So after about the two busiest weeks ever, I finally have a chance to post again. I work a disgusting 46 hours the week of thanksgiving, one day pulling a double shift, morning in Bloomsburg and evening in Lehighton. But so is the way of the dollar I suppose. Anyway, back on topic. I found this very interesting and good at getting to the point and really making you think.

12 reasons why gay people should not be allowed to get married.

1. Homosexuality is not natural, much like eyeglasses, polyester, and birth control.

2. Heterosexual marriages are valid because they produce children. Infertile couples and old people can't legally get married because the world needs more children.

3. Obviously, gay parents will raise gay children, since straight parents only raise straight children.

4. Straight marriage will be less meaningful if Gay marriage is allowed, since Britney Spears' 55-hour just-for-fun marriage was meaningful.

5. Heterosexual marriage has been around a long time and hasn't changed at all; women are property, blacks can't marry whites, and divorce is illegal.

6. Gay marriage should be decided by people, not the courts, because the majority-elected legislatures, not courts, have historically protected the rights of the minorities.

7. Gay marriage is not supported by religion. In a theocracy like ours, the values of one religion are imposed on the entire country. That's why we have only one religion in America.

8. Gay marriage will encourage people to be gay, in the same way that hanging around tall people will make you tall.

9. Legalizing gay marriage will open the door to all kinds of crazy behavior. People may even wish to marry their pets because a dog has legal standing and can sign a marriage contract.

10. Children can never succeed without a male and a female role model at home. That's why single parents are forbidden to raise children.

11. Gay marriage will change the foundation of society. Heterosexual marriage has been around for a long time, and we could never adapt to new social norms because we haven't adapted to things like cars or a longer lifespan.

12. Civil unions, providing most of the same benefits as marriage with a different name are better, because a "separate but equal" institution is always constitutional. Separate schools for African-Americans worked just as well as separate marriages for gays and lesbians will.


Granted, some of them are pretty rediculous, but others raise valid points. Especially the seperate but equal comment. I'm pretty sure Brown v. BOE struck that down quite a few years ago, yet it is still brought up today. Interesting material. More to come soon.

So over the weekend, I went to my cousins wedding with my girlfriend. My cousin, like myself, is of the christian religion. Her new husband, is jewish. Now to me, that doesn't create a problem aside except for a few issues of ceramony and that sort of thing. And they actually addressed that, having a surprisingly nice jewish/christian wedding. There was a priest and a rabbi, who both did part of the service. They combined traditions and it turned out very well. My cousins parents looked very happy about the entire thing, and were in an excellent mood, the stress of their first and only daughter getting married aside. However, the grooms parents looked absolutly miserable the entire time. From what I understood, they were very upset that their son was not marrying a jewish girl. I didn't see the grooms mother smile once, and her sister had a scowl on her face throughout the whole ceremony.

Silly me, I know. My idealisitic ways would think that parents would be happy for their son the day he makes the most important decision of his life. But what do I know. Apparently they have the right to be miserable because their son is marrying outside of the religion. God forbid. Seriously, I'm sure they would've liked God to forbid that. It's just sickening really. The two of them were so happy together, and my aunt and uncle were so happy for the whole thing, and they were miserable. There was even a fight at the reception within their family. I didn't see it, so I don't know about what, but somebody was shouting "shut up shut up" and stormed out and left. What a wonderful way to celebrate a wedding, by being selfish and putting the wishes of yourself before those of your child.

Now I understand that sometimes a parent should put their wishes before their child, such as the wish they do well in school, not do drugs, etc. But from my view, of your child is so in love that they want to marry someone, that isn't something you try and change. It shouldn't matter if they're man, woman, black, white, jewish, christian, catholic, or muslim.

Overall the ceramony was very nice, and I had a great time, but that little thing just bugged me all day. How selfish and ignorant of the parents to act that way on their sons wedding day.

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.

Gas! Gas! Quick, boys! – An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling,
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime . . .
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud12
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est
Pro patria mori.

Wilfred Owen
8 October 1917 - March, 1918

This poem stood out in my mind since the first time I read it in AP english in high school. It really paints a vivid anti-war picture. Even if it is from a different time peroid, the idea still rings true today.

Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori - "It is sweet and right to die for your country."

A novel idea, until you see the horrors of war.

So I was up until 2:30 last night watching the election on CNN before I finally decided to get to sleep. I guess I could have gone an hour or two earlier than that, becuase I know just as much this morning as I did at 2:30 since nothing changed. It looks like it's all going to come down to Montana and Virginia. I'm surprised about Montana, since that is usually such a conservative state, but as of now, democrat Joe Tester is in the lead. The very, very slim lead. Some of these races have been so close. I would imagine the republican candidates will ask for recounts. Seems as though the shoe will be on the other foot this election.

In Pennsylvania, I'm glad to see Rick Santorum lose his seat. Thats a blow to the republicans too, because he was prett high ranking in the senate. I like Bob Casey Jr, but I'm not sure what I think about his conservative views on social issues. I feel like he's a step in the right direction, just not as big a step as I would have liked to see taken.







Did anyone else notice that while talking to I think the head of the republican campaign, or head of the republican party, I'm not sure exactly who it was, but after he was done talking to I believe Anderson Cooper, and they switched over to Wolf Blitzer on to report on the election, you could still see the republican chairperson, whoever he was, angrily pull off his ear piece and drop it on the ground? I just thought that pretty well summed up the night for republicans.

I hoped the democrats would pick up a lot of seats in the house, but I thought they might get around 15, hopefully a few more and enough for the majority. I never thought they would pick up 28 seats, which is how many they've picked up as of now. I guess we'll have to wait awhile, possibly a few weeks, to find out what is going to happen in the Senate with Montana and Virginia. Lets hope they go blue.

November 7th, 2006, and another election is on us. I did go and vote, as every single American should. In my opinion, if you don't vote, you have no right to complain about anything that this or any government does. You didn't exercise your right, so you shouldn't complain about what goes on. Anyway, on campus we have new electronic machines. Two electronic voting machines, and one old fashioned paper ballot. Luckily just by chance, when I was up to vote the paper ballot was open, so thats what I did. I say luckily, because I don't trust the electronic voting. It leaves no paper trail, and could be hacked and tampered with far too easily for my liking. I asked my Media Law professor what his view on electronic voting machines was, and he said "They scare the hell out of me." He pointed out about a study that was done that found out it was possible for someone to tamper with the machines and influence the vote. Not a good thing to think about. On that note, I wanted to talk about another contested election, the election in 2000. We watched a video the other day in Federal Government, and this is what I learned.

Before the election, Katherine Harris(the head of the election board in florida and sec. of state) and Jeb Bush hired a group called database technologies to scan the voter records in florida and purge the names of all convicted felons under an old law passed right after the civil war which prohibited felons from voting. The law was passed by confederate soldiers aimed at keeping black people from voting. After Database technologies(DBT) started their search through the voter records, they started getting a lot of "false positives," which were people who's name was very similiar to a convicted felons name, but they were obviously different people. This included things like felon John Smith, and non-felon John Smith Jr, or felon Ted White, born on 11/3/50, and non-felon Ted White, born on 11/3/76. They sent a letter to Harris stating that they felt the search critera were too big and they were concerned about all the non-felons being picked and taken off the voter registration lists, and in return, recieved a letter from a lawyer of Harris and Bush's, that said "we want these lists to be fairly broad and encompassing." So DBT continued with their purge of the voter registration lists, taking people off of the lists who had never seen the inside of a courtroom, but had the disadvantage of sharing a name or birthdate similiar to a convicted felon.

Also in Florida, Jeb Bush decided to take the names of 2,883 convicted felons off of the voter registration lists. These felons had been convicted in other states, served jail time, been released, had their voting rights restored, and then moved to Florida. Bush thought that they should have to reapply for voting rights in Florida, so without notice, they were removed from the voter registration lists.

After thousands of black voters (who would overwhelmingly vote democratic) showed up and found out their names weren't on the voter registration lists, groups started doing investigations into the accuracy of the DBT felon lists. One minister at a Florida Church found out that he was unable to vote, because he was convicted of a felony in 2007. This was a problem DBT had, that somehow the years of conviction coming up did not fit with the person. Either they were before they were born, or in the future, or in a year that possibly couldn't be right, such as when the person was 2 or 3 years old. After alerting the Florida Board of Elections, led by Harris, of this problem, they were told to white out any years on their lists of convicted felons that didn't make sense. So on the lists of convicted felons sent out to the voting polls, 4000 wrongly accusted non-felons could not find out the year they were supposedly arrested. A study was done on a sampling of 690 convicted felons found by DBT, and out of those 690, 33 were found to be actual convicted felons. The other 657 had their voting rights wrongly stripped.

There were also major descrepencies on the ballots. Some were very confusing, having george bush listed first on the left side, meaning you would punch the first "chad" to vote for Bush, Pat Buchannon listed first on the right side, meaning you would punch the second chad for him, and al gore listed second on the left side, meaning you would punch the third chad to vote for him. However, the arrow pointing to the chad to punch for Gore fell on the line between the 2nd and 3rd chad, leading to people at first voting for Buchannon, and then realizing what they did and punching the chad for Gore. Over 1000 ballots were thrown out in a single county because there were two votes on them. Other ballots that were thrown because they said "place a vote on every page" despite the fact that there were presidential candidates on more than one page. By voting on every page, the voter voided their own ballot. Overall, 27,000 votes were thrown out, 16,000 of them in precints that vote 98% democratic.

Harris, who maintained her impartialness as head of the board of elections by campaigning for Bush in other states, refused to expand the election deadline to finish counting the votes manually. Republicans lamented the process of manual voting recounts, and the hanging chad, dimpled chad, etc, debate, despite the fact that 2 years earlier, while governor of TX, Bush passed one of the most liberal voting recount acts ever passed, saying that manual recounts were the most accurate way to determine who had won an election. The Florida government also allowed 680 illegal absentee ballots to be counted from the army oversea, which would vote heavily rebuplican, even though they were post marked after the election, a complete violation of Florida law. When the democrats raised this issue, they were accused of trying to rob the military of their right to vote.

The case got to the Supreme Court, and they decided not to overturn Harris's order of giving the FL's electoral votes to Bush. However, it seems that the justices knew what they were doing was wrong. (On a personal note, I've been reading and researching lots of cases for my media law class, and have never seen anything like this) The supreme court put a mandate before their ruling in this case, that what they were about to say applied ONLY to the case before them, and could not be citied as precident in rulings in the future. Possibly because they knew that they were setting a dangerous precident that they did not want used in the future. That raises the question, why did they vote to end the recounts and allow Bush to be elected President, by a vote of 5-4.

Justice Antonin Scalia's two sons worked for Bush's legal team, and after the election, one of them recieved a promotion. Justice Clarence Thomas's wife worked for Bush by reading and reviewing applications for jobs under his administration, a job that would surely flourish if he was elected President. Justice Sandra Day O'Conner had stated that she would only retire under a republican president so her successor could be conservative. All three voted to stop the recounts. Even if you don't want to believe that these were their motives behind their vote, For Scalia and Thomas at least, it seems they could have recused themselves because of ties to the Bush election and administration.

Even if you supported Bush, you have to admit that there are a disgusting amount of irregularities that went into the election in Florida, and it really makes you question the validity of the "American Democracy."