved Alaska paying for her kids to go to New York, among other places. Palin charged over $20,000 to the state in order for her kids to go with her to events they weren’t invited to. One expense was a 5-day trip to New York for Palin and her daughter, Bristol, and another expense to the state allowed her children to watch their dad, Todd, perform in a snowmobile race.
The argument is that Palin’s daughters were invited to these events, but some organizers disagree. Palin tries to brush it off as not a big deal, but if it wasn’t a big deal, then why did she alter records?
“…after Alaska reporters asked for the records, Palin ordered changes to previously filed expense reports for her daughters’ travel.” – An AP Investigation.
4)
The series of interviews Katie Couric did with Palin really showed her lack of knowledge on issues important to the office she wants to hold. Couric was relentless in asking specific questions, and wanting specific answers. Unfortunately, Palin couldn’t give Couric specific answers to easy questions. For example, When asked what kind of magazines Palin read, sheresponded by saying, “all of them.”
She also failed to answer other questions Couric threw at her, like specific questions about the economy.
This interview was just a terrible choice for Palin all-around. At the beginning of her vice presidential nomination, she already solidified herself as the dumb manipulative kind of woman, which some women don’t want representing them.
3)
Palin received millions of dollars for Alaska in order to complete a terrible bridge idea. Not only did she receive almost $400 million for the bridge, but after the rest on the country realized that building a $400 million bridge for a town with a population of 7,500 was a bad idea, she kept the money.
She supported the idea of a bridge until the general public thought it was a bad idea, then she kept the money and said she was going to “redirect the funds.” Now she has the nerve to say the bridge was a terrible idea that she fought against it since the beginning.
There is something very scary about a person who can completely turn around anything they said, and say it with a straight face. That means she can lie to us really well.
The AIP wants Alaska to succeed from the U.S. and become their own state. Big players in the party like Mark Chryson say they wouldn’t use force to succeed, but he admits to having lots of guns, as I mentioned in an earlier post (Obama and Ayers compared to Palin and Chryson).
Palin isn’t a member of this organization, but her husband is. And although she has never officially been a member, she has worked with them and supported them publicly on television.
1)
The worst mistake Palin made was accepting the nomination for vice president. This isn’t necessarily the worst mistake she made for herself, but it is the worst mistake she has made she her gender and her species.
Unlike Hilary Clinton, Palin isn’t a good role model for anyone. She isn’t someone who worked her way to the top and fought for everything she’s got. She had a vice presidential nomination fall in her lap after Clinton didn’t get on the democratic ticket. Palin just happened to be the hottest female at McCain’s disposal.
If Clinton was on the democratic ticket, there is no way McCain would have picked Palin. A potential president shouldn’t be picking his vice president based on who his opponent picks.
There are recent reports of mortgage giant Freddie Mac secretly paying a republican consulting firm $2 million to try to get republican senators to vote down a bill concerning regulation.
These reports are extremely important when looking at why the government needed to spend about a trillion dollars on the bailout package, because it shows how companies blatantly tried to manipulate congress into making people suffer financially.
The three "wise" monkeys
This measly $2 million is a problem, but the results of the AP investigation show a bigger problem that probably isn’t isolated to this one instance. If Freddie was careless enough to get caught once, how time times was he successful before slipping up?
And how many other companies do these same kinds of things?
Congress needs to look at this story and take away everything that could be interpreted as a golden parachute for these executives. Not only were these people responsible for the suffering of millions of people, they were also worthless at their jobs and even tried to perform secret missions to acquire power in the senate.
So, while some politicians are saying that playing the blame game won’t work, it could very possibly be because those senators were approached by DCI (the ones paid off by Freddie) and were somehow swayed to vote the way Freddie needed them to.
So who’s to blame for the bailout? The answer is simple. It’s not everyone, it’s not no-one. The answer isn’t to relax about where the blame should be.
There answer is companies like Freddie Mac, groups like DCI and senators like the ones who went along with these groups. Those are some of the people responsible for how terrible the economy is right now.
And Freddie brings up another question that needs to be answered as well: Why only target republicans when trying to take control of congress? What’s wrong with democrats?
There are about two weeks left until the general election. During that election, California will vote on Proposition 8. A proposition which would put an amendment into California’s constitution stating that only marriage between and man and a woman would be recognized.
Recently, the majority of commercials saying, “Yes on Prop 8,” are also saying that the reason to vote “yes” is because of our public schools. One of the big reasons homosexuals shouldn’t be allowed to get married is because teachers in public schools might mention it.
I went through the California public school system, and I know how much they teach students about marriage – not much. It isn’t a big part of the lesson plan. It’s just one of those things that is required to be taught, so teachers glance over it in a day or two in class.
Is that really going to destroy California’s children? Is that a good reason to take away the rights of some human beings?
Not only is this a weak argument, but it also blames public schools as a reason for why gay people can’t get married. This is not the case.
It isn’t public schools trying to prevent gay marriage, it is a bunch of fanatical religious groups like the Knights of Columbus, a group who donated $1.3 million to support the proposition.
Caution!
Supporters of prop 8 have more money invested than the people against it, and a lot of the biggest donations are coming from out-of-state. For a proposition that’s on California’s ballot, it’s strange to see that a lot of people that aren’t from here can try to control the outcome.
So how about letting Californians decide what’s best for their state? And how about keeping religion out of it?
It’s tough to keep separation between church and state when the church doesn’t try to play by the rules. Both the church and state need to try to play ball and be separate, the state can’t do it by themselves.
Maybe "real Virginia" should be added to the cloud.
“Real” Virginia is anyone who helps encompass what Virginia is as a state. That includes everyone who lives there, not just the people who support McCain, so I don’t see what they could really be getting at by the term.
McCain’s aide, Nancy Pfotenhauer, said that the poeple who live in the more populated areas in the northern parts of Virginia are commuters and people moving from D.C. who don’t count as “real” Virginians.
This is different than the southern par, which is more rural.
It’s pretty well known that republicans do better in rural areas, so why create a term that pins down those in Virginia? The logical reason seems to be one that’s a little slimy.
Instead of getting people in Virginia to support McCain by making him hear what their needs are, and helping them with their problems, the big strategy is to back-handily lie to them. By using the term “real Virginia,” all McCain does is instill a sense of ownership and pride in the rural south of the state.
If someone told me I lived in the “real California,” I would feel pretty proud of myself, but at the same time, it doesn’t really help me with my bills. I don’t really care if I live in the “real” part of the state, if the state is still getting screwed over.
When the “real” parts of the states are hurting just bad or more than the “fake” parts, then what’s the real difference? The only difference is one part of the state is going to have a chunk swayed to vote for someone who did nothing more than give them an empty compliment.
Just so you know, I really try to be unbiased, but sometimes one campaign has all the news. I can’t help but notice all of the firsts that have happened in the Obama campaign. Not only is he the first black president (potentially), but a lot of his ideas are new, answering questions with specific answers is new, and his new rally in Missouri brought in record breaking numbers. The only first in the McCain campaign is Sarah Palin being a woman, but that hasn’t really worked out like they’d hoped.
The photo of 100,000 people waiting to hear Obama speak is amazing. But you have to ask yourself, “why would all of these people travel to see Obama in Missouri?” No matter what you think the answer is, you’d have to admit that whatever brought all of them there, it was pretty powerful.
Obama is bringing out more emotion and feeling in his followers. He makes them believe that he is actually going to change things. McCain says he’s going to change this as well, but for some reason, not as many people believe him.
Why is that?
Maybe because he’s been in Washington for 30 years and things haven’t changed much while he’s been there. If you can’t change things to they way you want them in 30 years, how do you expect to do it in four?
It seems like, as long as people go out and vote, there is no question Obama has more followers to vote for him. However, that seems to be the case in every election. There are more democrats in this country than republicans, there are more people supporting Obama than McCain. But for some reason, republicans are always in the running when election night comes.
This is because there’s a big difference between saying things and actually doing them. Democrats always talk big, and hopefully Obama can back up what he’s saying.
“Joe the Plumber” has been found after the debate last night, and he’s not making things look any better for Barack Obama or John McCain.
The plumber the candidates were talking about in last night’s debate turns out to be a man by the name of Joe Wurzelbacher.
At an Obama event in Ohio, Wurzelbacher told Obama that he’s planning on buying a business that earns over $250,000 a year. He then asked Obama, “Your new tax plan is going to tax me more, isn’t it?”
The Gawker article says, “Keating’s son-in-law, Robert Wurzelbacher (not a very common last name) served a 40-month prison sentence in 1993 in connection with Keating’s Lincoln Savings and Loan collapse.” According to the article, McCain was investigated in the matter, but was let off with a slap on the wrist.
It’s hard to believe that Joe the Plumber just happened to be connected to the Keating scandal, and Joe’s already become somewhat of a talking head for republicans. It’s starting to look like this thing was -to some extent- set up by someone.
Wurzelbacher isn’t a very common last name.
There is a collection of articles and fast facts about the situation here.
Realistic Lies 