Bleary eyed

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It's 10 o'clock Monday night.
Delved into my official Washington State Voters Pamphlet, doing my civic duty studying the Initiatives, Measures, Federal candidates and their statements, State candidates and their statements, then County candidates and their statements, and a slew of State and County measures and amendments.
All 135 pages of it.
Ten candidates for POTUS alone. Five of them I recognize. Two of the five I'm sick of hearing about. But the other three, Jill Stein, Robert Kennedy Jr, and Cornel West I paid some attention to. Kennedy has since dropped out and went to the dark side (but not the darkest side). I know well what Stein stands for and continues to represent my values and morals.
West is a rather vague candidate who lists as his Community service as "taught in prison for 50 years", leaving me to wonder what he was serving 50 years in prison for?
He certainly could use a good proof-reader.
I did read through the statements of the remaining five candidates just to make certain I've not missed a messiah there somewhere.
Nope.
The rest of the Fed, State, and County candidates was made easier by determining who the incumbent was, and then voting for the other guy.
Breezed right through there.
The initiatives, measures, and amendments I painstakingly read through, both the arguments for and against, including the rebuttals to for and against, all on glossy 8 x 10 photos with pictures and arrows on the back.......no, wait that was a song in my head.
Anyway, I'm tired and confused and definitely bleary eyed and ready for bed.
Lets see, there's an envelope around here somewhere with my name on it.
I can really understand why so few voters participate.
I'll post this in the morning.

Good morning. Thread is open.

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usefewersyllables's picture

was about 50 pages, and then you have to add in the county-only sub-pamphlet. Colorado has a proposition for ranked-choice voting that is so bad that even the dems oppose it, for example.

I waded through all that dreck, and voted the day I got my ballot. Voted for Stein, voted against Boebert (who is carpetbagging in my district after getting thrown out on the Western Slope), voted not to retain any of the judges, and voted no on the vast majority of the propositions. Took forever. Dropped it off in the county lockbox the next day, and washed my hands of the whole sordid affair.

If they didn't mail me my ballot, I certainly wouldn't have bothered. It is just the repressed Calvinist in me that makes me do it at all.

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Twice bitten, permanently shy.

earthling1's picture

@usefewersyllables
were against, incumbents, initiatives, amendments, propositions, etc.
One such prop. was a levy lid raise on property taxes of 41 cents for police.
But reading through till the end, I found they slipped in an automatic 5% increase per year.
It will probably pass because most people will not read much of the details of the proposition, let alone the whole thing.
And Stein is my non-evil preference.
Thanks for the post.

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10 users have voted.

Neither Russia nor China is our enemy.
Neither Iran nor Venezuela are threatening America.
Cuba is a dead horse, stop beating it.

same thing with slimy politicians.

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earthling1's picture

@humphrey
And it would never be reliable power.
But thanks for the clip. Looks interesting.

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8 users have voted.

Neither Russia nor China is our enemy.
Neither Iran nor Venezuela are threatening America.
Cuba is a dead horse, stop beating it.

our sample ballots. There were no state wide propositions to vote against.
Stein is on the ballot.
There are a few Democrats on the ballot for state rep, and Ted Cruz has opponents in the D and Libertarian party.
We shall see how many Texans are genocidists.
Hope you got sleep and plenty of morning coffee, e1. Thanks for the OT, friend.

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10 users have voted.

"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

earthling1's picture

@on the cusp
for either party is pro Genocide. I see little difference.
The Libertarians I'm unsure about.
Thanks for stopping by.

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7 users have voted.

Neither Russia nor China is our enemy.
Neither Iran nor Venezuela are threatening America.
Cuba is a dead horse, stop beating it.

in the MSM.

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11 users have voted.
earthling1's picture

@humphrey
Lotta talk in the alt media about something really big (Black Swan Event) gonna happen to distract the world from focusing on the big meetup.
Be ready for it.

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11 users have voted.

Neither Russia nor China is our enemy.
Neither Iran nor Venezuela are threatening America.
Cuba is a dead horse, stop beating it.

QMS's picture

@humphrey
.
.
it is almost like they enjoy saving the world
I know you won't respond, so thanks to e1 for
the OT anyway.

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10 users have voted.

question everything

earthling1's picture

@QMS
Something tells me they gonna need a much bigger stage.
Thanks for stoppin' by.

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9 users have voted.

Neither Russia nor China is our enemy.
Neither Iran nor Venezuela are threatening America.
Cuba is a dead horse, stop beating it.

enhydra lutris's picture

won't until 11/01. Just back from shopping.

We have our annual bulky and recyclable waste pick-up Thursday, and have a ton of stuff to put out. We're allowed 27 cu yd and have already set aside about 2/3 of that. I have a surgery on the 29th and an infusion on the 30th, as well as a ton of stuff to get done in the meantime.

In CA we have some assistance in dealing with the ballot, 2 or 3 orgs that are very busy throwing their support behind various propositions and politicians and they have very odious platforms, agendas, views and preferences. Anything or anybody they support generally has my no vote, so that helps speed things up. Also the state referendum process seems to favor Constitutional amendments, and almost everything that gets on the ballot should, at best, be a law, not part of the Constitution, so there are a lot of easy no votes there too. Finally, this is a Blue state and the GOP types that run are usually far, far worse than the Dems, so it quickly narrows down to the Greens or Peace and Freedom or none-of-the-above.

be well and have a good one

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8 users have voted.

That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

enhydra lutris's picture

@enhydra lutris

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5 users have voted.

That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

earthling1's picture

@enhydra lutris
27 cu ft. is one cubic yard iirc.
It's all good.
And it's nonstop polical ads here on radio and TV, hell even Roku is running them.
Can't wait to get back to nonstop Big Pharma ads.
PS Why do all the drugs have an X, Y, or Z in their name? Just askin'.
Thanks for the post.

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6 users have voted.

Neither Russia nor China is our enemy.
Neither Iran nor Venezuela are threatening America.
Cuba is a dead horse, stop beating it.

enhydra lutris's picture

@earthling1

X, Y, and Z names would sell better, were more memorable, and stuff like that. I suspect that folks find them more "sciency" because, otherwise, they aren't at all that common.

For my money look for the ones ending in "mab", those are monoclonal antibodies.

be well and have a good one

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5 users have voted.

That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

QMS's picture

.
mostly makes sense

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9 users have voted.

question everything

I got lucky this year in Florida. It’s only two pages long. The important part is the amendments. They become a part of the Constitution so it’s harder to get rid of them. They also have to pass by 60%.

The only two I believe will pass is the one for the Constitutional right to hunt and fish. Florida has a lot of rural areas. It’s not just large metro areas like Orlando and Miami. Everyone I know owns a gun or two. Besides the way things are going we are going to need to hunt and fish in order to eat.

The other one I think is going to pass is recreational marijuana. I think that the abortion one will be close but won’t get the 60 percent.

And the Democrats actually are running someone against Matt Gaetz but it won’t matter, he’ll get about 75 percent of the vote.

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11 users have voted.
QMS's picture

@Enchantress
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only have a few referendums to vote against
not too complicated, as far as I can tell
typical legalese intended to confuse the voters
fortunately our local reps help to sort the mess out

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8 users have voted.

question everything

Pluto's Republic's picture

.... into an AI, and tell it what you are looking for — have the whole thing summarized, find out what patterns or problems it notices, ask if anything looks suspicious, plagiarized, or conflicted, find out who seems untrustworthy or mendacious,, etc, etc.

Just to break the monotony.

I happened to flip through the local voters guide in these parts, and I got the immediate impression that embedded thoughout the Guide was a general 'clamping-down' by the political parties and the Old System bureaucrats — in order to prohibit or prevent any thoughts about allowing Independent voters to expand the spectrum of political choices for the voting public.

A fact that is being repeated a lot in the news is that, overall, Independents comprise a larger group of voters than either the Republicans or the Democrats. This suggests that the privately-owned, political parties — the Minority — are imposing their partisan, self-serving, political rules on non-party Independent voters — the Majority. Those Party Rules make it impossible for non-party voters to gain any political traction on the ballots. The Majority has been written out of the US political process by unaccountable, private-Party Clubs.

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10 users have voted.
QMS's picture

@Pluto's Republic
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heh, I hear this sort of inquiry from the tooties
(local summer visitors) in season
so, who is your plumber?
who is your nanny?
or as R.W. would say
who's your daddy?
Wink

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5 users have voted.

question everything

earthling1's picture

@Pluto's Republic is some of the measures and amendments did not have opposing arguments, indicating no one submitted one, which smelled a little funny.
Any measure or amendment having only a "for argument" I promptly voted down.

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4 users have voted.

Neither Russia nor China is our enemy.
Neither Iran nor Venezuela are threatening America.
Cuba is a dead horse, stop beating it.

QMS's picture

@earthling1
.
.
for instance, having a referendum to alter the state
constitution for whatever measure, is unnecessary, as
there already exist laws to deal with these things
it is more of a question why the laws are not enforced
changing the constitution will not fix that fwiw

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4 users have voted.

question everything